1. What is the Google penalty in SEO?

Google penalizes the website when some use techniques that are against the
webmaster guidelines.

The main reasons why google penalize the website are- due to algorithm updates like a
penguin or due to the manual practices.

Getting penalized has many drawbacks like a decrease in the ranking, website traffic,
lower conversion rates, and lower sales.

Google updates its algorithm to deal against the wrong practices and manipulation of
organic results and to avoid black hat SEO.

If your website gets penalized, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to figure out the
timing of the drop in traffic and the latest Google updates.

Before the Penguin update, many people use black hat SEO or negative SEO. In black
hat SEO, the marketers or the website user forces Google to show its content or
website in the top search engine ranking.

Some of the common techniques used in this process are- using irrelevant keywords,
keyword stuffing, spam links, spam comments, copied content, using doorway pages,
and many more.

Are you thinking of using a negative SEO technique?

Using negative SEO can increase the ranking of your website for a short period of time,
but after your ranking decrease and the chances of getting penalized increased.

The latest google algorithm can detect the wrong and spam links, or we can say that
Google can detect negative SEO. So, it is better to stay away from this technique.

2. Reasons why your website gets penalized?

Google algorithm update

It is the most common type, and it is spontaneous, or we can say that it is automatic.

In this case, Google penalizes your website after its algorithm update. Having bad or
spam links and duplicate content is some of the reasons why your website gets
penalized.

Strange links
It is when you or someone else creates strange or artificial links to your website.

After the penguin algorithm update, google can analyze those links and degrade their
value, and if it detects that there are many spam links coming from the irrelevant
directories, then in this case, it will penalize the links and your website.