Google Penalty Recovery: How to Get Back on Track

Google has two types of penalties you need to be aware of:

• Manual penalty – this is issued when a Google employee reviews your site and determines you have violated the search engines guidelines. You will be notified via Google Search Console under Manual Actions
• Algorithm penalty – these are triggered by changes to the Google Algorithms. These are penalties that are not manually enforced and do not appear in Google Search Console. In fact, often you only notice a problem when your ranking and website traffic takes a drop

Identify the Cause of the Penalty

Now that you have identified you have a Google Penalty, it's time to focus on resolving the issue. You need to know why you were penalised in the first place, enabling you to take corrective action. 

Manual Penalty – Unnatural Links

These are often caused by low quality backlinks or manipulative practices, such as buying links or taking part in link building schemes.

Recovery involves conducting a link audit to identify what links are causing your website harm. Disavow any toxic links, informing Google you do not want those links counted in your ranking.

Manual Penalty – Thin or Duplicate Content

This manual penalty is given when Google detects pages that have very little value or irrelevant content. Duplicate content penalties occur when you have similar content across numerous pages or websites without the correct canonical tags.

Recovery involves going through all your pages, removing, combining or improving them. Content needs to provide value to your readers, which is done by creating high quality, well-researched, and relevant content.

Recovery for duplicate content includes using Google Search Console to detect the duplicate content pages, then implementing redirects and canonical tags.

Algorithm Penalty – Link Quality (Penguin)

If you have been issued an algorithm penalty that relates to Penguin, then it means you have spammy or low quality backlinks. To recover from this penalty, you need to remove or disavow the harmful backlink, focusing on acquiring high quality links from pages with a high domain rating.

Algorithm Penalty – Content Quality (Panda)

If you have an issue with an algorithm penalty that relates to Panda, then the issue is with the quality of your content. It could mean your content is low value, or duplicated. Recovery requires creating valuable content, focusing on original content to establish your site as an authority in your niche.

Conclusion

If you have noticed your website traffic is taking a dive and your visibility in search results has dropped, you could be facing a Google penalty. Don't worry it's not the end of the world, and it can be resolved. Get in touch with Genie Crawl today for help with your Google penalty recovery now.