Methods to get well from a Google penalty

SEO is a complex game full of surprises. Even with the best of intentions, it is possible to invest in your SEO only to penalize your website with a Google algorithm update or manual action.

If you find that your website traffic is suddenly dropping or your position in the SERP ranking is dropping, your website may have fallen victim to a Google penalty.

Setting these penalties should be a top priority as a drop in your search engine ranking can lead to lost customers and lost sales.

Fortunately, these penalties can be challenged and corrected, but you must understand the cause before you can correct the problem.

In this article, we are going to show you how to find out if your website has been penalized and explain exactly how to correct your score.

What is a Google Penalty?

A Google penalty is a penalty that Google imposes on websites for not following their webmaster guidelines.

Penalties can be imposed automatically by Google's algorithms or manually by any of Google's human auditors.

Some penalties are the result of Google algorithm updates, e.g. B. with the Panda and Penguin updates.

Think of Google penalties like a red card in football. The referee (google) says you did something wrong and are forced to suspend the rest of the game.

If you receive a penalty, like the soccer player, your website will have to suspend until a solution is found. This usually means that you may no longer be listed in search results or your ranking for targeted keywords will drop.

While Google penalties are designed to stop black hat SEO tactics and other online rule violations, they can also happen to websites that made an honest mistake or did nothing wrong at all. Sometimes it's just a bug from Google that needs to be fixed.

What are Common Causes of Google Penalties?

The following triggers often cause Google penalties:

  • Keyword filling
  • hidden links
  • duplicate content
  • irrelevant keywords
  • bad redirects
  • camouflage
  • Spyware, Adware, and Viruses
  • Data problems
  • bad links

There are many ways you can get a Google fine, but they are often triggered by black hat techniques or tactics designed to fool search engine bots.

There are two main types of Google penalties:

  1. Algorithmic penalties: Often caused by algorithm updates or changes.
  2. Manual penalties: Created by human auditors who work for Google to ensure quality standards. These are usually given when you violate Google's Terms of Service.

You can check the Google Search Console to see if you received a manual penalty.

For manual actions go to Safety and manual actions, then Manual actions. When you see a green check mark that says "No problem recognized"You are clear.

Google penalty - manual action screen

To see if your website has been given an algorithmic penalty, you need to check your ranking, which we will cover in the next section.

Remember, not every drop in search traffic is due to a Google penalty. For example, seasonal businesses often see a sharp drop in their off-season. Increasing online competition can also force your company further down the SERP page.

Google has always maintained that high quality, relevant content takes precedence over irrelevant content, which is intended to drive search engine optimization.

Essentially, Google wants companies to create content that is best not only for search engines but also for the user. If you try to outsmart the algorithm, you may be fined.

However, it is possible to get a Google fine even if you don't try to outsmart the algorithm.

Errors in manual entry and changes to the algorithm can result in a penalty even for innocent marketers.

Because of this, it is important to know what can cause a Google penalty and what to do when it happens.

The following are the steps required to recover from a Google penalty.

How soon will my website recover from a Google penalty?

Your website will be restored from a google penalty once all the bugs are fixed.

This could be anywhere from 10 to 30 days for manual penalties, depending on how quickly you fix the problem, re-submit, and have your request accepted.

Recovery time can be significantly longer for algorithm penalties, with some companies reporting damage up to two years later. Most websites can expect a six month recovery period.

How to Recover From Google Penalties

Google penalties can result in lost data and revenue for businesses. Therefore, it is important to find and fix problems as soon as possible.

While most of the penalties are due to poor SEO techniques, some penalties are due to Google errors and may require communication with the Google team.

Often times, if your website is penalized for content bug or bug, changing the content of your website can fix the problem.

Here are some simple steps you can take to recover from a Google penalty.

  1. Check if you have a ranking problem

    The first step in recovering from a Google penalty is to make sure that a penalty is what is causing your problems.

    You can use the website penalty indicator to see exactly where and how your website may be affected.

    Google criminal complaint
    You can also use tools like Ubersuggest for a full report on SEO errors to be aware of. These tools can help identify issues such as bad backlinks, duplicate content, indexing errors, or algorithm updates.

  2. Investigate the latest algorithm updates

    To find out if you are the victim of an algorithm penalty, log into your Google Analytics dashboard and compare the traffic with known changes to the Google algorithm.

    If you see your traffic drop at the same time as a known algorithm update, this is likely to be the culprit of your Google penalty.

    To conduct further research, select your website in the Google Analytics dashboard and click Acquisition > All the traffic > Source / medium.

    Google penalty - with Google Analytics

    From there you choose Google / Organic. This will show you a report on the number of visits your website is getting from Google Search.

    Next, select the reporting period in the top right corner and go back a year or more. Compare all the important data on traffic waste with the update data from the Google algorithm.

    Use this Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet to guide your process. Or read the Moz guide, which lists all the updates to the Google algorithm over the past 16 years.

    Once you've determined which update is leading to your penalty, read the update to understand how to fix the problem.

