Timothy Carter

Duplicate content can be bad. Using the same content, either in total or partial form, on your website leads to a poor user experience, and triggers a red flag in Google’s search algorithm. In the old days of SEO, duplicate content was often used as a cheap trick to get more keywords and more content on a website, so Google evolved a system to weed out the spammers who violated best practices by doing this. Today, if you’re caught using duplicate content, your domain authority could suffer and your keyword rankings could drop. In this post we discuss: What is duplicate content? Why is it bad? Content syndication & duplicate content What other content production tools can cause duplicate content? Types of duplicate content. Which are benign, which are toxic. How does Generative AI (artificial intelligence) content fit into the mix? How to avoid and/or clean up duplicate content Duplicate Content Defined In the vast majority of cases, duplicate content is non-malicious and simply a product of whichever CMS (content management system) the website happens to be running on. For example, WordPress (the industry-standard CMS) automatically creates “Category” pages and “tag” duplicate pages which list all blog posts within certain categories or tags. Or, the www vs.ur non-www version of a site may not be redirected properly, causing duplicate content from multiple URLs. This creates multiple pages or URL parameters within the domain that contain the same content. 1) Google may decide to let me off with a “warning” and simply choose not to index 99 of my 100 duplicate posts, but keep one of them indexed. NOTE: This doesn’t mean my website’s search rankings would be affected in any way by the duplicate content. 2) Google may decide it’s such a blatant attempt at gaming the system that it completely de-indexes my entire website from all search results. This means that, even if you searched directly for “Example.com” Google would find no results. So, one of those two scenarios is guaranteed to happen. Which one it is depends on how egregious Google determines your blunder to be. In Google’s own words: Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the pages with duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a canonical version of the content to show in a given search result. This type of non-malicious duplication is fairly common, especially since many CMSs don’t handle this well by default. So when people say that having this type of duplicate content can affect your site, it’s not because you’re likely to be penalized; it’s simply due to the way that web sites and search engines work. Most search engines strive for a certain level of variety; they want to show you ten different results on a search results page, not ten different URLs that all have the same content. To this end, Google tries to filter out duplicate content and documents so that users experience less redundancy. So, what happens when a search engine crawler detects duplicate content? (from https://searchengineland.com/search-illustrated-how-a-search-engine-determines-duplicate-content-13980) How to Find Duplicate Content Fixing duplicate content is relatively easy. Finding duplicate content is the hard part. Like I mentioned above, duplicate content can be tricky to detect—just because you don’t have any repeated content from a user experience perspective doesn’t mean you don’t have repeated content from a search algorithm’s perspective. Your first step is a manual one; go through your site and see if there are any obvious repetitions of content. As an example, do you have an identical paragraph concluding each of the pages on your site? Rewrite it. Did you re-use a section of a past blog post in a new post? Make a distinction. Once you’ve completed this initial manual scan, there are two main tools you can use to find more, better hidden instances of duplicate content. Perform Your Own Search First, you can perform a search to see through Google’s eyes. Use a Site: tag to restrict your search to your site only, and follow up with an intitle: tag to search for a specific phrase. It should look a little something like this: Site:thisisyoursite.comintitle:”thisisyourtargetphrase” This search will generate all the results on your given site that correlate to your chosen phrase. If you see multiple identical results, you know you have a duplicate content problem. Check Google Search Console (GSC) A simpler way to check for duplicate content is to use Google Webmaster Tools to crawl your site and report back on any errors. Once you’ve created and verified your Webmaster Tools account, head to the Search Appearance tab and click on “HTML Improvements.” Here, you’ll be able to see and download a list of duplicate meta descriptions and title tags. These are common and easily fixable issues that just require a bit of time to rewrite. To determine whether a sample of duplicate content is going to pull down your rankings, first you have to determine why you are going to publish such content in the first place. It all boils down to your purpose. If your goal is to try to punk the system by using a piece of content that has been published elsewhere, you’re bound to get penalized. The purpose is clearly deceptive and intended to manipulate search results. This is what Google has to say about this sort of behavior: Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. Copyscape For 5 cents per search, you can have Copyscape vet an entire piece for you. But if your budget won’t allow that kind of expenditure, you can still use Copyscape for free. The catch with free Copyscape is that you’ll have to

