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How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty



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How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty

We all worry if Google is going to penalize our websites, even if we're doing everything right, but our worries are usually from over thinking the entire process Google goes through when handing out penalties.  Over the course of 15 years, I've only had a few websites actually get penalized, and that's likely because I tend to say under the radar or I'm doing everything how Google wants.  Sure, I've gotten some of my websites penalized in the past, but it was because I screwed up and I wasn't paying full attention to what I was actually doing.

Keeping track of all your tasks and backlink campaigns will keep you out of the eyes of Google, and that means you won't get slapped with a penalty.  If you just keep track of everything, or you follow the rules, you shouldn't have to worry about much.  Google won't change their rules so drastically that your white hat methods will actually hurt you later one.  They know what they're doing and so do you, hopefully, and if you're unsure if a method is going to harm your website then you might not want to do it.  If your website gets a penalty, it's usually because of your own tactics and methods that did it, but you can definitely lift the penalty over time if you take your time.

In this discussion I'll be going over how you can overcome the fear of a Google penalty, and those ways are: 


You have nothing to worry about if you're following the rules
If you go through all the guidelines set forth by Google, relating to the search engine rankings, you will understand what you should and shouldn't be doing.  It's not difficult to follow the rules, but it's even easier to break them and get a penalty.  Yes, boosting your rankings unnaturally is tempting because you can get to the first page quicker than normal, but those risks come with severe penalties if you're caught. 

What you should do: 

  1. Add quality content to your website
  2. Interlink all your pages, in a natural way.
  3. Make your website responsive
  4. Have proper alt tags
  5. Have your keyword density around 3%
  6. Optimize your titles
  7. Optimize your descriptions
  8. Optimize your headers
and many more...

What you shouldn't be doing:
  1. Stuffing keywords to boost your rankings
  2. Blending keywords to the backgrounds
  3. Building thousands of low quality backlinks
  4. Linking to "bad neighbors"
  5. Don't use spun content
  6. Don't use duplicate content
and many more...

There are actually many more things you should and shouldn't be doing, so be sure to look through these discussions to get the massive list How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty


If you do get a penalty, you can lift it by reversing your actions over the last month
This isn't the easiest thing to do, because it's a penalty handed out by Google, and it's because you did something wrong.  Be sure to keep track of what you're doing, and you'll likely know what is getting you the penalty, and you can reverse it over time.

Sometimes you will get a penalty by one of your competitors building hundreds of thousands of backlinks aimed at your website, which is an uncommon reason to get a penalty because anyone can do this, but it has happened.  It's nothing to worry about, you can simply use the disavow tool and enter in all the URLs that you might have a bad backlink on.  This is basically you telling Google "I have no clue what this is, and it's not one of my own, please ignore it!" and they usually will.  I've seen plenty of websites go through their backlink profiles and add hundreds of backlinks into the disavow tool, and they lift the penalty they had previously.

If you have a keyword stuffing penalty, well, you did that to yourself and you need to go through your content and fix everything that is messed up.  If you wrote up your article to solely target a keyword, it's probably seen as stuffed with keywords and you need to go through it again and fix everything before the penalty is lifted.


Not everyone gets a penalty for doing something wrong the first time
Google understands that not everyone knows what they're doing, but that doesn't mean you can keep screwing up and not get a penalty.  Usually if you have a bunch of good content on your website, and one of your recent posts is considered to be stuffed with keywords, you won't get a penalty just from that.  Now, if you do this constantly, and Google notices all your stuffed content, they will slap you harder than your mother would if you said she was over weight lol How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty

You can get away with one or two things, but if you do it consistently, those one or two times in the beginning will be stacked on and hurt you even more.  If you just play it safe, and learn what not to do, you can stay off of Googles penalty teams and jump up within the rankings quicker than if you're dealing with a penalty How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty


