Reviving Your SEO After A Google Penalty

Read Time: 3 minutes

SEO has become a difficult task for some businesses to maintain as Google cracks down on sites that use unethical means to attract customers. If you’ve run into some trouble and ended up with a Google penalty, there are ways to recover.

Google estimates that 5% of websites that have received a Google penalty are attempting to recover their rankings. Don’t let your website fade into the oblivion that is the online world. There are techniques to get your website back where it belongs and generating regular hits.

What Is A Google Penalty?

It is common to assume that a Google penalty is based on the amount of traffic your website receives, however, the drop in traffic is only an indicator that something is wrong and it is not the penalty itself. When Googles Webmaster Guidelines are violated you will either receive a manual action penalty or an algorithmic devaluation.

• Manual Action Penalties (Google Panda Penalties)

  Applied by an employee at Google. This will occur when Google picks up on a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines. The severity of the penalty depends on the severity of the violation; however, they range from small downturns in rankings to the complete removal of the site from search results. You will receive a notification from Google with a message about unnatural links that have been picked up.

• Algorithmic Devaluations (sometimes called the Google Penguin Penalty)

  Refer to your website essentially losing rankings on Google’s search results. This is the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve with SEO. The difference between manual action penalties and algorithmic devaluations is that manual actions are known and it can be reviewed via Google’s support page. The problem can be understood and fixed. Algorithmic “penalties” present no fix. Your site just becomes less visible and less traffic is driven to your business. Therefore, there is no defined penalty. An experienced SEO marketer will be able to determine where exactly your site received an algorithmic update.

What Causes A Google Penalty?

Low-quality links are guaranteed to get your site a penalty. There are a few types of links you should avoid using:

• Sites that are banned by Google (sites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines)
• Websites that are unrelated to your niche market; Google insists on relevance as to not mislead the consumer.
• Spam-based comments on forums that are only placed for driving traffic to your website will get you penalized.
• Hidden text or links
• Links from gambling websites or sites that contain adult content.
• Using links of websites that have duplicated content is considered low quality
• Websites that make use of cloaking, hacking, doorway pages, unethical redirects, and irrelevant content will be flagged.

What’s Next?

Google has guidelines to fix each manual action penalty that is imposed. Recovering your SEO can be complicated.

First, you’ll need to identify the penalty and fix it. Google will be notified of your request to have the manual action removed. Then, once you’ve submitted your request for reconsideration, and Google approves your edits to the site they will remove the penalty. Algorithmic devaluations are harder to correct and once you’ve identified what went wrong and fixed it, you’ll need to wait for Google to run their algorithmic update. In most cases, businesses struggle to identify where they went wrong and that is why this step can be tricky.

How To Avoid A Google Penalty

Avoiding a Google penalty requires some knowledge about SEO. The bottom line is, you want to keep your linking clean and natural. Buying links should always be avoided as this makes your site look unnatural. There are techniques to using paid links while sticking to Google’s guidelines. Getting involved in link schemes will also get in hot water.

Keyword stuffing should be avoided because once again, this makes your content unnatural. Using repetitive phrases in an unnatural way will get you penalized. Lastly, stick to quality content. At Connectica, we have an experienced team of writers with the skills to generate relevant, quality SEO content for our clients, because that’s what gets results.

Mastering SEO can be a bit of tricky task if you’re not familiar with Google’s guidelines. Your website is your strongest marketing tool and understanding how to optimize your reach will only benefit your business. At Connectica, we have a team of SEO experts with the knowledge to share. We make it our goal to drive traffic to your website through techniques that won’t land on Google’s bad side.