I want to talk a little bit about Google’s penalty. Some people tell stories of how they were penalized by Google and they didn’t understand what their mistake was. In this article, I’m going to share with you what it takes to recover from Google’s penalty.
Now let’s take a look at the most common reasons why sites get penalized by Google.
The first most common reason is that people tend to use cloaking in their SEO strategies. Cloaking refers to providing different content depending on what search engine crawlers and users see. There are some cases where website owners would put the best content in front of users to get them interested, and then use the same content that they are sharing with search engine crawlers in the hope that those documents would rank well.
By doing so, you’re lying to Google, which is against its guidelines. You won’t be penalized for having two versions of your website – one for human users and one for search engine crawlers. You’ll be penalized if you ‘revisit’ your content, just to make sure that it’s eye-catching enough to make a person want to read it.
Google also penalizes websites for using hidden text or links on their pages. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s an example: if you use a graphics program such as Paint or Photoshop to take a picture of text white in color, and then you save it as a JPEG file. Because the colors look like they’re white, Google won’t index that page – even though there’s some kind of content on it.
Next, I want to share with you what Google says in its guidelines about hidden text or links.
The gist is this: if you’re trying to do something shady please don’t; otherwise, people will be able to see your wrongdoing and causing your website to get penalized.
Google’s guidelines say that you can’t:
add content that isn’t visible on the page; meaning that if there are links on your pages, make sure that they’re clickable and not hidden behind a graphic; and don’t try to hide links under flash or java apps because those kinds of apps are hard for Google to read.
You can add inbound links to these kinds of graphics because search engine crawlers can crawl through them and index the content that you’re sharing with your users. If you do try to hide the links by making the text white or putting it behind a graphic, then Google will notice that – and they won’t like it.
The second most common reason that users get penalized by Google is that they’re trying to game the system – if you’ve ever had a site banned in the past, or if your sites are always on Google’s update list, then chances are that you’re trying to do something shady. That means that you’ve been warned before and you’re trying to get around Google’s guidelines.
The last thing that I want to share with you is what it takes to fix your website when Google penalizes you: it’s simple. When you notice that your websites are not showing up properly in search results, then the right thing to do is talk to a professional and ask them for help. A specialist can provide you with advice, and they’ll be able to help you understand what went wrong. The specialists will also be able to show Google that your website has been fixed by adjusting it in a way that’s compliant with their guidelines – if your website measures up then there will be no reason for Google to penalize it again.
I hope that this article will help you to understand why your site might have been penalized, and what you can do about it. I’d like to finish with a quote from Google’s webmaster tools website: “Try collecting, organizing, and presenting the best information possible without misleading anyone.”
Google says not to game their system – they want you to make sure that the right content goes in front of their users – and I’m sure that you don’t want to get penalized.
Marketing is a competitive field, so you need to do whatever it takes for your business to be successful. For example: if an SEO consultant tells you that they can get your site ranked on the first page of Google within 6 months, then it’s a good idea to keep an eye on them. Do they ask for your competitors’ websites to get a better sense of the competition? If so, then you should be wary – because there are only two ways that SEOs can help you achieve first page rankings:
– They’re using hidden links to get you to the top, or
– They’re doing keyword stuffing.
The first option is shady, and it’s easy for Google to detect your efforts – so I wouldn’t recommend that at all. However, if you want help with your SEO then my suggestion would be to try someone who uses natural solutions. Don’t be afraid to ask your SEO consultant for references or examples of their work – that’s the only way that you’ll be able to make sure that they do high-quality work.
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It depends on a few things, such as the type of penalty and the intent behind it. In general, though, you should be able to see results within 3-6 months. The best thing is to not lose hope – we’ll get your site back on Google soon enough!
A lot of sites have been penalized by Google at one point or another – some for malicious purposes, and others because they violated their guidelines. One high-profile example is a site that was banned in 2010: the Huffington Post. It’s now doing fine, but for a while, it had to recover from its penalty.
Another example on the opposite side is Grooveshark. They’ve spent their time building a great site, and Google recently rewarded them by putting them at the top of search results for popular music searches.
Another high-profile example that comes to mind is Zappos: they were penalized because they were using tricks to get more traffic – instead, they should have focused on better content. Zappos has since recovered, and they’re doing fine.
Some sites get penalized for their actions outside of SEO – here’s an example: if you use AdWords to drive traffic to your site, but the people who click on your ads don’t convert well then Google might interpret that as an attempt to fraudulently increase your site’s traffic.
In general, algorithmic penalties won’t allow you access to the search console – so you’ll need another way to diagnose a problem. If your site is currently ranking on the first page of Google for most relevant searches but it seems like there’s no traffic coming in, then I’d recommend going through some of these steps:
Check for 404 errors:
– Check your site for broken links. Run a report using the “Pages” tab after selecting “Search analytics” from the left menu in Google Webmaster Tools.