    For example, if the penguin update puts your website at a disadvantage, then you need to focus on improving your backlinks and anchoring the text distribution.

    If the Panda update is penalizing you, it may be a content quality issue.
    Page experience penalty may require UX / UI updates to improve the user experience on your website.

  3. Perform an SEO audit

    SEO audits should be part of your regular marketing strategy. It can also be useful to diagnose traffic losses.

    If you are concerned that your website is suffering from a Google penalty, an SEO technical audit can help uncover any SEO flaws that are affecting your website.

    When doing a technical SEO audit, there are three things to focus on:

    -back-end hosting and indexing
    -front-end factors like content, metadata and keywords
    -External references and link quality

    SEO audits should use a link tool like our Backlink Checker to check for spam links.

    This SEO audit checklist can also help you conduct a detailed SEO audit to recover from a Google penalty.

    Some common SEO mistakes are:
    -bade or spam backlinks
    -Keyword fill
    -sitemap error
    -Loading speed
    -pop-ups

    If you fix your SEO mistakes and still find that your website is performing poorly, your penalty may be due to a content bug or some other problem.

  4. Perform a content review

    A content audit reviews all of your current content performance and can help you determine the cause of your Google penalty if it is related to content issues.

    Remember that your online content needs to be updated and optimized regularly in order to achieve high performance. Google looks for updated, detailed content. Content that was great two years ago won't perform as well today without updates.

    Use Ubersuggest to see your website's overall performance and find ways to update content. Just click search > Site audit.

    Google Penalty - Content Review

    Content inventory tools like Blaze or DynoMappe can also help you uncover content problems.

    Also check for duplicate content. Duplicate content can be a big problem for your search performance. Companies that allow user-generated content such as comments on blogs should be particularly aware of this.

    During your content review, look for:
    – obsolete content
    -Content gaps
    -Evergreen content that needs to be updated
    -Metadata
    Image data
    -Word counts

    Depending on the tool you use, you may receive content recommendations that you can use to improve your website.

    At Ubersuggest, problems are rated from low to high.

    Fix high impact issues first to minimize Google penalty issues, then plan to update content regularly so you stay in Google's good hands.

  5. Clean up your backlink profile

    Healthy link building campaigns are vital to SEO, but bad backlinks can have the opposite effect.

    Bad backlinks can result in both manual and algorithmic Google penalties.

    Google's Penguin algorithm was developed to uncover faulty backlinks and penalize websites believed to be manipulating SERPs.

    While managing your links can be a daunting task, there are many tools available to make this process easier.

    –Majestic SEO is an intelligence tool that allows you to conduct link audits to understand how and where your links are working.
    – Google's disavow tool can help you remove spam backlinks from your website. Note that you should only do this if direct communication was unsuccessful in removing the broken backlinks.
    –WebMeUp Backlink Checker breaks your backlink domains and IPs along with the percentage of dofollow links and displays your data in easy-to-read pie charts.
    –Ahrefs Backlink Checker offers a link analysis tool with a regularly updated link database to support you in your endeavors.
    –Link Detox is a subscription-based tool that you can use to automatically clean up your link profile. Be careful with automatic tools as they can sometimes turn down your best backlinks. Always check the results manually to make sure you don't lose any good links.

    Once you find negative or underperforming backlinks, you can try removing them.

    This can be accomplished by emailing the webmaster of the poorly performing websites to request removal.

    Find the webmaster's contact information on a Contact or About Us page. If that doesn't work, try entering your domain into Whois.com.

    Your request email should look something like this.How To Recover From Google Penalty - Clean Up Your Backlink Profile
    If the webmaster doesn't answer or denies your request, you can use Google Disavow to remove the links yourself.

    Remember, a handful of bad backlinks won't improve your ranking. Google ignores a lot of these weird links when you're unfamiliar with them. However, if you've used a seedy SEO agency or dealt with building black hat links, take the time to clean up those links.

Google Penalty FAQs

How do I know if I have a Google penalty?

Use tools like Website Penalty Indicator and Ubersuggest to uncover manual or algorithm penalties that are affecting your website traffic.

How can I fix SEO errors?

Perform an SEO audit to find and fix any SEO errors that could result in a Google Penalty.

What tools can I use to clean up my backlinks?

Online tools like Majestic SEO and WebMeUp can uncover bad backlinks. From there, you'll need to contact the webmaster directly to delete them or reject them yourself.

When will my website be restored?

Your website should recover in about 30 to 30 days for manual penalties and six months for algorithm penalties

Conclusion

A Google penalty can be a big problem for websites that rely on web traffic for their revenue.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to find out how, when, and why your website is being penalized.

Remember, there are many ways you can improve your Google ranking without being penalized. Always follow Google best practices to minimize penal issues.

While we hope after reading this guide that you will feel confident enough to identify and fix Google penalties yourself, our agency is here if you can't or don't want to. Our experienced team can guide you through the SEO audit / fixing / growth process with any level of involvement you want.

How have you resolved your Google penalties in the past? What steps did you take?

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