Have you ever felt like you’re navigating through a minefield on Google, trying to keep your website visible on the first page of search results? Well, you’re not alone.

With Google dominating almost 92% of the search engine market, securing a spot at the top is every company’s dream. And that’s no surprise — 54.4% of all clicks go to the top 3 Google search results.

So, making your website visible on Google is everything when it comes to your online presence. And yes, it’s easier said than done, especially with Google’s penalties lurking around the corner.

Imagine waking up one day to find your website going down in search results just because of Google’s complex guidelines. To be honest, it’s a reality for thousands of sites annually, with nearly half experiencing a drastic drop in traffic and, more importantly, in revenue.

However, we wouldn’t be writing this article if there wasn’t a path to avoid and easily recover from Google penalties. In our Google penalty recovery guide, we’ll explore the main no-nos and walk you through step by step to recover from them. 

What Is a Google Penalty?

Before we dive into the most common penalties, we’ll break down what a Google penalty actually is.

Think of Google as the gatekeeper of the internet, setting guidelines for websites to follow so it may provide users with the most relevant content and keep things fair for everyone. 

In case a website decides to step out of line and overuse SEO tactics or provide spammy content, shady links, or poor user experience, Google can drag the website down in rankings or even remove it from search results completely.

What are the main Google penalty triggers?

• Keyword stuffing
• Irrelevant keywords
• Duplicate content
• Hidden text or links
• Spyware, malware, or viruses
• Instant redirects without the user clicking anywhere
• Backlink farming

Now, why should you be concerned about this? First of all, it can quickly slash your site’s traffic, cut down your leads, and, as a result, leave your sales tanking. Understanding the why behind a Google SEO penalty is critical. It’s about maintaining the quality and trustworthiness of the web and improving your website so it offers the best user experience.

There are two types of Google penalties: manual and algorithmic. 

A manual penalty happens when a Google reviewer has spotted something off and decided to intervene. 

Algorithmic penalties, on the other hand, are applied automatically, pushing your site down in the rankings when changes occur in Google’s guidelines.

Luckily, you can fix both types of issues and keep your website safe in the eyes of Google. In this article, we’ll explore a list of Google penalties and discover how to perform a Google penalty removal with no harm to your website.

But first, how will you even know whether your website has been penalized?

How Can You Tell If Your Site Has Been Hit By A Penalty?

At this stage, you might be wondering, “How do I know if my website has been penalized?” 

There are some essential signs you should look for.

1. Sudden traffic drop

One day, your website is full of visitors, and then — bam — it’s like a desert. If you see an unexplained drop in your website traffic, you might have been hit by a penalty.

2. Rankings drop

As with the first condition, if you’re used to seeing your pages at the top of the search results but suddenly they’re ranking far lower, it can be a clear signal that a penalty has come knocking.

3. Notification in Google Search Console

Of course, with Google, you don’t always have to wonder and wait for a sign. Sometimes, they send you a direct message. So, if you’ve received a notification in Google Search Console about a manual action taken against your site, that’s Google being clear: it’s time to make amends.

4. Deindexed pages

You may find that your website pages are not only hidden far down in Google’s search results but have completely vanished, even after a direct search. In this case, it’s a strong indicator that Google has deindexed them due to a penalty.

5. Algorithm updates

Sometimes, it’s not about what you did but when it happened. If your site’s traffic and rankings dip right after a known Google algorithm update, you might be feeling the aftereffects. Keeping an eye on SEO news can help you correlate these events and figure out if an update has left you in the cold.

Now that you know how to identify penalties, let’s take a look at our step-by-step Google penalty recovery guide.

The Major Google Penalties And How To Fix Them

1. Panda penalty

What it is: The Google Panda penalty was launched back in 2011, and it mainly targets content-related problems — thin content, duplicates, plagiarized content, generic content, content with not enough information, low-quality content that doesn’t serve the user’s needs, too many ads, over-optimized URLs, unnecessary or excess HTML or CSS in your code, duplicate meta descriptions — any of these issues can trigger Panda.

Example: Your blog rehashes the same advice found on dozens of other sites, offering little in the way of new insights or value.

How to fix it:

1. Roll up your sleeves and audit your site’s content. Is it original? Does it provide value? Update your pages or eliminate the ones that no longer hold any value.
2. Fix poor grammar issues. Typos, errors, and other grammatical mistakes are a no-no, so make sure you use a solid tool like Grammarly to create concise content.
3. Сreate content that’s not just unique but packed with insights, helpful information, and answers to your audience’s burning questions.
4. Remove or revamp any duplicate content that might be lurking on your site.

How long it will take: Since you will need to adjust your content and make sure it holds value to your users, it may take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks to recover from Google penalties. Here, it all depends on you.