Check for low-quality content:
– Go to “Search queries” and click on the first-page rank that doesn’t have Social metrics set up (or whichever one you’re falling short in).
Check your site speed:
– Check the load time of your home page using Pingdom Tools. If that’s under 5 seconds, then it should be fine. However, if there is a problem with something that needs to be fixed then I’d recommend checking out Google’s PageSpeed Module for an easy way to test your site speed.
If your site was recently penalized for building bad links, then I don’t recommend using PBNs or trying to outsmart Google. If you want to successfully recover from a manual link penalty then I’d recommend that you do the following:
Write better content and publish more of it:
– Use an editorial calendar, and make sure that you write something at least every week.
Search for content from your competitors:
– If there’s content that you’re missing out on, then go ahead and write a post about it. Find a way to make it unique – but don’t copy the other site since Google will be able to tell that easily!
Make sure that your users are happy:
– The most important thing is to maintain a good user experience. If people feel like they had to click too many times before being able to find what they’re looking for then you’ll be in trouble since Google is all about the user.
From what I’ve seen, you’ll recover from a manual link penalty in about 2-3 months. The best thing is to not lose hope – we’ll get your site back on Google soon enough!
Disavowing links is one of the best ways to recover from a bad link-building campaign – but it’s not the only way to fix things.
If you use PBNs and get a manual penalty, then I’d recommend getting all of your bad links taken down as soon as possible. While Disavowing is good – it won’t work if you still have bad links on your site. When you disavow a link, it means that you’re telling Google that the bad link shouldn’t be counted as a vote for your site.
This is the best way to avoid getting penalized in the future, too:
If you want to stay safe then I’d recommend disavowing all of your links before rebuilding your PBNs and trying again. Not removing links can result in some serious problems, and you’ll be penalized for a long time if Google thinks that you’re still trying to artificially inflate your rankings.
Disavowing all of your links is best since it removes the risk of accidentally leaving something on your site but it will also take the longest amount of time to recover from a penalty. If you’re in a rush to fix things, then you can choose to disavow just your low-quality links instead – however, I don’t recommend doing this since it’s harder for Google to detect spam without all of the links on your site (and they’ll probably end up penalizing you again).
Disavowing all of your links before building a PBN can be useful if you’re having trouble getting backlinks. Users seem to like “clean” sites – and they’ll be more eager to link to them, too!
First, go to the Google Search Console (and make sure that you’ve claimed your site).
Then, select the bad links tool and follow the instructions. If you’re not sure where to begin then I’d recommend going through each of your competitors and disavowing any bad links that you find on their sites. This will keep them from ranking higher than you – which is what we want!
Before you start building a PBN, disavow all of the bad links on your site. It’s a good idea to do this even if you don’t have a penalty – but it can help prevent one in the future, too!
If you’ve been given a manual penalty then Google will tell you when it’s time to fix things. You’ll probably receive e-mails in red from webmaster tools like this.
Other signs of an algorithm update include:
– Your rankings drop for no reason (or they leapfrog a competitor)
If you’re manually penalized, then you’ll need to change your ways and work on building a better site instead of trying to cheat the search engines. Your users will appreciate it more – and Google will notice that, too!
Reasons why you may have been penalized:
Here are some reasons why you may have gotten a penalty: – You sold links (Google says that this is bad) – You used blackhat techniques (Google doesn’t like spammers) – You got paid to link to another site (this is against Google’s rules)
Basically, you’ll get an e-mail telling you what penalty you got and how long it will last. Also note that if you use PBNs, building them over and over again can get your site banned from Google completely.
If you get a manual penalty then I’d recommend taking a good hard look at your business model. Are you using spammy techniques? Are there any more shady sources of links that need to be removed? These are things that you should think about, too:
The best thing to do after getting a manual penalty is to take an honest look at your site. Try not to be defensive – instead, admit that you made some mistakes and then make sure that they’re corrected.
Everything hurts during the recovery period but it will get better in time!
If you’re having trouble getting links then I’d recommend choosing sites that are related to yours. Try to link to everything important, too – but don’t go overboard and try to appear “natural.”
After a few years, your Google penalty will be lifted automatically. Google checks in on your site and makes sure that you’re not doing anything shady – and if you’ve cleaned up your act then they’ll let the site live again. Google doesn’t make any announcements about this (I’m just making an educated guess)
There are a few different types of penalties that you can get from Google. Here’s a list of them:
– Manual penalty: This is when you’ve done something wrong (like paid-for links) and Google punished you for it. You’ll get an e-mail telling you what to do next, too. After the time period has passed your site should be good as new.
