One of the worst nightmares that can happen to your online presence and activities is the Google Penalty. It causes all of your hard SEO work to right out of the window. You have a drop in organic traffic and in turn, your business suffers. It is a daunting experience and it can really hurt. However, you can find your way out of it and define a better link-building strategy. Once you know just how to recover from any Google penalty you can more easily tackle the problem. You should know that it is almost impossible to fully recover. But, you can recover and alleviate some of the negative implications of a penalty.
What it is and how it impacts you?
Well, the penalty issued by Google is, simply put, a punishment to websites that do not play with the rules and standards set by Google. This means that Google can register and punish any activity that it deems unnatural and unethical by a certain website. Google issues the penalties automatically, as part of an algorithm update, or manually. Automatic penalties are more of a demotion of a website as it does not comply with the set rules and can be healthy in an automatic way. These usually affect pages on a website. At the same time, manual penalties can have a detrimental effect on a website.
However, all of these kinds of penalties can give a hard blow to the rankings and traffic of the website. Website or certain pages can be omitted from search engine results causing a huge drop in organic traffic. In this way, potential customers do not get a redirect to the website ultimately causing a decrease in sales and profits. So, you should try to research and handle all of the ways of getting out and recovering from these penalties.
The types
Automatic penalties are a result of a change in google search algorithms that influences how Google views a website. Your website may be flagged and penalized after an update in Google’s algorithm. There are two such penalties. Panda penalties are related to the content of your website. If Google determines that content is substandard and websites are low quality. If the algorithm determines that the website doesn’t provide value it can penalize it. Penguin penalties are more common and occur if the algorithms determine that the website has an unnatural activity. It follows the bad links and looks at the link quality. These penalties have a limited effect and they affect only certain pages in a website.
A separate kind of penalty is the manual penalty that is issued by a human operator. Sometimes websites pass through the automated grid and can only be identified by human operators. They can upon analysis determine that the site deals in the black hat SEO realm and may issue penalties. This happens if the website has an unnatural backlinks portfolio usually, as a result of forbidden activities. These penalties have a larger impact. A manual penalty is unlimited and it removes the entire website from the search engine. This significantly impacts the whole website and domain.
How to recover?
The way we can start to recover from a penalty is dependant on the nature of the penalty. Algorithmic penalties demand one while manual penalties demand the other approach. Knowing just how to recover from any Google penalty is key to keeping your rank and position.
Get out of algorithmic penalties
Whether the penalties are a result of the panda or penguin update the solution is the same. You have to fix the problem to get out of the problem and you should wait until the next update. this does not require direct contact with google and it takes effect after the update. As these updates happen once in a few months the change will take effect after the next update. As it is not certain when it will be you should try to fix the issue as soon as possible.
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Get out of Panda penalty
As Panda penalties are focused on the quality of a web page you should review your website and look int its quality. So, the penalties address web pages with slow speed, multiple ads, poor content, and navigation. So first of all check for your speed and see how long it takes for your webpage to load. Also, check if you have duplicate pages and content and try to delete them. Also, check if there is quality to the content. Once you find and fix these issues you can wait for the next update for these changes to take effect.
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Get out of Penguin penalties
As penguin deals with the link network and quality, you should review your backlink portfolio. First, get rid of unwanted links as they can be unnatural or bad. So, contact the website and ask them to remove the link. If you do not get a response make sure to disavow the whole backlinking domain to keep your portfolio clean. Also, check your anchor text and its distribution. You can take advantage of the free tools at your disposal. There are many tools and ways that deal with how to recover from any Google penalty so make sure to research and learn. Once you make the necessary changes you can also wait for the next update to see if this fixes the issue.
Get out of manual penalties
These penalties are similar to Penguin penalties but are issued by a human operator. An while this penalty affects the whole website and your domain the point is the same: you have to clear your backlink portfolio to get out of the penalty. The set of steps are as with the Penguin penalty. However, once you make the necessary changes you can contact Google to review your case again and lift the penalty. You must know that recovering from a manual penalty may take some time. Google is busy and it takes time to review your case once again. In addition, you must know that recovering fully is not possible. It takes time to get back your rank and standings from a manual type of penalty so be sure to try and resolve the issue quickly.
So, Google penalties can cause you many problems and have a profound impact on your SEO results. However, knowing just how to recover from any Google penalty can help you overcome the issue quickly. You must be on the lookout for any traffic drop and dreaded message from Google about issuing the penalty. Quick response and action are key to getting out of the penalty and recovering from it.