2. Penguin penalty

What it is: Launched into the wild in 2012, Penguin is all about link quality. It’s aimed at sites with a shady backlink profile — those intended to manipulate page rank rather than provide genuine value. Basically, it penalizes you for the keywords you were targeting, resulting in less traffic.

Example: You’ve paid for a bunch of links from sites that have nothing to do with your niche, hoping for a quick SEO win.

How to fix it:

• Conduct a link audit with tools like Google’s Search Console, Ahrefs, Webmaster Tools, or Link Research Tools to analyze your backlink profile.
• Identify and manually remove links that are harmful or irrelevant to your site. After gathering and deleting as many as possible, collect the remaining links and submit them to Google to disavow. This will tell Google you don’t want those links to be connected to you. We also recommend consulting with a professional, for that matter, as it could potentially harm your rankings if done wrong.
• Earn your links through high-quality content and genuine relationships within your industry.

How long it will take: Brace yourself, as Penguin recovery may not happen overnight. Since you have to wait for Google to recrawl your links, it may take from a few weeks to … a year.

3. Thin content

What it is: Similar to Panda but worth its own mention, this penalty targets sites with content that has little or no value to the user. Think of pages with very little text or copied content.

Example: You have pages on your site with just a couple of sentences that offer no factual information or usefulness.

How to fix it:

• Add substance to thin pages by providing comprehensive and valuable information.
• Consider merging thin content pages with more robust ones or removing them if they offer no value.
• Always prioritize the creation of content that addresses the needs and questions of your audience.

4. Cloaking (hidden texts or links)

What it is: Cloaking is another method that violates Google’s policies. It can show one piece of content to the search engine and another to your visitors or redirect users to another website (while the original is the one ranked on Google).

Example: To attract more traffic, some businesses place text on their website that’s the same color as the background. In other cases, they will set the font size at 0, invisible to visitors but readable by search engines, or show a high-quality article to Google but redirect users to a completely different page.

How to fix it:

• Make sure that both search engines and visitors are seeing the same content. No tricks, no gimmicks.
• Use the relevant structured data for your website.
• Go through your site and remove any text or links that are not visible to users but are embedded for search engines. You can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to help you identify any discrepancies.

5. Keyword stuffing 

What it is: Keyword stuffing is a black-hat SEO strategy in which website owners use an excessive (and unnatural) number of keywords to ensure they rank higher on Google. Of course, this often results in the websites getting penalized.

Example: Take a look at this sentence: “Our chocolate cookies are the best chocolate cookies because we make chocolate cookies with the best chocolate.” Something like this will inevitably result in a keyword stuffing penalty.

How to fix it:

• Analyze your content for density and rewrite keyword-stuffed content to ensure that it’s written for users and not for ranking manipulation.
• Use long-tail keywords instead of single-word ones.
• Use Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant to help you with natural keyword integration.

6. Auto-generated content (spam)

What it is: As the name suggests, this strategy involves using various software and tools to generate content without human oversight. This can include automatically translated text, meaningless content using paraphrasing tools, text generated from combining several sources into one gibberish text, etc.

Example: When websites don’t want to pay content writers, they tend to use software to scrape content from various sources and mash it together into a Frankenstein’s monster of an article that may barely make sense.

How to fix it:

• Clean up your spam pages and replace auto-generated content with genuine articles and texts. You can use Grammarly to improve the quality and readability of your texts, as well as find more appropriate synonyms for your words.
• Audit your website for plagiarized or duplicate content using Copyscape. This can help find the auto-generated content.
• Consider hiring a professional content writer to create high-quality, original content that will be appreciated by both Google and your end readers. In case you use AI-generated content, don’t neglect to improve the texts with AI copy editing services. Alternatively, utilize AI humanizers like Humanizer Pro to add a human touch, improving readability and making it appear as if crafted by a professional writer.

7. Spammy user-generated content 

What it is: It’s not only robots that can do harm to your website — user-generated content can, too. Yes, it can enrich your site if done right, but it can also attract spammy posts and comments, affecting the website’s quality.

Example: You allow an open comment section on your blog without moderation, leading to a flood of spammy links and irrelevant comments.

How to fix it:

• Manually review comments or use Akismet for WordPress to help you filter spammy comments.
• Use the anti-spam service reCAPTCHA to distinguish real users from bots.

8. Security issues and hacked content

What it is: Sites that are compromised or hacked can receive penalties, leading to alerts in Google Search Console’s Security Issues tab or next to your URL in SEPRs about the site being hacked. A site may even be removed from search results until the issue is resolved. It’s all because such websites provide no value to the user or may even contain redirects to harmful pages.

