How to recover your business from Google Core Search Algorithm penalty

Have you ever come across any message from Google alert stating that your website has been penalized? Do you know what ramifications this alert could lead to? There are chances that your website can face huge loss as far as Google search ranking is concerned, it may also be removed completely from the Google search engine. It doesn’t end here! This could even lead to close of business.

The question that arises, is why does this happen?  There are various factors which could attract penalized by Google

Factors Responsible as to why a Website may be penalized by Google

There are multiple factors which could lead to such a scenario. Here are some of them.

• When manipulative tactics and methods are being used in order to improve the ranking of a site. As far as manipulative methods are concerned, there are two more categories, which are
• Using on-site methods within the technical set up of a website
• Using off-site methods to manipulate the factors which are being used by Google to check the trust and authority of a site
• The visiting traffic reports poor website experience.

Types of Google Penalty – Manual or Algorithmic

Here is a detailed discussion on the 2 different types of penalties that can be imposed by Google

• A manual penalty is imposed when a visitor from Google has reviewed a site manually and found one or more Google guidelines have been violated.
• An algorithmic penalty may be imposed when a particular website has stumbled a filter or safeguard which is built into Google algorithm.
• As far as Algorithmic penalties are concerned, they fall under Penguin or Panda categories. When it comes to Panda penalties, they are related low content quality of a site along with its usability. Talking of Penguin penalties, they can be associated with over-optimization and usually supports the content of very high quality.
• The major and minor updates for Penguin and Panda can implement different changes. These changes at times may go unnoticed and can completely destroy the SEO of a particular website.

Keeping all these factors in mind, it is absolutely necessary to remain up to date with the most vital algorithm updates

How a Google Penalty can be recognized?

Here are some of the signs that would signify that you are being penalized by Google

• Your website would stop suddenly showing selected phrases or keywords in the SERP
• You might end up losing lots of traffic and may not recover them ever again.
• The ranking of your website would unexpectedly drop to zero
• At times, the website may be shut down completely. At times, it can be recovered easily by Google penalty, while most of the times it becomes very difficult to recover.

In order to fix and resolve all these issues, you need to deploy an SEO expert, who would follow a checklist for identifying the probable causes which could lead to website penalty and would come up with various recommendations to avoid it.

How can you Avoid Google Penalty

There are a couple of important aspects that need to be taken care of in order to avoid Google penalty. Here are some of them

• Spam back-links, Link Building, and Guest Post Link: If you use guest posting with an excessive amount of links as a strategy for link building, then it can prove to be absolutely fatal. In order to avoid Google penalties, especially Penguin, the key is to have a profile which looks natural. There is also a high risk of devaluing links by Google which are being generated by guest posts. These days, there are lots of people who are into guest posting on a huge scale for Google to ignore. Google can quite easily detect all the links for guest posts and then devalue them.
  

The newly implemented Google algorithms do not allow websites for selling or purchasing back-links. Therefore, as a host, you need to be cautious and refrain yourself from adding too many back-links in a relatively short span of time. Google might assume that you are doing this with the help of dedicated software. Therefore, it is recommended to use backlinks which are relevant to the content of the website.

• Duplicate or Plagiarized Content: As per policies set by Google, any duplicate of plagiarized content can attract penalty. It needs to be ensured that whatever content you are uploading, it is being written properly and it unique. There are a couple of tools and applications which can be used to avoid plagiarism. You should also check everything else which can be duplicated along with Meta tags, link anchors.

• Hidden Text or Links: All of the website text and links should be visible clearly to the visitors and has to be beneficial to them. Any hidden text or links will be considered to be suspicious. It is recommended not to color any link or text which is similar to the background of a page or a button.

Although the visitors of the website may not be able to notice the hidden text or links; however, it can be easily detected by the Search engine bots.

• Keywords Stuffing: It is highly recommended to avoid excessive use of the targeted keywords. A high keyword density is considered to be a sign of a poorly written content. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to check for the densities of the keywords. If you have excessive numbers of keywords stuffed in a page, in that case, it would attract the attention of Google you might get penalized heavily for it.
• Overuse of H1 Tags: By using an H1 tag, Google can clearly understand the title of the page. Google will be able to easily figure out that H1 tags have been used excessively in order to pump the listing using keywords.
• Advertising and Affiliations: Google doesn’t like those websites which have too many advertisements and affiliate marketing. Google will also reject any website which has high bounce rates.  Therefore, this is an important aspect which needs to be taken into consideration.
• Control Hacking: In case you site is hacked, it would be immediately removed from SERPs by Google. Therefore, make sure that you are always prepared for the worst case scenario. You must be able to act quickly in order to control any hacking attempts and make sure that a backup of your website is taken so that it can be restored at any point in. 

Recovering from Google Penalty

If a penalty has been imposed on you by Google, in that case, there is no need to panic. You need to have patience. Remember, websites which are even popular and bigger than you can be penalized for any numbers of reasons. What you need to do is to figure out the causes of the penalty and then take corrective measures. Different solutions would be applicable for different problems.

Here are a couple of tips which you might find handy when it comes to avoiding Google penalties

• If penalties are being imposed due to troublesome links, then you can go ahead and ask Google to ignore them and request them not to count those links
• You need to clean up your website and then a new site-map needs to be submitted to Google mentioning about new and fresh content.
• Google Webmaster Tool can be used in order to download and find all the back-links
• Try and remove some of the links and also make sure that some of the links are being taken down
• You may put forward a request for reconsideration in case of a manual penalty
• At times, Google takes a considerable amount of time in order to act on your requests and changes. So, all you need to do is to wait till your website starts crawling once again.

It needs to be remembered that it is possible to fix most of the penalties by using an ethical approach, some hard work and a little effort for rebuilding a website.

However, if Google refuses to remove the penalty from your website, in that case, you won’t have any other option but to purchase a fresh domain, restart everything from scratch, including promotion.

If you are complying by all the policies set by Google, then you have nothing to worry about; however, given that there are so many websites operating these days, even slightest of non-compliance can attract penalties. Therefore, it is very important for you to make sure that you stick to the guidelines laid down by Google. If you ever get penalized, then things can turn out to be a bit nasty for you. There are ways to get out of it; however, it is advisable not to get into it in the first place.

Conclusion

The key to removing Google penalty is to understand the causes and reasons of such penalties. Therefore, as a host, it is absolutely essential for you to go through the Webmaster Guidelines of Google. If you wish your website to stick right at the top of the first page of Google, then you can consult an experienced SEO expert for guidance.

Author: Amara Luis

Amara Luis is a skilled and most creative content writer work freelance specializing in writing SEO, social media and other various topic on internet marketing.