Google penalty is an experience that is best avoided at all costs. The effects are very toxic and may lead to massive traffic loss and in most cases loss of revenue.

It is the big hammer that bloggers, webmasters, and businesses all strive to avoid. Yet, so many people fall into Google penalties from time to time without ever knowing.

Why does it feel like almost everyone falls into Google penalties?

The fact is that every time Google rolls out an update to its search algorithm, there are gainers and losers. While those who always indulge in sound SEO practice will find their search ranks unshaken or improved, those who get involved in unwholesome SEO practices get hammered through a decrease in search ranking.

Google penalties may have an adverse effect on your website and revenue, but there's a way out.

And in this tutorial, I will show you how to resolve 3 of the most common Google penalties. However, I will kick off with some info on how to identify if your site has been hit by a Google penalty.

Google Penalties

Google penalties are different punitive actions taken by Google in order to discourage site owners from manipulating search rankings. Their manipulations are referred to as "black hat" SEO practices which are intended to deceive Google into getting good rankings for their website.

In the past, Google focused solely on keywords for ranking sites, and so people started stuffing their sites with keywords, even when it was obvious that the keywords didn't add any meanings to the content. And so, the Google penalties began with a view to weeding out toxic SEO practices.

There are two main categories of Google penalties which are the ones caused by Google algorithm update and manual penalty

Google updates its algorithm from time to time and this causes some websites and pages to slip in their search ranking. However, this penalty isn't so serious as only very few sites are affected and the slip in the ranking is quite little.

The second penalty is a result of a member of Google staff manually reviewing your website to see if it breaks any of the rules. And if it is confirmed that the site erred, there is a manual penalty served on it.

This kind of penalty is very detrimental and it usually leads to a big drop in the search ranking of the affected site. It could be as bad as Google removing the site totally from its index.

Yet still, this kind of penalty can be resolved if you go about it the right way. It's just that it takes quite a while to fully resolve and get your website restored to its previous position. Let's look at some ways on how to identify if your site has been axed by Google.