Google is not cool with you frequently violating their guidelines. Well, obviously they’re not cool with you violating them at all, but they do give second chances. If you screw up and get slapped with a manual penalty, you can fix the issue and file a reconsideration request, and get back into Google’s good graces.

This will only go so far, however. If Google accepts your reconsideration request, and you keep violating guidelines after that, it’s not going to be so easy (if it was even easy in the first place) the next time.

That’s the gist of a message Google is sending webmasters. The company’s search quality team wrote a short blog post on the subject, urging webmasters to take its guidelines seriously. It says:

In order to protect the quality of our search results, we take automated and manual actions against sites that violate our Webmaster Guidelines. When your site has a manual action taken, you can confirm in the [Manual Actions] page in Search Console which part of your site the action was taken and why. After fixing the site, you can send a reconsideration request to Google. Many webmasters are getting their manual action revoked by going through the process.

However, some sites violate the Webmaster Guidelines repeatedly after successfully going through the reconsideration process. For example, a webmaster who received a Manual Action notification based on an unnatural link to another site may nofollow the link, submit a reconsideration request, then, after successfully being reconsidered, delete the nofollow for the link. Such repeated violations may make a successful reconsideration process more difficult to achieve. Especially when the repeated violation is done with a clear intention to spam, further action may be taken on the site.

Long story short, don’t violate the Webmaster Guidelines. If you do for some reason, and you get caught, and action is taken against your site, don’t keep violating them once you get your site back in the game. You’ll get caught again, and you’re going to have a much harder time getting your rankings back.

If you need a refresher, you can find the guidelines here. Read it over, and know what Google considers spam.

Image via Google