Working as a tax lawyer requires generating a steady stream of leads, and search engine optimization (SEO) for lawyers happens to be one of the best lead-generating methods around. SEO will get your law firm’s website to show up in search results whenever people in your area search for legal help on sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The goal is to get your website to appear as close to the first page of results as possible, and when you achieve that, you’ll get more traffic and ultimately more leads. How SEO gets leads for tax lawyers Your best leads are people who need a tax attorney right away, and those people will be searching online for legal help. Optimizing your website to get discovered in the search engines gives you more opportunities to be found by those who are looking for a tax lawyer. Law firm SEO involves several components: Keyword research. As the foundation of SEO, keyword research will give you ideas regarding what keywords and phrases you should be targeting to get your content ranked high in the search engines. Local SEO. Nationally, law-related searches are highly competitive. If you don’t have a huge budget to compete with national law firms, local SEO will be extremely helpful. Local SEO only puts your content in front of users who are from your general area. This is determined by their IP address and/or zip code if they’re logged into a Google account. By narrowing down the audience and excluding non-local sites, your website has a better chance at showing up in search results. On-page SEO. When your web pages are optimized for the right keywords, you’ll rank better and generate relevant leads. Part of on-page SEO also involves making it easy for leads to contact you, like placing your phone number in large text at the top of every page. Backlinks. Backlinks are links that go to your website that are published on other people’s websites. Generating backlinks has always been an important component in SEO, and it’s how search engines originally determined rank. Today, it’s not the only ranking factor, but backlinks are still important. Content marketing. The more content you have, the more opportunities you have to rank that content and get found in the search engines. Content marketing is nuanced, but in general, it helps you generate backlinks and organic traffic by creating and distributing your content across the web. Although this is not a complete list of what’s involved, all of these elements work together to make your law firm’s website more visible in the search engines, which helps you capture a steady stream of leads searching for your legal services. If you’re not currently getting a healthy flow of leads from search, SEO will help. Let’s take a closer look at each of these elements. Targeting the right keywords and phrases Keywords are how your visitors find your website in the search engines. When a person needs legal help, they’re going to search online using keywords related to the type of help they need. The first and most obvious keywords and phrases to target are those relating to your practice areas. For instance, you might choose to target the following: Income tax Corporate tax Estate tax Tax planning and compliance Tax disputes If these are your main areas of practice or your specialties, you’ll want to target these specific keywords and phrases related to these main topics. Here’s an overview of how that looks: Individual pages for each area of practice. While your home page is ideal for providing an overview of what you do for your clients, including showcasing successful case outcomes, you also need individual pages dedicated to each area of tax law you practice. This gives your visitors a chance to read more about what you do, and it puts more content into the search engines, which increases your chances of ranking for various search terms. A dedicated category on your blog for each main practice area. These days, you can’t just have a static attorney website with a few services pages. You need a blog with solid, quality content, and it helps to continue adding content over time. With dedicated categories, you can publish plenty of detailed content to educate people on tax law, which can also help you generate leads. Using your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your website. Your target keywords should be used throughout your law firm website on all of your webpages. However, they need to be placed strategically and in context. For example, if one of your phrases is “tax planning and compliance,” you’d want to include that in a paragraph, perhaps in a section that explains what it is and why compliance is important. Although, not every keyword should be on every page. Your text needs to be natural and you should avoid “keyword stuffing.” In addition to targeting main keywords associated with your practice areas, you’ll also want to target more long tail keywords, especially those which have more potential to bring you hot leads. These keywords are called “buying keywords.” In your case, since you’re aiming for leads, your money keywords will be what people type into the search engines when they need an attorney immediately. For example, “income tax lawyer in Dallas” or “estate tax lawyer near me.” The good news here is that you can optimize your site for these types of phrases with local SEO for law firms. Local SEO for tax lawyers Local SEO is one of the most important components in search engine optimization for tax lawyers. If you don’t target local counties, cities, and towns, you’ll only be able to compete nationally in the search engines with all the other million plus law firms doing the same thing. Local SEO eliminates a large amount of competition by excluding national results. Without optimizing your site for local SEO, search engines won’t have any reason to tag your law firm website as relevant to narrower markets determined

