How to Identify if Your Website Has Been Hit With a Google Penalty

If you notice a decline in organic traffic, no matter the degree, it could be caused by a Google penalty. The first step to take is to find out if there has been any recent Google algorithm update that you didn't know about. You can search for SEO news platforms to find out if this is the case.

If there is no news of an update yet, and the traffic decline refused to reverse or keeps getting worse, you will need to continue with the troubleshooting. Next is to establish if the traffic drop is site-wide or if it only affects a particular page or pages on your website.

And also find out if the traffic decline is a result of a manual penalty from Google. There are tools that Google offers webmasters and you can find the status of the penalty using one of those tools.

The new Google Search Console will display a notification at the top of the home screen if indeed you've been hit by a manual penalty. And if you do not see any notifications, then click on the "Manual Actions" button on the sidebar of the page.

Also, you may need to look into the historical data and compare it with the last time there was a Google update. Whatever results you find during this phase, the next section should help you resolve them.

Some Google Penalties and Ways to Resolve Them

Here are some common Google penalties and good ways to get them resolved:

1 - Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the situation where site owners include search terms more than is necessary just to attract search users. And these terms (keywords), most often than not, end up not adding value to the content.

It used to be an effective SEO technique until Google outlawed it. And now keyword stuffing is black hat SEO that attracts Google penalty when used.

Just in case you find yourself facing the Google penalty for keyword stuffing, you can resolve through the following:

• First of all, if you're going to rank for a keyword, make sure you provide the best content for that keyword
• You don't have to include keywords more than is necessary for a post. You can reduce the number by deleting some instances of the keyword inside the post
• You can also use words that are related to the keyword instead. For instance, if the keyword is "content optimization", you can use "optimizing content" or "improving content"
• A keyword density of 1% - 2% would be appropriate for any kind of content. In simple English, it means 1 (or 2) instance of a keyword should appear for every 100 words. So, if the length of your post is 1,000 words, then your keyword should appear between 10 to 20 times.