When Google does not place your site as high as expected, you might be wondering that what is the mistake you have done. Understanding what you are doing wrong for fixing it and obtain a good result in the web positioning of Google is important to subsequently attain several clicks, leads, conversions higher than the existing one. Let us have a look at some of the reasons why Google may penalize your website.
Obtaining a position in Google depends on the various algorithms. Web penalization comes from wrong choices or management of elements that are regarded as the basic elements to evaluate the results of those algorithms positively. Among the various elements and causes that Google considers while evaluating sites are the content’s quality, backlinks, and the user’s experience.
Google applies various existing algorithms while evaluating the websites. Some of the popular ones include Hummingbird, Penguin, and Panda. Because of Google’s Panda filter, several pages have been penalized and provide wrong results, because the parameters through which Google’s algorithm values a site are too strict. Newspapers, blogs, forums, eCommerce sites, websites, magazines have been greatly affected by such changes while assessing a website’s SEO.
How to find out whether Google has penalized you?
Google has two ways of applying penalties, either automatically or manually. In case of a penalty applied manually, Google warns the user beforehand that something that violates the Google algorithm has been found, and because of this, he/she will be penalized. After finding suspicious elements, Google generally provides a fixed time for the user to rectify this mistake, informing about the consequences of maintaining those elements on the website.
The problem is when the penalty is applied automatically. This penalty may be applied because of a change in the parameters of Google, and the new algorithm is applied automatically without notifying the user. This kind of penalty takes place when an indexing robot various patterns that can be regarded as spam or dishonest, among several other reasons. To identify whether your site has been penalized by Google, you must analyze the below-mentioned sections:
- Is your site positioned while searching for your own company?
- Has your positioning changed while searching for the terms for which you were positioned earlier?
- One of the important aspects that Google values the most is your website’s score. To understand it, you must access PageRank and know what score your website gets from Google. If you find that it has dropped, Google has penalized you.
- Does any of your web pages, other than your homepage position in Google?
Reasons Why Google May Penalize your Website
There are several reasons for Google to penalize a site. Nobody, other than Google knows the reasons to give a negative score to a website. Some of the common reasons that affect the positioning within Google include:
- Duplicate content- One of the important aspects that Google values most is originality. Thus, duplicated content can be one of the reasons why Google may penalize your website. A common practice, specifically in online stores, was to use the manufacturing company’s content and complete the info required to sell their items. It was a simple method to present the products and attain a positioning of contents utilizing the original manufacturer’s presentation and text. Many believe that changing the color or the format of the content is enough to make a difference in the content and make it duplicate-free. It is also important to include new URL’s as a repeated URL is harmful to all the sites that have the same URL.
- Page speed- How many times have you come across a website that takes too much time to upload and finally you leave it? The factor, speed, is seriously regarded by Google while evaluating content and websites, as shorter the loading time, the better the web page will be. You must consider that content that loads fast is easy to access and read.
- Unnecessary use of keywords- It is vital that while creating the content, you must know what keywords to use because you will be searched on the search engines using those keywords. One of the common mistakes that people commit is to use the keywords too many times. They are not aware that doing this is harmful to their website.
- Purchasing links- Buying links can also be one of the significant reasons why Google may penalize your website. Google values a site that can be a source to quote and to link your site to it as you believe it is useful. To fulfill this parameter, which Google considers vital, many sites create pages exclusively intended to link to the main page, which they anticipate position, but this is not acceptable. In addition to the websites that are known as a mirror, there are companies as well as pages that purchase links from other sites. In this case, Google penalizes those websites that get links by buying them. Similarly, sites that link to each other several times are also not accepted by Google. This is regarded as an unlawful practice, intended to overcome the obstacles posed by Google’s algorithms for positioning.  If you want other sites to create links to it, then you must create quality content that will help your site to be searched and linked.
- Error pages- How do you feel when you come across a website that redirects you to an error page? You probably close the website and leave. Error pages are one of the main reasons why many websites get penalized by Google. Make it easy for your users to find what they are searching for. Check that the links and pages take your customers to the right pages and do not make them confused. Error pages impede navigation on your site and Google may penalize you for this.
- Missing Meta Description Tags- Meta descriptions play a significant role in SEO. You must ensure that you do not use more than 5 meta keywords on one page. Meta tags define your website page to search engines and without this, your website will not appear in the Google search engine results.
- Too many advertisements- Advertisement is one of the mediums through which blogs make money. However, you should never overdo this at a point where it disturbs your customers from reading the content on your blog. The number of advertisements on your site must be proportional to the content’s length. Anything over and beyond the suggested limits will induce Google to penalize your website. The number of advertisements on your site must always be proportional to the content’s length.
- Over Optimization- Do not over-optimize your site. Google does not prefer it and identifies as an effort to eliminate your competition from the SEO list. Ensure that you publish good and informative content and check your process.
- A lackluster structure/design- Does your current website has:
- Unresponsive design
- Poor use of H1- H6 tags
- Lack of visual hierarchy
It is important to have a mobile-friendly site, especially now when most of the searches are done on mobile devices. You must use the headings like H1- H6 properly. Here is the way of using each of these.
- H1 to use as the main topic heading
- Restrict to one per page
- H2 is used for marking the topics
- Always use relevant subheadings
- H3 through H6 as labels supporting the visual hierarchy of your page
- H4 should not follow H2 directly