– Links not counted: Sometimes you won’t see the keywords that you’re trying to rank for (or your competitors will show up instead). Google says that filtering errors like this all the time and it’s nothing to worry about. See if your competitors’ rankings have gone down a lot – if so then it could be an algorithm update and not a penalty.
– Links showing up in Webmaster Tools: If you see links in your Webmaster Tools account that doesn’t match anything then it’s possible that you’re being penalized for those sites (if they exist). The best way to fix these kinds of issues is to disavow the links and then see if they go away.
– Links not showing up: If you don’t see any links in Webmaster Tools then it could mean that the site is too new for Google to know about it yet. In that case, just wait a while and then ask webmaster tools about the link removal again! (Google can take 4+ days to update their links database.)
– Thin content penalty: If your site has a lot of low-quality pages then it might get penalized. To fix this you’ll need to go through the content and see what can be improved upon. Some things that I’d recommend are rewriting descriptions, getting more images on the page, and making sure that the content is all related to one another.
The worst thing about PBNs is that they’re cloned pages – so if one site gets a penalty then the rest of them will, too. If you use PBNs on your site then it’s not going to be long before Google catches onto what you’re doing and penalizes you for that, too.
If you’re getting a penalty from Google then here’s what I’d recommend doing about it:
#1 Change the links on your site (if possible)
#2 Claim that the whole website is under new management
#3 Make sure that spammy links aren’t pointing to the page in question
#4 Once that’s finished, request reconsideration
Now that your website is penalized by Google then there are two things to make sure of:
– You need to remove links (or disavow them in Webmaster Tools). If you have no idea which link caused the penalty then try taking them down one by one just to see if they’re the offending link.
#1 Reply to the message that you got from Google. They’ll ask you if you agree with what happened – say yes and then wait for further instructions. You don’t need to go through any sort of reconsideration process (that’s for new sites that are trying to rank in the Google search results).
#2 Get rid of the malicious links on your site. This is very important because if you don’t get rid of these kinds of links then all it will take is one competitor to report your site and Google will slap another penalty on it!
Of course, you can find PBNs all over the internet. However, it’s much more difficult to use them without being detected these days. So instead of doing that, I’d recommend looking into other networks like BloggingPro or NicheWebsitesPros. If that’s not an option then you might even consider posting some guest posts on SEO-friendly blogs. One of my favorite things to do is to try and submit some posts on backlink-watched websites (just Google “backlink watch” or something similar) and see if any will accept the post.
All of that is just like posting a link, but you can make sure that everyone has shared your content. Sites like Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon are great for getting your content in front of a huge audience.
There are plenty of things that you should stay away from if you’re trying to avoid Google penalties. Some of the worst things are:
#1 Buying links
#2 Selling links
#3 Using link networks
#4 Creating sketchy private blog networks (PBNs)
Here’s my list of link building tactics that Google likes:
#1 Guest posts
#2 Interviews on podcasts
#3 Creating guides and tutorials
#4 Using social media to get links (mentioning people when you talk about them)
If you’re just getting started with link building then I’d recommend using free resources. Try creating a helpful resource guide that you can offer to people on Twitter and then see if they’ll give you a link back on their site (if they do then message them and let them know that it’s your first time linking out! You want to be as polite as possible so that they’ll be more likely to link back to you).
Peer-to-peer networking is another great option for getting free links. Try using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to let people know about your page (don’t get spammy with this!) then see if they’re willing to post a link.
If you’re wanting to rank a new site then it’s a bad idea to start building links immediately. You want to take things slow and build up some social signals before you go after that #1 spot in the SERPs. This is because Google will penalize your site if they notice that you’re trying to manipulate them into ranking your site!
The core algorithm is what determines your ranking in Google. It’s a set of rules that decides how you rank and how to display results. Whenever we hear about updates being made to the core algorithm it means that they’re changing the way that things work.
If you were penalized through Google Penguin then you’ll have to completely remove the spammy links and then request a reconsideration. The second update (Penguin 2.0) was released in Oct 2014, so your site has a pretty good chance of recovering from it.
If you were penalized by Panda then you’ve got a much bigger problem on your hands. Avoiding Panda updates is difficult and I’d honestly recommend just starting over with a new site (you’ll have to work hard for a few months but it’s definitely worth it in the end).