Getting clear on who your target audience is can be one of the most helpful steps in the business growth process. And as your revenue grows, you’ll want to consider who your most profitable customers are. This is best done through a process known as market segmentation. In this article, we will walk you through what market segmentation is, why it’s important for search engine optimization (SEO), what types of segmentation exist, how you can segment, and a few simple things you should and should not do in order to get the best possible results. Sound good? Let’s roll… What is Market Segmentation? The concept of market segmentation is pretty simple and straightforward. It’s essentially the process of dividing your company’s target market into specific and approachable groups. If you think of your customer base as a collection of colorful balls in a playground ball pit, market segmentation is the process of organizing these balls into color-specific piles. They’re all your customers, but each set has unique attributes. Typically, market segmentation involves creating subsets of your market based on factors like needs, demographics, interests, priorities, and other criteria. The goal is to be as detailed as you possibly can without mislabeling. In other words, be specific but don’t make illogical assumptions just for the sake of segmenting. The Top Benefits of Market Segmentation I’ll dig into more of the “how” regarding market segmentation momentarily, but first I want to make sure you’re clear on why it’s important and how it can benefit your business moving forward. Here are a few top perks: Better understanding. Who doesn’t want to know their customers better? When you get serious about market segmentation, your entire approach changes. You’re no longer taking shots in the dark and hoping something sticks. You know who your customers are and you’re able to reach each group in a very specific way that resonates with them. Stronger marketing. The key to successful marketing is to reach the right person with the right message at the right time. Market segmentation enhances your ability to accomplish each of these goals. Better targeting. Because you’re able to target each customer with a very specific approach, you’ll see your response rates increase, acquisition costs decrease, and conversion rates go through the roof. You’ll waste a lot less money barking up the wrong trees. Greater control. Market segmentation takes you from a reactionary approach and transforms your business to adopt a more proactive stance. In other words, you control the direction of your business – not the marketplace. Superior niching. As the saying goes, there are riches in niches. With careful market segmentation, you’re able to niche down and reach very specific demographics. In some cases, this may unlock totally new revenue streams that didn’t previously exist. When you target niche markets though, be sure your total addressable market (TAM) is big enough to sustain a viable business for you and your competition. Greater innovation. Through market segmentation, you become intimately acquainted with what your customers want and need. This can lead to better product innovation in the future. At the end of the day, market segmentation makes mathematical sense. Research from Bain & Company shows 81 percent of executives believe market segmentation is a crucial aspect of growing their bottom line. Furthermore, those organizations that have thorough and documented market segmentation strategies see a 10 percent bump in their profit margins when compared to those that don’t. 5 Basic Types of Market Segmentation Most marketers agree that there are four or five basic types of market segmentation. If you focus your efforts on the following “buckets,” you’ll see positive results throughout your business: 1. Demographic Demographic segmentation is the most basic. (And thanks to the rich data trails that people leave behind online, it’s also one of the easiest to work with.) It typically includes information like age, gender, income, location, education, ethnicity, family situation, annual income, and other key details. While demographic segmentation can be very generic for some businesses, it can be quite helpful for others who naturally need the ability to filter based on factors like age, gender, location, etc. Take a dance academy for example. They might have dance programs for women and dance programs for men. These programs may even be separated based on age and zip code. Knowing which demographic segment customers fall into makes it so much easier to target the right people with the proper offers. 2. Geographic Geographic market segmentation is pretty self-explanatory. It’s typically based on factors like country, region, state, city, zip code, climate, urban vs. rural, and/or proximity to a certain location. Geographic market segmentation is obviously important for brick and mortar companies and local businesses. However, it’s also vitally important for online businesses that sell physical products or services that may be impacted by something like climate. Geographic segmentation is what local SEO is all about. Amazon.com is a really good example. They’re very aware of where their customers live and have the ability to promote products that coincide with weather patterns. If a snowstorm is coming through the northeast, they’re able to recommend cold-weather products. However, a customer down in balmy Fort Lauderdale will see something totally different (bathing suits or sunscreen). 3. Firmographic Firmographic market segmentation is very similar to geographic segmentation, except that it’s designed primarily for B2B organizations. Firmographics look at things like company location, company size, number of employees, gross revenue, and other factors specific to the makeup of the business. In essence, firmographics help you properly target businesses in sales and marketing situations. It gives you the information needed to approach a small business with 20 employees with one message, while coming at a national corporation with 2,000 employees in a totally different manner. 4. Behavioral This is where it starts to get interesting. Behavioral market segmentation involves separating customers based on their decision-making patterns. This includes consumption habits, purchase patterns, lifestyle, and usage. In order to get clear on behavioral segmentation, you

