Fix Google Penalty Issues with a Complete Ranking Recovery Guide

Are you seeing a drop in website traffic or ranking? The primary reason for this could be a Google penalty. Though you find it frustrating, the penalty is a common issue when your website doesn’t follow Google algorithms and guidelines. 

I have faced similar challenges in my marketing journey and found that websites can be recovered from Google penalties. With the right process, you can recover rankings, increase dropped traffic, and fix other issues. Let’s explore how to fix Google penalty issues in this blog. 

What Are Google Penalties?

Google penalizes your site when it fails to adhere to search engine algorithms, quality standards and guidelines. These penalties can affect your website’s performance, with a sudden drop in ranking and traffic. These setbacks remind you to follow best SEO practices and maintain quality. 

Types of Google Penalties

Below are the two types of Google penalties websites may face: 

Manual Actions

The Google team can manually penalize your site if it violates guidelines. Common reasons for manual flags include spammy content, hidden keywords, unnatural backlinks, cloaking, or any other black hat SEO practice. For instance, if you build irrelevant links, you might see a warning in your Google search console 

Algorithmic Penalties

These are automated penalties, where Google core updates, helpful content, and Penguin or Panda algorithms assess your site for relevance and quality. Penalties due to these algorithms hit your website performance without signal, making you track SEO practices often. 

Common Causes of Google Penalties

  • Keyword Stuffing: Placing keywords just to make them present despite the quality content to manipulate search rankings. 
  • Duplicate Content: Copying content from another website or repeating it across multiple pages. 
  • Unnatural Links: Creating backlinks using link schemes or purchasing them. 
  • Spammy Practices: Following unusual tactics like doorway pages, hidden text, or cloaking.

How to Check if Google Penalized Your Website

Websites with Google penalties can experience sudden downfall in traffic or ranking. How do you check it? Let me answer you below: 

How to Check if Google Penalized Your Website

How to Detect a Google Penalty

Firstly, check the Google Search Console and go to the manual actions tab. If Google has penalized your site, you will see the notification. However, for algorithmic penalties, you won’t see any notification. Below are the signs for these penalties: 

  • Sudden website traffic drop
  • Page deindexing
  • Ranking losses on targeted keywords

Want to spot these signs earlier? Track keyword ranking and traffic trends using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

SEO Audit After a Google Penalty

Once you confirm the penalty, a deep website audit for SEO is essential. In this process, you can find potential areas that caused the penalty and try to find the possible solution: 

  • Content Quality: Find thin, low-quality, and duplicate content on your website that doesn’t follow Google’s guidelines. 
  • Backlinks: Discover spammy and unnatural backlinks created using Moz, SEMrush, or Ahrefs tools.
  • Technical SEO: Find slow page speeds, crawl errors, or improper indexing issues as part of technical SEO. 

Google Penalty Removal Guide

Getting a website back on track after the Google penalty needs careful strategy and execution. Here is the stepwise guide to help you recover the site from penalty: 

Step 1: Know the Cause

The primary step is to find out why Google has penalized the site. For manual warnings, check the GSC notification in the Manual Action tab. You will know the basic reason for these warnings, mentioning spammy practices or unnatural backlinks. 

For algorithm-related issues, check the site for ranking drops and traffic downfall and see trends. Compare the time of these drops with algorithm updates and find the main reason. 

Step 2: Fix the Issues

Here is how you can fix the website from the above penalties: 

  • Remove Bad Backlinks: Compile all the toxic backlinks and submit them to the Disavow tool in Google Search Console so that the search engine can ignore them.
  • Address Content Problems: Find all the content issues and fix them manually, be it duplicate content, thin content, wrong structured data, keyword stuffing, or cloaking. 

Step 3: Submit a Reconsideration Request

Once you fix all the possible issues on your website, submit the well-written reconsideration request to Google and request for penalty removal. However, you should be transparent and submit evidence that you have followed Google guidelines and removed and revamped the website completely. 

Fix Google Penalty

Step 4: Monitor and Refine

You found the root cause of the penalty, fixed it, and Google lifted it. That’s great. However, this is not over. Continuously track the website ranking and traffic to ensure it is improving. Follow SEO best practices, track website performance, and continuously keep fixing weak areas with frequent website audits.

Tips for Google Search Ranking Recovery

Google search ranking recovery needs continuous efforts with the right process and strategy. Here are a few tips you should follow to regain website traffic on the largest search engine: 

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Create High-Quality, User-Focused Content

Content is King in SEO success. Focus on creating it with the highest quality, addressing their needs, and delivering the required values. Find relevant search terms, depending on topics and user intent, and place them naturally in the content. Further, it ensures the maintenance of content quality, uniqueness, structure, readability, and user engagement. 

Build Natural and Authoritative Backlinks

Backlinks from topically related and trusted sites signal the reputation of the website to Google. Hence, follow standard link-building practices and earn natural and original backlinks from trusted sources. Strategies like creating linkable assets, guest blogging, and networking with niche-related website owners can help. Moreover, track backlink profiles using tools like SEMrush and disavow harmful backlinks. 

Stay Updated with Google’s Algorithm Changes

The popular search engine rolls out its algorithm updates. You should keep track of that continuously, from trusted sources like Google Search Central, and make required changes to your site. 

How to Prevent Future Google Penalties

To prevent your site from getting penalized, it is necessary for you to follow best practices and be proactive. Begin it by strictly adhering to Google webmaster guidelines that emphasize ethical SEO, high-quality content and a user-first marketing approach. 

Secondly, audit the website for SEO issues often to find duplicate content, broken links on webpages, and irrelevant backlinks. This practice can help you improve website traffic and ranking and maintain steady growth. 

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Use trusted SEO tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Moz, and SEMrush for real-time data monitoring. They can alert you to potential issues on the website, such as signaling traffic and ranking drops. 

Conclusion

Google penalty recovery might be a challenging task. However, the right approach and standard practices can help you achieve this. Quality content, regular SEO audits, and adherence to Google search algorithms and guidelines are key to growing your website without any challenges. 

Are you struggling with any of these issues? Let me recover your site from penalty and grow with best SEO practices, and you focus on the core of your business. Contact me for a free SEO consultation.

FAQs 

What tools can help detect a Google penalty

Google Search Console, Moz, Google Analytics, and other SEO tools help to find penalty issues, like backlink analysis, notifications, and traffic drops. 

How long does it take to recover from a Google penalty?

The duration to recover a site from a penalty depends on reconsideration processes by Google, the level of issues on the website, and the time you take to resolve issues. 

Can I recover my website from Google without professional help?

Yes! However, an experienced SEO professional or freelancer can quickly fix issues and save time by complying with all the guidelines.

How often should I audit my site for SEO?

I recommend you perform an SEO audit for your website once a month to ensure better performance.

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