As a small business owner, your website’s search ranking on Google is vital for your business. If your business receives any penalties from Google, it can result in a drop in ranking with the search engine. This ultimately impacts your website's traffic and your business' bottom line.
To understand the effects of Google Penalties, first, you have to know what a Google penalty is. Per Wikipedia, “A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's search algorithms or manual review. The penalty can be a byproduct of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.”
When you search Google's website, it can be challenging to sort out how you receive the penalties, and how to go about removing them. So if you're a small business looking to understand Google penalties, below are the reasons why your website can receive a Google penalty, and what you can do to address the penalty once received.
Google is the number one search engine in the world because they produce the most relevant results for their users. Therefore, if you use any tactic to try and manipulate the search engine or give poor user experience, Google will penalize you. You're impacting their ability to provide quality service.
If your website has any spam, spyware or viruses, hidden links or text, cloaking, any redirects that are deceptive, duplicate content, or your website uses any keyword stuffing or irrelevant keywords, it can be flagged for a penalty. The Google team can spot these when they do their manual reviews. They will notify you when you received a penalty.
As for the algorithm penalties, they're a lot harder to spot as you're not notified when they occur.
To correct a manual penalty, you can submit a penalty reconsideration to Google. From your Google account, you'll need to sign into your Search Console, review your site to make sure everything is complete, review your manual penalty action, and do everything suggested to correct the problem. Lastly, select "Request a review" which asks Google to reconsider the penalty. You'll need to provide documentation that the changes asked of you were completed.
There are good news and bad news with regards to an algorithmic penalty. The good news is if your site has received an algorithmic penalty, you won't need to request reconsideration from Google. The algorithm will correct itself once you resolve the issue(s). The bad news is that this can take a long time to fix, missing out on a lot of website traffic.
As a small business owner, it's imperative that you consistently monitor your Google ranking to avoid or catch any penalty placed on your website. If your website does drop in its search engine ranking, you can't immediately assume you’ve received a Google penalty. Google is continuously updating and changing how it ranks websites.
Also, you also have to keep in mind that new businesses are popping up daily. Your current competition can be gaining momentum. Therefore, you may have to improve your search engine optimization. If you realize that your search engine optimization methods aren't working, SERP Champion can assist you with bringing your websites ranking back up, so that you can compete in the marketplace.