Well, we may not have achieved the technological singularity. But there’s no question we’re squarely in the middle of the age of AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) has worked its way into nearly everything, from our smartphones to our project management platforms – and now, even our search engines. Search engine optimizers are no strangers to adapting to new technologies, but the AI era has certainly been a doozy. While many of the fundamentals of SEO remain unchanged, there’s an entirely new structure for Google search results – and perhaps even more importantly, we’re witnessing the emergence of entirely AI-based search tools. In response, many digital marketing professionals, including ourselves, are doing our due diligence to stay ahead of the game and come up with strategies and tactics that can help us and our clients rank in AI-based search engine services. We call these strategies, collectively, generative engine optimization, or GEO. So what are these strategies? And how do you use them effectively? The Era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) The era of GEO is based on the rise of AI in our search experiences. You may have noticed that for many queries, Google now offers something called AI Overviews. Above the fold of conventional search results, Google will attempt to answer your query directly or provide you with summarizing information designed to improve your user experience. For example, it might summarize a word or phrase for you, or give you some pointers on the topic for which you requested advice. Knowledge Graph answers and rich snippets are nothing new, but AI-generated results add a new twist to the idea. Note that Bing is offering a very similar service, with AI summaries above the fold of conventional search results. Another interesting development is that many engineers and innovators are attempting to develop their own, completely novel AI-based search engines, competing with Google and Bing directly by offering an upgraded experience, at least ostensibly. For example, Perplexity AI has made a splash in the search engine world by attracting more than 500 million queries and 10 million active monthly users – despite being around for only a couple of years. Perplexity functions intuitively, but in ways that diverge from Google, Bing, and other first generation search engines. Additionally, open AI has announced the upcoming deployment of SearchGPT, which promises similarly disruptive innovations in the search world. This is a rapidly advancing niche, and one we’re paying close attention to. Already, we have strategies to help you get more visibility in AI search results in Google and Bing, and many of those strategies will be similarly valuable in AI-first search engine services. However, there’s still a lot we don’t know – and we expect things to change even more rapidly in the future – so it’s important to understand that nearly all GEO strategies are somewhat tenuous and in flux. GEO SEO vs. Conventional SEO: What’s the Difference? How is generative engine optimization different from search engine optimization? As we’ll see, there’s considerable overlap between the two concepts. GEO, like SEO, has a primary aim of boosting the visibility of your content in search engines, with the end goal of producing more organic traffic. Like conventional SEO, GEO requires your careful attention to SEO fundamentals like technical onsite optimization, content creation, and backlink building. However, Google and other AI-based search engines sometimes use different criteria for producing results. AI technology is notoriously opaque, so we don’t know all the details, but we do have some helpful clues to point us in the right direction of new tactics that can support visibility in AI-generated results. Is GEO a Replacement for SEO? The short answer is no. Growing organic traffic has always required adherence to SEO fundamentals, and that remains unlikely to change in the near future. Even if you were exclusively focused on building visibility and traffic with AI-generated results, you would still need traditional SEO as the foundation of your strategy. Also, at least for the time being, AI-based results still only represent a portion of all the visibility and traffic that can be generated from favorable positioning and presentation in search engine results pages (SERPs). In other words, there’s still a lot of value in building conventional organic rankings. How to Optimize Content for AI-Powered Search Engines Now for the good stuff. How do you optimize content for AI-powered search engines? For starters, you need to follow best practices for traditional SEO. Consider this a functional prerequisite on top of which you will develop your GEO strategies. There are many tactics that can shift the odds in your favor, but there are three that stand out as particularly valuable. Cite Your Sources Research suggests that one of the best methods for reliability improving your visibility in AI-generated search results is citing your sources. A study by Princeton University, Georgia Tech, the Allen Institute for AI, and IIT Delhi has verified this. There are a few elements of effective source citation you’ll need to bear in mind:       Cite credible sources. Citing a random source on the web isn’t going to cut the mustard. If you want your citation to be valuable, you need to cite credible sources. Look for industry experts, trusted names, and well-established institutions.       Provide inline citations. Your citations also need to be inline, meaning they need to appear in the line of text where they are relevant. Footnotes and endnotes are acceptable, but they should be considered supplementary, adding context and elaboration to your inline citations.       Add a hyperlink. Part of your citation should include a hyperlink to the original source, if relevant.       List your citations at the end. Finally, include a list of citations at the end of your content as a redundancy measure and as a way to show off the full scope of your research. Add Quotes From Authorities It’s also a good idea to add some quotes from authorities. Authorities are experts or

