What is Google's Penalty

Google automatically check a website's quality and if it is substandard according to the Google's famous algorithm, then it will penalize the site. Most low-quality sites get penalized but sometimes some very high quality sites that meet the general standards also get penalized just because the quality-check is automated and as bots or crawlers don't have eyes they will flag a quality site. So webmasters avoid even the slightest of all mistakes. See the reasons for penalty below and make sure you are not guilty of anything.

Reasons for the Penalty and how to avoid it

Below I am mentioning some major reasons why some sites get penalized. You can easily avoid these penalties also. Ways to avoid certain penalties are given with them. Please note that it is quite easy to avoid certain penalties just by not doing what causes you the penalty. So, while reading this article please keep in mind that this article is not only about the reasons of penalty but also tells you ways to avoid Google's Penalty.

Linking to Adult and Gambling Sites

You can't place a link to an adult or gambling site on your website or blog no matter how necessary it is. You can't do it even if the adult/gambling site is willing to pay you tons of money. If you did this, it will not only bring you a penalty from Google but also from other search engines and you will lose some faithful readers for sure. Always avoid doing this.

And don't get worried if some adult or gambling site has a link to your site on theirs. According to Google's Matt Cutts it is alright if such site is linking to you as one can't help it if someone links back to them. Almost a couple of years back I saw traffic coming to a site of mine from an adult site. When I checked they had placed a link to my site, but it did not affect my rankings. So, don't worry if an adult or gambling site is linking to you from their site, just make sure you don't link to them.



Trying to Optimize too Quickly

If your site is new and you are trying to get too many back-links to your site a bit too early, stop doing that rite now. As Google don't like back-links being generated too quickly for new sites. And this might be a reason if your site is new and already penalized. You can always start slow on building links and slowly pick up speed.



Spamming

Search Engines, especially Google do not like spamming at all. Even if you haven't done any spamming, Google might think you were spamming. So make sure you don't look spammy while optimizing your site. Auto-submissions and even manual submission with same text can be seen as spam.

Here are some tips you can follow to avoid looking spammy...

1) Use atleast 5 different title tags while submitting your site to link directories.

2) Never use auto-submission services or bots for submitting your site to search engines or directories.

3) Similarly use different titles for comments.

4) Make sure you don't add comments with your site's url in them too often. 5 comments in a day is more than enough.

5) Never use softwares for submitting comments in bulk. Do it manually and very carefully as webmasters will flag you by emailing Google.

6) Write something different and related to the topic in the body of the comment, every time you post a comment with your website's url.

7) Don't post your site's link more than often on forums.



Link Farms

By definition a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. If you want to get your site penalized forever, go for link farms. Google and other big search engines hate link farms. Don't join them or anything like them. I have seen link farms coming up under different names, so beware of them. Its easy to get genuine backlinks without joining a link farm. Here are some ways to get free and easy backlinks.



Copied Content

Copied or duplicate content will take you nowhere. Only direction it will take you is downwards. Ultimately your site will be nowhere in the SERPS which means it will get the penalty. If you can't generate content of your own, then get it done by someone else. Hire someone or outsource. You can also get freelance writers to write for your blog through different freelance sites.



Deception

If someone suggested you to fill your page with high paying keywords and make their font color same as the backgrounfd color of the page only because they don't match the theme of your site or you cant write an article on them so you are told to go for the easy way, don't take such suggestion. You can do this if you want to ruin your site. There are other forms of deception too like adding plain images which match the background and those images link to some other site. To be on a safer side try to avoid anything that decepts.