It's tougher to get a penalty than you think it is
Getting a penalty is actually pretty tough, and I should know because I've literally put up websites to see how difficult it was to penalize them, and it took me some time haha How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty  It seems that penalties are automated to a certain point, and then manually triggered, which would make sense since you can't fully trust artificial intelligence.  Think about it, if the first steps to determine if a website should be penalized was automated, and the website nuke button what manually triggered, it would save a lot of websites.  The system could go through everything, break it down, and only compile a list of the websites that should be given penalties.  After the list is developed, someone will go through it and glance over what the website did, then they will either hit the nuke button or let the website pass lol How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty  Of course, this is just a theory of mine, since no one really knows how this works, but it's a fun idea to think of How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty

I've built websites with the sole purpose of trying to penalize them, and it's actually pretty difficult.  I've build massive backlink profiles, using all SEO software and leaving plenty of footprints, and just that didn't get me a penalty right away.  I would load the website with hundreds of spun articles, and even just copy/paste articles from popular websites, and I still didn't get a penalty right away lol.  Some of my articles were actually getting indexed and sending me traffic!  But, it was a short road because eventually I got my website slapped by Google and it was almost impossible for me to get it fixed lol.  After around 4 months of doing my negative SEO campaign, I was hit with a penalty, and it was difficult to lift because I had to just assume I was penalized for everything lol How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty


In conclusion
When it comes to a Google penalty, you don't have anything to worry about as long as you're doing everything right.  I'm the CEO of an SEO company, and I follow Matt Cutts to see what he says, which is basically a cardinal rule in the SEO industry lol.  You can build your website naturally, place links on websites that are related to your niche, add quality content that you or a freelancer wrote, and you'll be just fine as long as you don't break the few cardinal rules set forth by Google How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty


Remember to follow me!
https://www.seocheckout.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

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Thank you good post keep it up more updates,



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jeffreyjose48
Thanks for the information. I hope I will not get google penalty. Let's just follow their rules and regulations.



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kaka135
You are right, it does sound scary if we might have offended Google and get a penalty. Thank you for sharing these good advice, though I am still not very confident I will offend Google accidentally, at least I know if I follow the guidelines and be good, I won't get the penalty easily.



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Soulwatcher
It is scary because if your website gets penalized by google your website is as good as dead. And I think the only people that have to worry about google penalizing them are the people who are trying black hat methods to try and gain a quick first-page rank. And those are the people that usually ditch the website and make a quick sale before google takes notice.



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focusedwriter10
It is scary because if your website gets penalized by Google your website is as good as dead. And I think the only people that have to worry about Google penalizing them are the people who are trying black hat methods to try and gain a quick first-page rank. And those are the people that usually ditch the website and make a quick sale before google takes notice.

Exactly, and most beginners fall in the trap of buying such websites.



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vinaya
Well said.
Your website needs content and these contents must be unique, interesting, useful and well written
Having quality contents is not enough, your contents must be optimized for search engines. In order to optimize for search engines, you need to have focus keywords and build backlinks.
Building backlinks is important, however, while building backlinks you need to build on quality site. Quality backlinks is more important than quantity.



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overcast
I always pay attention to the tag being used on the article. Also I try to write longer these days. I can tell you that some of the time it may not work. But overall one has to be paying attention to how that works out. I guess for each one of us we need to understand how the google is going to judge our content and the website in general. And that's what is going to set the tone for the penalty. So we need to be understanding of that fact.



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Maryland
Hello,

Thanks for your guide

I would like to know if Google warns in any way
about penalization for many keywords

or how is it possible to know

Thanks greetings



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Tronia
Google is strict for a reason and their rules exist to regulate the websites. Initially, when I began blogging and creating my website I do admit that I was scared - what if I make some newb mistake that Google doesn't allow and I get penalized or worse, banned? So, all I did was just read through their rules, read some articles about it and realized that there's nothing to fear if you follow some simple points.



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Everett
I would say you are one of few from the many that does not actually review website's terms of services, rules, etc. A lot of the time, people do not understand why their site was penalized by Google when they could have found out why via Google's extensive help articles or not even gotten it penalized in the first place.

I read an article that was based upon the average amount of times a website user or visitor actually reads the website terms of service, and it was very interesting. They set up a website, and include all the core pages, terms of service, privacy policies and other important messages. However, not many actually read these pages, and didn't really know what they were signing up for. In essence, the terms of service stated that if you would be breaking website rules if you signed up, and people actually signed up to the website. The study was quite funny.