You’re probably here because you’re thinking to outsource your link building. You’re either a digital marketing agency looking for a white label link building service OR You’re an in-house SEO looking for more resources for scaling-up your link building  When it comes to outsourcing link building there are always pros and cons. The Advantages of Outsourcing Link Building for Agencies I want to start by clarifying the advantages of outsourcing your SEO & link building to a white label SEO company, because there are many to be had (assuming you’re avoiding the “deadly sins” I’ll be covering in the next section). These are some of the most powerful: Outsourcing Link Building Is More Convenient Link building is notoriously labor intensive. When an external agency is handling and outsourcing link building services, you won’t need to hire someone internally to do the work. That can spare you hours in your link building efforts, which you can then use to improve your client relationships in more productive ways. Tap Deep SEO & Link Building Expertise Link building agencies have spent years building their businesses to master the art of outsourcing link building. It’s only natural that they’d be better at navigating this terrain than most general marketing agencies. As a result, their links tend to be higher quality, with better results. Outsourcing Link Building Services Typically Improves Accountability If something ever goes wrong with the campaign, you’ll have someone external to hold accountable. It will be on them to find the mistake, take corrective action, or suggest a new outsourcing link building strategy to make up the difference—and they might even lend you special services for free to make it up to you. Outsourcing Link Building Can Be More Affordable  Though you might be reluctant to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a month on outsourcing link building services, the reality is, an SEO agency will be far less expensive than trying to do the work yourself. Hiring an in house link builder is almost always more expensive, and you might get inferior quality links from their link building activities as well. This is particularly true if you offshore some of the outreach link building work (but we don’t suggest offshoring copywriting). Improved Link Building Scale by Outsourcing  Outsourcing link building will add more resources, regardless of the existing size of your team. As such you will be able to scale more quickly by outsourcing link building. The Risks of Outsource Link Building If you want to see these link building benefits, you’re going to have to avoid these deadly—yet common outsourcing link building mistakes: 1. Picking a cheap (or offshore) link building service via GIPHY Most marketing agencies looking for a new link building services provider want to save time and/or money. Accordingly, they act rationally by shopping around for the best price. But in the outsourcing link building world, the lowest price isn’t always the best price. In fact, it tends to skew in the opposite direction: you get what you pay for. By paying less for a link builder, you’ll probably get one or more of the following: Cheaper labor by outsourcing backlinks  Writers and editors who get paid less for their work tend to have lower standards, or less experience overall. That means your off-site articles and link building portfolio are going to suffer. We covered this deadly sin in my article at VentureBeat titled Getting a good deal on SEO? Think again! Fewer checks and balances Reputable agencies tend to cost more because they have more internal positions to account for; they might have a team of writers, a team of editors, a team of reviewers who examine the work before publishing, and a team dedicated to managing publisher relations. If you try to pin all this work on one or two separate teams, the end result will be more mistakes, lower quality work, and less consistent work. Fewer guarantees and assurances Cheaper SEO agencies aren’t as dependable because they may not have account managers who truly care about your brand. They may also rely on quantity of clients rather than quality, and therefore may be willing to lose your business over a disagreement. Lower-quality publishers when you outsource link building  The more authority a publisher has, the more valuable it is for link building. Unfortunately, that authority comes with a cost; it takes more time and effort to establish and build that online reputation, and much more work to maintain it. Low-cost agencies can’t possibly afford to maintain these systems, and may instead favor low-authority publishers, which can damage your campaign. Does this mean you should seek out the most expensive outsourcing link building serviceyou can find? No. But you should consider far more than just the price of the agency you’re working with. Get quotes from multiple providers, and figure out exactly what you’re getting for each price point. Treat this as a link building investment, rather than a link building expense, and optimize your link building strategy accordingly. Pro tip: check your backlinks now to see how you are doing compared to your competition. 2. Working with non-native speakers via GIPHY Before I get too far in explaining this point, I want to note that it’s entirely possible for non-native English speakers to be competent, or even gifted writers. Remember: outsourcing is not the same as offshoring!  However, speaking generally, non-native English speakers tend to write inferior content, when compared to native speakers. They may mistranslate certain phrases, be unable to use slang or idioms in a natural way, or use clunky phrases that make the content seem less fluid. People won’t want to read this content, and top-quality publishers won’t be willing to accept it, which means it’s practically impossible to build a successful campaign on it. Why would a link building agency work with non-native speakers? There are two main motivations here. First, it’s because they’re cheap. Agencies can get away with paying writers far less in developing countries, which means they

