What is the Google Penalty?
Just like police punishes criminals for doing something illegal, Google penalizes the websites that are going against its policy. These websites are not always doing it intentionally. But they still get the penalty. Now for those who want to know what the penalty is? A penalty is a punishment by Google where your website gets deindexed from SERPs. It means all organic traffic coming to your website vanishes in an instant. You will have a flat graph of organic traffic. And, your web search console will show 0 indexed pages. The end result is that you will have to leave the website and try again from scratch. Only a handful of lucky people can get out of a Google penalty. We want you to play safe. That is why we have created a list of links that you should never make for your website. Also, it is better to hire guest posting services like Globex Outreach for your blog. They are experts in the field and do complete due diligence before posting guest posts or any kind of links to play safe.
8 Types of Google Link Penalties
We have discussed in detail about website penalty and how it can ruin your business. Let’s discuss all the links that are in the red zone and should never be created even for your competitors.
1. Spam Links
Google scorns spam links. They are made by trainee SEO experts who just want to fill the link count on their sheets. But they do more damage than benefiting a website. Spam links are usually those that are created just for marketing purposes. For example, you paste a link about a tech blog on a fitness website that too in the comment section. It is a spam link, but the spam score will be comparatively low. Now, let’s say there is a spam link directory and you paste a link of a website on these link directories. The spam score of these websites is high. It will also decrease your website rankings. The workaround is to disavow links from these websites because they are only damage to your business. Note: Moz open site explorer offers a spam score checker tool for each website where you create a link. Make sure to give it a try before backlinking.
2. Porn Links
Almost all search engines have disallowed porn websites. It means all links created on these porn websites are also disallowed. Many competitors will create a backlink on a porn website just to decrease your rankings. Make sure you disavow these backlinks in the first instant. Otherwise, get ready to see a ranking decrease or maybe even a penalty.
3. Hidden Text Links
Around 10 years ago, we used to see websites with hidden links getting higher rankings. Google curbed all these websites with its Penguin update. The reason is that these hidden text links are a fraud. They are only tricking the user into clicking on them, and Google doesn’t link tricks. It has clearly stated this reason in its SEO policy.
4. Link Cloaking
Link cloaking is neither liked by affiliate networks nor by Google. Link cloaking is when you try to remove your affiliate ID and make the link more attractive to the user.
5. Links that distribute virus/malware
Sometimes websites get viruses or malware through plugins they install. In fact, there are many plugins that have a virus or malware in them. Now that WordPress powers over 70 percent of websites, these plugins can easily infect your website. When a website gets a virus or malware. All its links will become doorway pages to a landing page of a virus-focused website. Google doesn’t like that because, in its eyes, these are tricky links and stealing user data. It will penalize these websites.
6. Doorway pages
We were discussing viruses and malware. Doorway pages are also used by marketers to rank for different terms. They will create various landing pages with poor content and rank them on search engines. When the users click on them, they will be redirected to another website that sells that product.
7. Links from PBNs & Same IP Addresses
While PBN links are not always illegal, but Google still frowns upon them. Most PBN networks are hosted on the same server, and this means Google can easily see who is operating the network. So, it will simply deindex the whole network and all websites that are on it. That is also one reason why you should have a dedicated or cloud hosting where you can launch your server.
8. Links from Exact Match Anchor
We have already discussed what happens when links from the same server (same IP) are directing to a website. Let’s discuss why exact match anchor texts are also a NO-NO for Google. Exact match anchor texts mean that SEO experts have intentionally created these links. Most natural links don’t have a keyword as anchor text. With Google Fred update last year, it penalized all those websites that were heavy on exact match anchor links. So, make sure that you have a ratio of 3:1. Where 3 is the number of natural links coming to your website. That’s it. We have provided the complete list of all the notorious links that you should avoid at all costs. So, launch your web search consoles and see which of your sites have these types of links and start disavowing them.
