Google Penalty Recovery

Google Penalty Recovery

 WHAT IS GOOGLE PENALTY?

Has your website experienced a sudden decline in traffic or ranking?

If suddenly you experience a dramatic drop in Google search ranking it is often a result of a penalization, for the use of prohibited SEO practices. Regardless of whether you’ve accidentally violated the Webmaster Guidelines or deliberately used Black Hat SEO techniques, your website will be knocked down the rankings or even entirely removed from the search rankings.

Examples of how a Google Penalty impacts traffic and visitors

Types of Google penalty:

Algorithmic Penalties

Algorithmic penalties are a ranking drop caused by updates in Google’s constantly-developing algorithm. Google Search receives over 600 updates per year,  these updates cause ‘SEO flux’ your website will be penalized for not adapting to the latest SEO recommended practices.

Manual Penalties

Google employee’s who believes you have utilized “Black Hat” or unethical SEO techniques may also enforce penalties. Black hat SEO is not illegal, but it does risk severe Google Penalties.

The following SEO techniques can result in a manual action notice:

  • Hacked site
  • Malware attack
  • User-generated spam
  • Spam free hosts
  • Spam structured mark-up
  • Unnatural links to your site
  • Unnatural links from your site
  • Pointless content – a mask for keywords
  • Cloaking
  • Pure spam
  • Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing

Can Anyone be Blacklisted?

Absolutely! Google isn’t beholden to any corporations, and many major companies have been penalised before.

Google Penalty Case Study – BMW

Violation: cloaking

In 2006, German automotive titan BMW search rankings dropped to zero when they were caught utilizing black hat SEO techniques. They attempted to utilize hidden text to enable them to rank for search terms unrelated to the particular page. The hidden text contained words such as “used cars” which didn’t correspond with the companies landing page.

The penalty Google enforced completely removed BMW.de from its search results for three days.

Google Penalty Case Study – BBC

Violation: unnatural links

In 2013 Google issued the British Broadcasting Corporation a “manual action notice” from Google for pages contain unnatural links. Site links that didn’t fit with the rest of the page content. Link spamming had been a focus of recent updates to Google search algorithms, and the changes caught out the BBC. The news giant turned to Google forums for help.

The violating page was removed from Google search results indefinitely.

Google Penalty Case Study – JC Penny

Violation: paid links

One of the most effective ways of boosting Google rankings is having sites linking to yours. Inbound links demonstrate to the search engine that your website is a trusted authority and in demand. JC Penney paid external websites to create thousands of links to their website, causing the famous corporation to top the search results for everything from “dresses” to the weirdly-specific “grommet-top curtains”.

All of the pages linked to the scheme were degraded severely in Google’s search rankings for 90 days.

How Do I Get a Google Penalty Removed?

Algorithmic penalties are easier to recover from because they’re usually content driven. Check out
Webmaster Guidelines to see if you comply with their current updates. Low-quality links and keyword choices, as well as competitor sites, can all contribute.

Manually imposed penalties are more severe and harder to overcome, as you’ve directly violated Google’s written guidelines. The first stage of recovery is to identify and cease committing the specific violations: Remove spam links, take down hidden text, etc..You will then have to place a reconsideration request.

After overturning the penalty, you will still need to rescale the ranking. Google’s machine learning AI will return to searching for content written for customers and searching for authentic “natural-linked” content. It’s especially important at this time you begin to invest resources into white hat SEO including, high-quality content and backlinks to boost your rankings.

Collecting sufficient data and identifying all the required actions is a lengthy technical process. Luckily, Digital Squads expertise in SEO and penalty allows for an efficient recovery. Get in touch if you have any concerns regarding your Google ranking.