It can feel like your whole online world is crumbling when you get hit with a Google penalty. You wake up one day to find that your site is ranking beautifully, and the next day, you cannot even figure out why your traffic has plummeted. A Google penalty might seem like your website is dead and buried for SEO, but the road to recovery is clear. In this help guide, we are going to take you through a step-by-step process of recovery from any Google penalty and get your site back on track.
What is a Google penalty?
Let’s just briefly go over what a Google penalty actually is before we start recovering. Google penalties are essentially ‘sentences’ inflicted upon websites that break the Webmaster Guidelines of the search engine. These penalties can position your site at the bottom of the search rankings and impact your traffic and business directly. When your website/blog/sales portal receives Google penalty, only a professional SEO services company can help you find ways to recover from this damage.
Types of Google penalties
There are two major types of Google penalties any website can get:
Manual penalties: these are awarded by Google’s webspam team whenever they detect a serious breach of their guidelines. You would get an email message in your Google Search Console notifying you of the penalty together with a statement explaining it.
Algorithmic penalties: These are automatic penalties that begin applying after an algorithm update, perhaps the Panda or Penguin update of Google, whose aim is to eliminate a particular issue: thin content or unnatural backlinks.
The form of penalty will be important because the steps for recovering from a penalty are somewhat different for each technical SEO.
Step 1: Identify the reason behind Google’s penalties
Determine the Google penalty cause is the very first step that is going to be required in recovering from this mess. In the case of a manual penalty, the exact information on why you got penalized usually falls under the section of manual actions.
For algorithmic penalties, match the traffic drop date with any significant algorithm updates using Moz or SEMrush. That way you will be able to establish whether your site got hit by a particular algorithm change, be it Google Penguin the algorithm that specifically penalized unnatural links, or Panda the algorithm designed to target low-quality content.
Tools to identify penalty:
Google Search Console for manual penalty
SEMrush or Moz for algorithm updates
Ahrefs or Majestic for backlink analysis
Step 2: diagnose the problem with Google’s penalties
Confirmed that your website has been penalized, the next step is to drill down into the source. Figuring out the real issue with a web and mobile development company will be the only way that it will get corrected properly.
Unnatural backlinks
The Penguin algorithm from Google has been crafted in a manner to penalize sites with low-quality links or spammy and manipulative links pointing to a particular site. Probably, if you carry out some of the link-building practices such as buying backlinks or participating in link schemes, this could be your major problem.
Find these by checking your backlink profile using Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console. Look for links with professional SEO services coming from some suspicious or completely irrelevant source or links that seem auto-generated, like links originating from blog networks or link farms.
Thin content
Thin content is another very common reason for a Google penalty, especially after the Panda algorithm update. Thin content is short to provide little to no value to users: these are pages containing either too short content, not even good writing, or duplicate content spread on various pages of your site or even on other sites, among others.
If you have pages with nearly nothing to say, or if you simply copied a small amount of text across several pages just to use up space, this may be killing your site. Even if there is unique content presented, if it does not offer some value to the user or does not answer the intent behind his question, it can be considered low quality for Google penalty recovery.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is an old SEO tactic where you stuff your target keywords into whatever content you have with a view to cramming it up as much as possible, often in unnatural ways. Ten years ago, sure; now, Google has gotten onto that scene too and keyword stuffing will get you penalized.
Chances are if you feel you’re repeating the same keyword multiple times without adding anything new or if sentences don’t look natural because you’re trying to force too many keywords in there, that’s it. Keywords from an SEO services company need to appear as a natural flow within the content and should not disturb readability or usability.
Hidden text or links
It is an incidence whereby webmasters will attempt to deceive search engines by covering up keywords or links in a way that they cannot be accessed by end-users. For instance, by using white text over a white background, placing the text off the screen, or simply making the text or link the same color as the background.
If you or your web designer has tried to hide text or links by doing this, remove them right away. Google Bots are pretty advanced and will catch you for these tricks, and Google SEO penalties will be delivered to you for it.
Mobile friendliness problems
As an increasing number of users shift towards mobile devices to access the internet, Google has paid much heed to its services being mobile-friendly. For this reason, Google’s Mobile-First Index prefers mobile-friendly and responsive websites at the top of search rankings.
Mobile-friendly web design by technical SEO is not just about the design; it’s designed to make Google search bots happy. Ensure that your website is accessible on any sort of device and loads quickly with fast loading times so that a clean and intuitive layout is a no-brainer.
Step 3: Fix the Google penalty problem
This is when the action begins and you start the Google penalty recovery process. According to which penalty-causing problem you had, there are different fixes by a web and mobile development company needs to apply to get rid of the penalty.
Unnatural backlinks
If unnatural backlinks are the problem, you will have to clean up your link profile. Find bad links pointing to your site using Ahrefs, Moz, or Google Search Console, and then reach out to the webmasters and politely ask them to remove those links. If they do not agree, you can use Google’s Disavow Tool and ask Google to ignore those links.
Thin or duplicate content
If you caught one of Panda’s whiffs of thin or poor-quality content, you might need to beef up those pages or get rid of them for Google penalty recovery. You want to focus on writing good research for high-quality content that is either a solution or an answer.
Correcting keyword stuffing
If your problem is keyword stuffing, start with a scan of your content for repetition of target keyword phrases. Your objective is to always create content that is natural and useful for users, not focused on attempting to game the system with too many keywords.
Step 4: Submit a reconsideration request
Now that you’ve cleaned up the mess behind Google SEO penalties on your site, it’s time to tell Google. If you got a manual penalty without doing black hat SEO, then you should file a reconsideration request to Google to lift the penalty. In the request, explain what you did to fix the problem, provide some evidence to support it, maybe in the form of a list of links you have removed or in the form of other content improvements you made, and beg Google to reconsider your site.
Be honest, clear, and exhaustive. Google’s team appreciates transparency, and if they notice that you have made a real effort to clean up your site, they are more likely to lift the penalty.
What to Include in a Reconsideration Request:
Detailed explanation of the problem you identified
Actions you took to rectify it (and include concrete examples)
Proof of the fixes you have taken to avoid Google Penalty (like a list of disavowed links)
A polite, professional tone
Step 5: Monitor your progress
Now that you’ve submitted your reconsideration request or applied the required changes for algorithm penalties, it’s time to play. As Google goes through your request, monitor your rankings and traffic. Recovery can take some time weeks or even months and do not lose hope.
Continue keeping an eye on your site’s health with professional SEO services as well as keeping up with the new algorithm changes so you do not get hit again.
Ongoing monitoring tools for Google penalty recovery:
Google Analytics (Traffic trends)
Google Search Console (Search performance)
Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush (Backlink profile and rankings)
It feels a bit scary, but this step-by-step guide will help you gain control of the situation and start reclaiming your rankings. To begin with, running an audit of the whole site using Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush would be a good idea. This way, you can zoom in on specific areas, depending on the outcomes of the audit.
Cleaning up spammy backlinks or thin content would naturally address the most glaring issues that need improvement. Once you know what is wrong, focus on it in the subsequent steps. Don’t forget that you have time to recover and therefore should not rush either. Approach the Google penalty process patiently and persistently with eBizTrait and you’ve got this!
