For most of the websites, traffic contribution from the organic channel is the highest. Conversion rate from the organic channel is also the highest. This increases the dependency of business on Google. Just an improvement in Google ranking for a few keywords can increase the number of leads and thus can help improve the revenue. To achieve better and faster results from the organic channel, some SEO practitioners might manipulate the search index by either over-optimising their website or by employing some black-hat SEO practices. And guess what Google does to them? A penalty which devalues their site on Google.
What is Google Penalty?
You should not get confused between Google algorithm updates and Google Penalty. Google penalty is a manual action taken by Google if your website violates the google webmaster guidelines, whereas an algorithm update affects the Google search results.
List of Google Penalty or Manual action by Google
User-generated spam
This manual penalty is not because of the site owner trying to violate webmaster guidelines but due to some malicious visitors or users who are trying to spam the website either through irrelevant links or content. Websites which accept user-generated content are more vulnerable to be hit by this penalty.
Spammy hosting service
This google penalty is due to your hosting provider getting spammed through the creation of websites which majorly violates the webmaster guidelines. This is a common problem for free hosting provider services.
Structured data issue
This Google penalty will occur if the website has a mismatch in the content served and the structured markup that has been used. Also, if your website violates the structured data guidelines of Google, your website will receive this penalty.
Cloaking
If your website provides different content to users and search engines, then your website can receive this penalty. Google recommends showing the same content to both users and Google bots.
Conclusion
Being hit by a Google manual penalty will devalue your website in Google search and will also have an impact on the organic traffic and thus the revenue. Hence it becomes essential to ensure that your website does not violate the webmaster guidelines. However, if you get hit by a penalty, you should not panic as you can troubleshoot the particular issue and submit a reconsideration request to Google through the search console. If you are finding it difficult to recover from the penalty, then we would like to help you out with our Google penalty recovery services.