How to Recover from a Google Penalty: A Guide to SEO Recovery

Google penalty!!!

A nightmare for SEO experts. There is nothing worse than getting a Google penalty on your website if you are an SEO professional. You do not want to lose the momentum of your website on a steady rise by getting penalized by a Google algorithm update or even manual errors right?

If your website is falling off of the SERP ranking or your traffic is suddenly taking a hit, you have more work to do. But dont worry, it is not the end of the world. Bouncing back from a Google penalty is possible. But it does take a few techniques and tips to get back on track again.

Fixing the penalties should be your first priority since the drop in your search engine ranking can cost you customers and sales. In this blog, ‘How to Recover from a Google Penalty: A Guide to SEO Recovery our SEO experts at Inter Smart the best SEO services in Kochi will give tips and techniques to recover from a Google Penalty, but first let’s start with an explanation.

What Is a Google Penalty?

When a website violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, the search engine will penalize the site. It also means your site won’t be listed on the search engines and your target audience won’t find you. 

There are two types of them:

Algorithmic Penalties: This results from modifications or upgrades to algorithms.

Manual Penalties: Google auditors have introduced the system to guarantee better standards. Usually, you get these if you break Google’s terms of service.

Besides, you can see if you have got a manual penalty in your Google search console. 

To check it go to the security and manual actions and ->  then Manual Actions.

If you dont have any notifications and have a green checkmark that says ( No issue detected) then you are good. 

However, if you are seeing notifications to review something, you got things to fix. 

What Are Common Causes of Google Penalties?

• Keyword Stuffing –  It is known as the practice of spamming/ repeatedly using the same keyword in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings 
• Hidden Links – The process of adding links to a webpage that are not visible to users is known to outsmart the algorithm.
• Irrelevant keywords – Using unrelated terms in an attempt to influence search engine results pages. 
• Bad redirects – When a user gets sent to a different web page than they wanted to visit. These were done to farm clicks and traffic.
• Spyware/Adware/Virus – They are examples of harmful software-distributing websites.
• Data Issues – Technical issues that occur due to robot.txt files/sitemap etc
• Bad Links  – Spam links or low-quality Links
• Spun Content – The content that offers no value to the reader
  

Other Causes for a Fall in SERPs

A sudden or mysterious drop in search engine ranking is going to be devastating for business that greatly rely on high traffic, sales, and conversions. Even though Google penalties are some of the common things for a website, there are also some factors that are affecting the cause. Following are some of the reasons for discussed in detail : 

Seasonal variations: Websites may see an abrupt drop in traffic during their off-peak hours, which could result in a decline in search engine rankings.

Increasing online competition: Your business could be pushed further down the SERPs by competitors. Every year, 252,000 new websites are launched worldwide. If you are not upgrading and optimizing your website, it is far too easy to lag behind the competition.

Content quality: You’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King,” which applies to everything on the internet. Google emphasizes that it values great content more highly than badly written, pointless postings created just for search engine optimization.

How to Recover From Google Penalties : Restore Rankings With Inter Smart

Let’s take a look at some of the ways recommended by our SEO professionals at Inter Smart to recover from Google penalties.

1.Check the Rankings

First thing first. The first step to recovering from ranking fluctuation is to understand if the penalty is the source of your problems. You can use The Website Penalty Indicator for this. It allows you to see exactly where and how it is hurting your site.

2. Check the Recent Algorithm Update.

To check if you have been affected by the algorithm rollout, you have to log in to your Google Analytics dashboard. Then detaily assess the traffic declines to any recent Google algorithm adjustments. If you haven’t checked your dashboard in a while, it’s worth it to see if an earlier change has impacted your search ranking

If your traffic drops at the same time as a known core update, it’s most likely due to a Google penalty.

For more information further, you can select your website from the Google Analytics dashboard and then click Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium. From there, select Google/Organic. This displays a report on the number of visits your website receives from Google searches. Then you can compare the traffic drop to the dates of the core update.

3. Run an SEO Audit

SEO audits should be part of your regular marketing strategy, but they can also assist you with assisting traffic problems. But, if you are concerned that your website is suffering from a Google penalty, a technical SEO audit will certainly help you to identify any SEO issues that are affecting your site.

When completing a technical SEO audit, you should focus on the following three factors such as  

• Back-end hosting, 
• Indexing Front-end content, metadata, and keywords
• External references and link quality.

4. Content Audit

A content audit thoroughly analyzes your existing content performance and can help identify the source of your Google penalty if it is due to content concerns.

You can start by using tools like Ubersuggest to assess your overall website performance and identify content update opportunities.

Simply select Search > Site Audit.

Content inventory tools like Blaze and DynoMappe can also help you identify content issues. Connecting with our experts at Inter Smart, the top SEO services in Kochi.

5. Double-check backlinking

Healthy link-building activities are very important for SEO, but bad backlinks are a huge negative and might have the reverse impact.

Bad backlinks can result in both human and algorithmic penalties.  Google has already introduced improvements targeting spammy, low-quality links.