A Google Penalty is a misnomer. Google issues Manual Actions on sites whose practices violate the company’s guidelines. But Google does not issue penalties algorithmically (even though we state otherwise below). When webmasters claim their site was “penalized” by the latest Google update, it’s incorrect. Sites that drop in search results from a recent update are most likely over-optimized (most often this occurs as the result of one’s link building strategies) in one area and under-optimized in others. This lack of optimization on a web page level, can look like a penalty from Google, but it simply indicates a lack of understanding of all the factors impacting your rankings. Google Penalties Google penalties are some of the most frightening—yet most poorly understood—elements of search engine optimization (SEO). With the power to dramatically reduce your site’s rankings and visibility in search engines, Google penalties are a real threat, but at times, the legends surrounding them venture into “boogeyman” territory. But, if you’ve ever received a Google penalty notice like the following, it could send your cortisol levels climbing: As the saying goes: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In short, it is best to practice white-hat SEO services to avoid Google penalties in the first place. But, if you’ve already been hit with a Google penalty, there’s a solution for that too. Here we discuss the types of Google penalties and how to best recover when you are hit with a Google penalty. What are the Different Types of Google Penalties? There really only TWO types of Google penalties: Algorithmic Penalties. An algo penalty may hit a specific page or section of your site or an algorithm update may negatively impact your entire site. Manual Penalties or “manual actions”. Typically site owners will receive an alert from Google’s web spam team indicating your need to fix a Google penalty or manual action. Such a message can be a stressed, but there is a way out! These are some of the top reasons for “true” Google penalties (aka, manual actions): Sneaky redirects. Sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they originally requested is considered malicious. Simple 301 redirects aren’t usually a problem here; instead, this tactic attracts penalties when it takes users to a spam site through doorway pages, or a site completely different than the one the originally wanted. Keyword stuffing (and/or hidden text). Back in the day, you could fool Google’s search crawlers by “hiding” invisible text in the background of your site; it was a method of keyword stuffing, or getting as many target phrases on your site as possible to increase its relevance. Not only is this strategy ineffective (thanks to Google’s many content quality updates), but it will also earn you a manual penalty if you’re discovered to be using it. Cloaked images. Similarly, if you’re intentionally hiding images on your site for the purposes of fooling visitors or gaining a ranking advantage, you’ll likely earn a penalty. Link schemes (and/or spam). Unnatural links or link schemes are one of the most common motivations for Google taking manual action because links are so important to any search ranking strategy. Building links to your website is enormously beneficial if you’re employing best practices and prioritizing the quality of those links, but if you’re spamming links, building low quality or unnatural inbound links or taking part in link schemes, it’s only going to hurt you. Link swaps, link circles, and other forms of spam links are all frequent targets here. Thin content. Most instances of “thin” (i.e., weak or low-quality) content are sorted out by Google’s algorithmic quality indicators. However, in some cases, it may be severe enough to warrant a penalty. Expired information. In some cases, allowing information related to your site to expire, such as job postings, for a prolonged period of time could lead to a manual action. Hacking issues. If your site has been hacked or if its security has been compromised, Google may manually block the site from appearing in search engines to protect its typical users. Google has the power to take a manual action against a site that shows signs of violating Google’s terms of service. In this situation, a human being reviews the site in question and issues a manual penalty against the site. After the penalty is issued, some or all of your web pages will either suffer a massive ranking penalty or be omitted from search results entirely, depending on a number of factors (including the type and severity of the offense). There’s no clear visual indication that the pages are lower in rank, but their visibility will plummet. In all cases of a Google manual penalty, you will be specifically notified of its issuance. This is the only type of formal penalty that exists. However, your web pages may decline in rank for other reasons; these ranking declines are often referred to as “penalties” even though there is no human, manual action involved. Usually, if you notice a sudden decline in your search rankings, it’s because Google has issued a change in its algorithm. Google does this periodically as a way to improve the quality and accuracy of its search results; as a byproduct, it reevaluates the pages in its index, and some pages may fall in rank while others increase. Typically, these algorithm changes focus on refining Google’s quality standards; though the specific details aren’t published, it often means tightening restrictions on how Google “sees” your content and external links. Either way, there are strategies you can use to recover from your ranking decline. In the event of a manual Google penalty, you’ll need to make specific changes to your site and request a manual review from Google directly. In the case of search engine ranking page (SERP) volatility due to an algorithm change, tweaking your current efforts may be enough to bring your rank up over time. Which Type of Google Penalty Is Affecting Your Site? You may notice your pages