What is Google Penalty and How to Check it?
What is Google penalty and how to check it?
Google is the most popular search engine in the world and it has been the main source of traffic for several business units. It will be most embarrassing when you have failed to comply with the norms and guidelines stipulated in Google policy and receive a penalty. This grossly brings down your ranking and as an aftereffect of it, the traffic to your site reduces considerably.
Is it a penalty?
Many of us have to understand the action of Google by viewing at the analytics results but you still need confirmation. At first you have to see if Google has altered its behavior towards your company. For example, the rankings of your business rivals might have also been affected. You should also verify the results from different locations. Also check the Google referrer traffic in the analytics tool. On many occasions, the revisions effected by Google like Panda and GooPLA can be the reason for drop in rankings. These updates are not a penalty but they simply change the functioning style of Google search algorithm.
Reasons for getting penalized
Creation of false links is one of the most prevailing punishable practices. It includes going for paid links, hiding links in pages and duplicate links. Using keywords in abnormal numbers, also referred as keyword stuffing, is penalized as well. A site containing full of malware is also penalized by Google.
Penalty is a result of you breaking a guideline. The guidelines provided in Google Webmaster clearly explain on what grounds a website can be penalized. A reliable method to verify whether you are at default or not is to run the 'site: yourdomain.com query'. If this does not function, you can conclude that your site has been penalized. Several times your rankings will remain unaffected in your site even after being penalized.
Dealing with penalties
Usually there is a time period of a few months if you have been penalized. After this period, you become eligible to be indexed again. Filing a petition for reconsideration also helps. You should remove the penalized content or factor and when re-crawled, the site will come back to its original ranking.
People often confuse in their perception about the "Google Penalty" and the "Google Dance". The "Google Dance" is usually a short term affair during which time Google alters its algorithm and the search engine rankings will move up for a few days. The "Google penalty" is when they note something wrong with your SEO methods and you end up being penalized with a marked drop in your search engine rankings. There is a standard period of penalties varying from 6 months to one year depending upon the seriousness of the default.
Steps to identify link penalties
• Look for Notifications from your Google Webmaster Tools Account
• Keep on Reading Reliable SEO Blogs for Recent Google Updates
• Determine the Coverage or Reach of Penalty
• Perform a Review of Your Site against Search Engine TOS
• Fix and Improve your SEO Strategies.
