Google has been changing its ranking algorithms since 2000 with the release of its toolbar extension. At the time, the toolbar update made a great shift in the SEO industry. And it was the first time PageRank was published in a usable form.

Over time, it started to eliminate poor quality contents and elevate the good stuff to the top of the Search Engine Result Pages. That’s where Google penalties came in. The Penguin algorithm update which was released in 2012, hit more than 1 in 10 search results overnight. It wiped out some websites out of search engines and cleared away low-quality contents and forced the optimizers to be more careful about their content strategies. Since then, SEO professionals have been observing the Google’s plans, with the fear of their sites been penalize from the Google’s next update.

Google keeps continuously revising the way it index content. Let’s go through some of the reasons for Google taking issues on your site.

1. Buying links-Buying links is considered as an attempt to manipulate PageRank, and therein lies the controversy. If in case you are buying bad links, your actions could have caught up with you.

2. Excessive reciprocal links-Swapping links was once a marketing tactic until it started to be abused. If you are exchanging lots of links with your clients, it can be seen as a manipulation attempt.

3. Duplicate content-Duplicate content on your site makes it less useful from the Google’s point of view, and it could result in a penalty. Make sure your content is unique.

4. Overusing H1 tags-The H1 tag helps Google to understand about the page. Excessive H1 tags could be seen as an attempt to pump Google’s listing with keywords.

5. Internal 404s-If you’re delivering 404s inside your website. It is a signal that your users aren’t getting the information they are looking.