![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/man-worries-about-seo-penalty-800px.jpg\")
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There are two forms of \u201cpenalties\u201d that SEOs think about when they refer to a Google penalty.<\/p>\n
One is a manual action penalty, which is site-specific and intentionally applied. The other type of “penalty” is really more of a consequence. It happens when a site loses rankings as a result of the Google algorithm.<\/p>\n
Google reports<\/a> that manual actions occur less and less frequently as the algorithm gets smarter. For example, Google applied 2.9 million manual actions in 2020, which is far fewer than the 4 million sent in 2018 and the 6 million in 2017.<\/p>\n Since algorithmic hits account for ranking drops more and more, calling them search engine penalties sounds fair to me.<\/p>\n Below I’ll give more details about both types and why penalties exist. Feel free to jump ahead:<\/p>\n Google\u2019s \u201cWebmaster Guidelines<\/a>\u201d help website publishers understand what can cause a penalty or poor rankings.<\/p>\n These guidelines are centered on quality. A quality website will provide a good user experience. Websites that offer a good user experience have a better chance of competing in the search results.<\/p>\n Websites that create a bad user experience and violate Google\u2019s guidelines can either receive a manual penalty from Google, or just not rank \u2014 or both.<\/p>\n The webmaster guidelines are driven by basic quality principles that include the following:<\/p>\n So how do you avoid deceiving your users and create a high-quality site? Google gives a list of things not to do<\/em> in its \u201cquality guidelines<\/a>,\u201d which should be a roadmap for your website. For example, don\u2019t use automated tools<\/a> to build your webpages. And avoid duplicate content<\/a> as much as possible.<\/p>\n The guidelines also include some pretty basic lessons on spam.<\/p>\n\n
<\/a>How Webmaster Guidelines and Penalties Work<\/h2>\n
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