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DenisP
From what I understand, Google isn't so strict as to penalize you for making basic mistakes. They can certainly tell the difference between someone who is unfamiliar and someone who is going to be a source of trouble. However, while this may be the case for websites, it would seem YouTube (who - for those unaware - is owned by Google) is far less lax. Lately Google has been penalizing content creators left and right for ever insignificant thing. It makes me wonder if their strict nature with regards to video content will spread to websites in the future.



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jaymish2
Great advise. However I don't really think it's as simple as this. I don't think people are really scared of the penalties. Speaking from my own personal point of view the problem is that the goal posts keep changing. So everyone may do what you have recommended , but they may wake up tomorrow and find this no longer applies. It may be higher keyword density or no keywords e.t.c People will generally adhere to rules if they know them.



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kgord
I think in reality very few websites get penalized. As you pointed out, I think that if you do everything right, you probably don't have much to worry about. I think Google can tell the difference between innoccent mistakes and those who are deliberately trying to skirt the rules.



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treecko142
I don't think many people are actually afraid of Google penalties, in fact, I think only some people are aware of it and some just outright ignore it, mainly because, as you've said, it is really tough to get penalized by Google when you're not actively trying them to give you penalties.



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cmoneyspinner
I was about to say that. Fearing a Google penalty? WHY?

Imagine you're in a long line and have to wait your turn. But instead, you try to sneak to see if you can't get to the front of the line and hope you don't get caught! If you're trying to wriggle your way around the system, you probably should fear a Google penalty.

As for me, I don't think Google has a "police force" or a "cyber army" with eyes and spies everywhere. But some people make themselves so obvious, even Google can see what they're doing or trying to do! In those cases, it's just a matter of being fair to everyone out there in cyberspace. As many school teachers have probably said to their students: "Children. You must play fair."

The Internet world is just like the everyday offline world. There are crooks, weasels, sneaks, con artists, people who try to game the system, etc. There's got to be some kind of "law and order". If you got zapped with a Google penalty you must have really done something OOO! (Out of order.) How to overcome your fear of a Google penalty



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SiamSEO
If you use no shady tactics, then you have absolutely nothing to fear. Even in the very unlikely case of your competition trying to get your site shot down by ordering some shady black hat SEO against it, Google will soon see that it's illegitimate practice aimed against you, not by you, and make sure that it won't hurt your ranking and your business at all.



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Barida
That's true as they are aware of the bad moves made by rival sites to close down some sites as well as bringing bad image to others. What I always try to do is to ensure that everything work pretty okay and good when we talk of adding back links in a natural way.



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Russet
Hmm. I had a site deranked and it was because I broke a rule (paid backlinks). But despite my immediate correction of the problem and follow up email (within 2 days) that site remained 0-ranked for just over two years, It was--as far as I know--the first and only time I broke any Google rule. So, while my experience may be rare, it does not match with your reassurances.



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mark8625
Your post was educational. I have no idea about the penalty from Google. Thanks now I have wide idea about it. We need to be more careful to avoid any penalty.



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Barida
Trying as much as we can to always add up great contents to the things that we write is one of the ways that we are going to make everything work out at the end of the day. I have always looked at the way that I can make quality contents for websites as one way that it will generate better rankings and also prevent any form of penalty from Google.



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Jeane
Focusing on creating great content that offers solid solutions to problems your target audience wants fixed is certainly the best way to avoid Google penalties. Since Google does use social signals as a ranking factor, if you are getting plenty of likes or your content is being shared on social media by lots of different people then you shouldn't worry about being penalized.

As for posting content that is spun, since these articles/blog posts may sound like gibberish, you'll probably lose all your site visitors before Google even penalizes your site should start posting spun content on your site. If you can't create fresh content then you could at least try rewriting and editing old articles.



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Corzhens
For me, the best way to avoid a Google penalty is by going by the rules or propriety and honesty. Just like being in a society, you are only afraid of the cops if you have done something wrong, right? Why would I fear a Google penalty when I am not committing any black hat seo method and that my site is always prim and proper when it comes to contents, keywords and backlinks.



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