If you’re about to build new links then there are two things that you need to be aware of:
#1 The anchor text of the links that are already pointing at your site
#2 The type of content that you’re going to be promoting (if you promote news and articles then building links is very easy)
You don’t want to be penalized, so it’s a good idea to take precautions. Here are some tips:
#1 Be patient (think long-term)
#2 Avoid using “Black Hat” tactics (like posting links in forums, buying links or selling links)
#3 Make sure that you’ve got a lot of social engagement on your page and website as a whole
#4 Create a quality resource that bloggers will want to share with their readers
I know this sounds scary, but it is possible. Here are some ways that you can earn your way back into the SERPs:
#1 Start a blog (your own site) and link to other blogs within your niche (this is called a “content hub”).
#2 Promote the content on social media, getting people to engage with it as much as possible.
Once you’ve got over 10k shares of that piece of content, then start linking to it from your website. Don’t worry if you don’t have 10k shares right away, just focus on getting new people to your site (by posting in forums, social media, or any other free resources that you can find).
#3 If the changes were a result of building too many links then wait for Google to back off and then start building backlinks once again.
If it was a result of some other penalty then you can just remove the bad links and start all over again (this time making sure that you avoid any violations).
What are Google’s plans?
It’s important to remember that these updates were made to improve our experience with search engines. Google is constantly changing its algorithm and we’ve got to accept that (it’s not about intentionally penalizing people).
I really hope this has helped you understand how Google updates works. If you have any questions about anything then feel free to leave them in the comments section below!
#1 Locate your site, paste it in the ‘Site Owners’ section and request a reconsideration, then click the ‘Request Reconsideration’ button.
#2 Within few days you will get an email from Google, saying that they have reviewed your reconsideration request and are asking to verify ownership of the site, on which you want to remove the penalty. So login into the Analytics account of your website, find Dashboard Mode, copy and paste your site URL into the Search Console field and click ‘Verify this website’.
Note: If you can’t find Dashboard mode within Analytics, then go to Settings -> View Advanced Settings -> Data Collection and enable ‘Default’ under ‘Data Collection Sources’.
#3 Within few days you will get an email from Google, saying that they have verified your site and saying you to remove the penalty.
Note: If you don’t get an email from Google within 7 days, then again login into the Analytics account of your website, find Dashboard Mode, copy and paste your site URL into the Search Console field and click ‘Verify this website’.
#4 Within few days you will get an email from Google, saying that they have reviewed your reconsideration request again and removed the penalty.
That’s it. Your website has been successfully unpenalized by Google!
Important notes: To avoid any misunderstanding, if you haven’t done anything wrong then you don’t need to contact Google for removal of the Penalty. Also, I am not a part of Google so I can’t guarantee that you will get the penalty removed.
#5 Don’t buy backlinks (this includes private blog networks).
Honestly, this is something you should be doing anyway. The idea behind building links should be to create great content and gain social signals from other sites. If someone offers to sell you links, then my advice is to steer clear.
#6 Don’t make the same mistakes again.
If you’ve been hit with a manual action review, then it’s time to look at your site and see what changes you can make to get back into good graces (this means taking a real hard look at why you got penalized in the first place). If you’re seeing a drop in traffic, then it’s time to look at your backlinks and disavow any bad ones.
#7 Check the “Unnatural links” section of Google’s Webmaster Tools account for tips on how to get rid of unnatural links pointing to your site.
If organic search traffic is important to you (and it should be), then make sure to pay close attention to this section.
#8 Update your XML sitemap regularly.
If Google sees that you’ve got a lot of new content, then they’re more likely to crawl your website and update the index faster.
#9 Use Schema on your site (Schema markup on individual pages or site-wide).
The schema markup tells Google what the page is about, so it’s easier for them to serve you up a result that fits your query.
#10 Avoid installing third-party plugins (which are not trusted).
Third-party plugins can cause issues with page speed and security (and even get your website banned from Google entirely). If you absolutely need a plugin, then make sure to do some research first.
#11 Avoid using low-quality plugins (or remove existing ones that you have installed).
These are notorious for causing issues with page speed and security. A poorly coded WordPress theme can also negatively impact your site’s performance in this area.
#12 Ensure your hosting meets the requirements for speed and security.
Your host should have a solid reputation and provide both secure (SSL) connections as well as high page-load speeds. Many web hosts also include site backups in their hosting packages, so this is one less thing you will need to worry about if you have decent hosting.
#13 Avoid installing unnecessary WordPress plugins.
If you’re not sure whether a plugin is safe or not, then it’s best to steer clear altogether.
For example, I am an internet marketer and I used this method for recovery of my client’s penalized websites successfully. Bingo what we say here is just the trick! It’s 100% work, I am using it on my website ( http://www.jimpenterprises.com ) to recover from the Google penalty as well, and it’s working fine.
Wish you all the very best!
I hope that this article has been helpful to you. If you are still having a hard time overcoming procrastination, please continue working on the exercises I’ve outlined in this article.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll try my best to help!