Search engine optimization is full of surprises. Even when you do everything you can to optimize your website, you can still get lost in the system. Google is like a separate association with its rules and regulations for rankings. However, violating any of these regulations may result in getting penalized.
Even a high-ranking website can face a penalty and suddenly disappear from the search engine. Factors like spammy links, unethical content, and negative reviews are responsible for de-ranking and penalizing a website. Google can penalize some web pages or the whole website based on several on-page and off-page SEO factors.
What Are the Different Types of Penalties by Google?
Google tweaks and updates its algorithm frequently to get only relevant results to its users. Manual and algorithmic penalties ensure that spammers and unethical sites remain out of the picture. To avoid such circumstances, the search giant has prepared an instruction manual to guide site owners. If web administrators fail to comply with these guidelines, they will face penalties, website de-ranking, or blockage.
1. Manual Penalty
Some sites have been tricking their way up to the first page of Google, burying the most relevant information underneath. It negatively affects the user experience. Google gives a manual penalty to a website when a human user has complained about its quality. If a human reviewer tells Google that a specific webpage is not following the Webmaster Quality Guidelines, manual action is taken against it. Most of these manual penalties address the manipulation of the search index or spammy and fraudulent content.
If your site faces a decline in visitors and de-ranking issues, you may have some manual penalties on your web pages. You can check them through the Google search console report. You will see the count of complaints and negative remarks on your report if any manual actions are taken against your site. However, if none exist, you will see a green check mark with relevant remarks.
2. Algorithmic Penalty
These are automated penalties by Google bots to lower a page’s search ranking due to misleading factors. Google search results are compiled by a highly intrusive and complex algorithm that works alongside search crawlers. These penalties often occur due to Panda, Penguin, page experience updates, and Intrusive Interstitials.
These penalties are often difficult to understand since no notifications are handed down for them. It is challenging to specify which penalty is in action and when. Therefore, a website needs to be audited first to determine the causes. Sometimes Google updates may cause a slight dip in the ranks; however, if it doesn’t ping back shortly, there is an algorithmic penalty.
How to Recover from Google Penalty?
Google Penalties result in two types of site downgrading:
- Delisting: Every URL related to the website is removed from the Google search index.
- Downranking: This results in lower rankings and traffic loss on all penalized pages.
You can take different actions to remove and avoid being penalized by Google, like running a diagnostic test to determine why, how, and when Google puts a penalty on your website. Achieving pre-penalty standing can be challenging; however, Google penalty removal services can help you regain your value using different strategies. The key to removing a penalty is to find out what caused it.
1. Look for Website Rankings
An experienced professional would take a data-driven approach that includes comparing the page rankings first. They can determine it by typing the URL in the search bar of any analytics tool, seeing its rank, and comparing it with past rankings to analyze how much decrease it faces online. You can also get a diagnostic report using Google search console to discover any manual action taken against your website.
2. Determine Algorithm Updates
De-ranking can also result from Google’s algorithm updates. Run a penalty check through Google Analytics to determine these changes and analyze the traffic drop with past updates. A drop in views during algorithm updates is Google’s fault and can be recovered quickly. You can check the source and reason for the decline in ranks through this service.
3. Website Auditing
Running a website SEO audit should be essential to your digital marketing strategy. It can be a valuable tool to diagnose drops in traffic, lower visibility, or a technical error in a site’s SEO. A website audit focuses on three aspects of a site’s performance.
- Back-end hosting and indexing
- External references and link quality
- Front-end elements such as content, metadata, keywords
SEO agencies usually do these audits to evaluate website health and recover from penalties. Look for repetitive and outdated content, site map errors, and keyword stuffing. Optimize the site loading speed by removing spammy backlinks, redirects, and heavy files from the interface.
Hire professional Google Penalty Removal Service Providers
Removing a Google penalty can be a time taking process, given the number of penalties per page or the whole website. Getting a website back on track can take 10-30 days. A down-ranked website may require less time than a delisted one. Expert professionals deal with penalties through different approaches, such as changing the domain names, running audits, and assessing the severity of the situation. Hiring a Google Penalty Removal Service equips you with expert assistance to deal with website penalty issues. If you are seeing a dip in your site’s traffic or a particular webpage has de-ranked from the first page to the second or third page of Google, hiring a competent agency like Lincoln SEO services scan help you achieve your ranking again.