Example: Google displays a warning that your site may have been hacked, affecting user trust and your site’s visibility.

How to fix it:

• Check Google Search Console’s Security Issues report regularly to find and remove any malware or hacked content.
• Use malware scanners to instantly identify hacked content and prevent further problems.
• Implement an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate.
• Update software, use strong passwords, and consider using a security service to prevent future attacks.
• Hide your login URLs, adjust login attempts, and add two-step verification.
• After cleaning your site, use Google Search Console to request a review in order to remove the security warning.

9. Doorways

What it is: Created to rank for specific searches and funnel users to different pages, doorways are basically poor-quality, misleading intermediate pages. They act as “doors” to rank high in SERP but lead users to a different website. Just as with many of the other penalties we’ve mentioned, Google penalizes these websites since they have no value to searchers.

Example: A website has multiple domain pages that all funnel users to the same destination, which doesn’t offer the specific content the user was searching for.

How to fix it:

• Identify pages that are acting as doorways using Google Analytics and remove them.
• Regularly audit your redirects.
• Focus on the quality of your content. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can help you identify content gaps and create value for your visitors.

10. Excessive affiliate programs

What it is: Of course, affiliate websites do have the right to exist, and Google doesn’t penalize them outright. However, websites that rely heavily (or solely) on affiliate content without adding significant value can be penalized.

Example: A site is filled with affiliate links and thin content that does little more than redirect users to products without providing useful information or reviews.

How to fix it:

• If you’re using affiliate links, make sure your content is valuable, offering in-depth reviews, insights, and information that goes beyond what’s available on the merchant’s site. You can use tools like Answer The Public to find questions and topics your audience cares about.

11. Intrusive ads

What it is: Introduced to tackle sites heavy on ads, especially above the fold, this penalty targets pages where content is obscured by ads, making it hard for users to find the information they came for.

Example: Visitors to your site are greeted by a barrage of ads before they can even see your content.

How to fix it:

• Balance ads and content.
• Strategically place ads so they don’t interrupt the user experience.
• Regularly audit your site from a user’s perspective to ensure ads are not overwhelming.

12. The Fred update

What it is: Fred targets sites that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines by prioritizing revenue over user experience, typically sites with low-quality content that’s packed with ads or affiliate links.

Example: A significant portion of your site’s content is focused on generating affiliate revenue, with pages offering little valuable content and an overabundance of ads.

How to fix it:

• Audit your content to remove or improve content that’s primarily designed to drive revenue without providing value.
• Ensure any monetized content also offers substantial, useful information to your visitors.

Important Updates To Consider (Not Penalties)

1. Mobile-first indexing 

What it is: Not a penalty per se, but it is a fundamental shift in how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks websites. It prioritizes the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking, reflecting the increased use of mobile devices for web access.

Example: Your site’s mobile version is a stripped-down version of your desktop site, missing significant content and features. This will negatively impact your rankings or even prevent your website from appearing in search results.

How to fix it:

• Your mobile and desktop sites should offer the same content and functionality.
• Make sure your site is responsive, loads quickly on mobile devices, and passes Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

2. The Pigeon update

What it is: This algorithm update was designed to improve the ranking of local listing results, making the proximity and location ranking factors more important. It affected both Google Maps and Google search results. This is not a penalty either, but it’s an important update that you should focus on.

Example: Your local business website ranks low in local search results due to a lack of location-specific information or poor local SEO practices.

How to fix it:

• Create region or even city-specific content.
• Make sure your business is listed in local directories with accurate information.
• Use location-specific keywords in your titles, meta descriptions, and content.

3. The Hummingbird update

What it is: Hummingbird is another important algorithm update that focuses on providing results with high-quality, relevant content.

Example: You stuff your website with keywords without considering the context or intent behind user searches.

How to fix it:

• Use Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool to conduct keyword research for better ICP (ideal customer profile) understanding.
• Craft content that addresses the topic in-depth, offering value to readers instead of simply targeting the keywords. Use images, lists, CTA (call-to-action), and communicate with readers through your content.

Conclusion

And there you have it: now you know everything about Google penalties and algorithms, and you finally have the answer to your question, “How do I recover from my Google penalty?” However, even with this detailed guide on Google penalty removal, you may still feel lost.

But here’s the good news: ReVerb can help you create an impactful and safe SEO strategy.

With our team of SEO experts focusing on the unique needs of every client, we can analyze your website, craft customized strategies, enhance your content, get rid of SEO penalties, and give recommendations that will drive results.

We believe SEO makes all the difference to foster real growth and create genuine connections with your audience. So, if you’re ready to team up, contact us, and we will help you take the first step toward your digital success!