Google penalty removal

Depending on different factors, we can find different types of penalties. In any case, these are the two types of penalties that are usually imposed:

Algorithmic Penalties
Algorithmic penalties are those caused for not complying with Google’s guidelines. The problem in these cases is that Google periodically changes its algorithm, in theory, to improve its efficiency. You must update your website in regular bases to adapt to the new Google Algo and avoid a penalty.

Manual penalties
Manual penalties are those imposed by Google professionals, literally “by hand”. There are no robots or algorithms in action, it occurs expressly after identifying a behavior or action from a website, which violates the search engine guidelines.

Algorithms in charge of detecting the penalties.
Google has always updated its algorithm. However, the year 2011 marked a before and after. The launch of the algorithm called Google Panda, was an unprecedented catalyst for some websites, but also the arrival of SEO penalties.

Google Panda?
It was 2011, and the phrase “content is king” had not yet been spread. With Google Panda, it began to take this claim seriously.

It was the first algorithm responsible for reviewing the content of websites, and became famous for the number and severity of sanctions imposed on countless webpages around the world.

Since then, it was established as a general guideline in SEO that web pages had to avoid having little content (thin content), duplicate content or content that did not add value to the user. 

Google Penguin?
In just one year, Google made all SEO professionals tremble with Google Penguin, an algorithm based on the analysis of “off-page” optimization. Specifically, on incoming links to your website.

Since then, these links had to be of quality, a concept that has become increasingly complex, link building strategies have become authentic art.

Most common SEO penalties
As SEO professionals in HK we can easily identify the most common Google penalties:

Thin Content
Applies to pages with poor, sparse, or low-value content. The most frequent example is the product page of online stores, we can hardly find a good description, the best practice is to write a long and juicy product description, reviews, etc.

Unnatural links to your website
After Google Penguin, we must take great care of incoming links to your website. The quality depends on many factors, including how naturally they are. An unnatural link, which can clearly correspond to a purchased link, will be penalized as soon as it is detected.

Duplicate content
Duplicating content for SEO purposes has long ceased to be a recommended strategy. It is clearly penalized by Google and, in fact.

It is important to note that duplicate content is considered whether we copy it from content that we have on our own website, or if we copy it from another external website.

Cloaking
Cloaking is one of the first techniques used by webmasters to trick the search engine and get an SEO position that, in reality, they did not deserve.

It consists of offering different content to the user and the search engine. Cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser.  Today, it is still something that is severely penalized!

Keyword stuffing
Some SEOs talk about keyword stuffing, others talk about excess keyword density. No matter how you want to define it, the truth is that the inappropriate use of keywords, with clear purposes of over optimizing a web page, is punishable.

Hidden content
Another very old SEO technique and not recommended is trying to position yourself with hidden content.

Living up to its name, it consists of content (both readable and by code, for example links), which is hidden from the user, but is shown to the search engine.