Despite your best efforts, you may find that you’ve received a search engine penalty. Penalties range in severity, from a drop in rankings for specific keywords to complete removal from search engine results. Either of these can be catastrophic for your business, if you’re relying on organic search traffic for leads, sales, and exposure. But it’s important to maintain a level head, take stock of what’s happening, and systematically go through the process to repair the damage.
Search Engine Penalty Basics
There are a lot of rumors about search engine penalties. They aren’t random. In fact, in most cases a site’s owner will confess that there’s something they’ve been worried would get them in trouble. Perhaps you engaged in some questionable link building processes in the past or you took other steps that fall into the “bad SEO” category. In other instances, you may not be fully aware of the source of the problem but need to work out the details before you can address the problem. The following process is a quick guideline that you can refer to if you’re facing a penalty.
1. Determine if you’re facing a Manual or Algorithmic Penalty
The first step to addressing a penalty is to determine which type you’re facing: a Manual or Algorithmic.
Manual penalties: Manual penalties are simple to identify. When they occur, site owners typically receive a message via Google Webmaster tools noting that the penalty occurred and offering insights into the source of the problem. Manual penalties vary in severity, ranging from action against a single page or piece of content on your site to the entire domain. Rankings may drop or your site may be removed from the search engine results. The only strategy for dealing with a manual penalty is to look into the source of the problem and submit a reconsideration request. We’ll discuss how to navigate that process in more detail below.
The second type is the algorithmic penalty. Algorithmic penalties occur organically as search engines update their algorithms. Individual changes or updates – for example Google Penguin or Google Hummingbird – impact the rankings for your site and cause them to drop. These may be harder to detect, as site owners aren’t notified. Instead, you may first notice a drop in your organic traffic numbers.
If you suspect a penalty is affecting your rankings, the first step you want to take is to consult \ Google Webmaster Tools. Log in, go to “Search Traffic,” and then check the “Manual Actions” section.
If you don’t have any notification of a manual penalty, you need to assume that it’s a result of algorithmic changes. With the wide variety of updates that have occurred, it’s helpful to determine which change is driving the penalty. Is this a Google Panda problem, referring to an issue most likely with your content; a Google Penguin issue, that may indicated a problem with your link profile; or a mobile optimization concern linked to Google Hummingbird? The timing the penalty occurred (as in, if it was connected with a known algorithm update), combined with your own knowledge of the site and which pages were affected, can give you quick insights.
2. Target the solution to the problem
After you’ve figured out the source of the problem, you’re ready to apply the right solution.
For manual penalties, start by reviewing the notice that you received from Google. Study its contents and make a list of the areas that you need to address. If, for example, the issue relates to manipulative link building its time to complete a full audit of your link profile. Do you have links that you bought, that are from poor quality sites, or that are from sites that are irrelevant to your niche? If so, this can be addressed by removing as many links as possible. You can then move on to submitting a reconsideration request.
It’s harder to address algorithmic penalties, since your first need to determine the cause. Once you’ve tied it to a specific update, you’ll be able to better zero on the right solution. For example, if you’ve tied the problem to Panda you need to face that your site has usability issues. It’s time to audit your content quality, content volume, content originality, site speed, and overall structure and navigation. Penguin penalties require that you take a look at your link profile, conduct link audits, and where necessary remove links and submit disavows. By tackling
3. Implement a new strategy
Recovering from penalties are difficult: they take time, energy, and human and financial resources. You’re losing brand equity, revenue, and customers when your site’s not ranking well. The best way to avoid a penalty is to commit to an ethical, value-driven strategy moving forward. Focus on over delivering to your audience through your content strategy, gaining exposure via social media marketing and earning high quality links. This approach will never backfire!
Link Audits and Google Disavow
If you suspect that bad link building practices might be at the root of your problems with site penalties, it’s time to conduct a link audit. Link audits let you take a closer look at all your incoming links and assess their quality. Depending on the results of your audit, it’s to move the discussion to looking at how best to remove bad links from your site.
Google Disavow
Google launched its Disavow tool in 2012. The focus is simple: if there are bad links pointing to your site that you can’t remove any other way, the Disavow tool can do that for you. You can submit a list of sites that are low quality for Google’s consideration. Disavow doesn’t remove links, but the tool signals to Google that you’d like for these links to be ignored when search engine results are considered. Remember: Google Disavow doesn’t solve every issue with bad links and it’s important to proceed cautiously when you’re using it.
Google’s Matt Cutts explained
in a video that it’s best to use the tool both judiciously and strategically. Don’t just upload every bad link to your site to the Disavow tool and consider your job done. Cutts specifically states that Google wants site owners to make multiple attempts to get bad links removed before using Google Disavow.
To repeat: it’s critical that you make a good faith effort to get links removed before resorting to this step. Start with identifying the offending sites and reaching out to them via email to request the link be removed. Sending numerous email requests (sometimes even in the hundreds or thousands can be incredibly time consuming) but it’s well worth the effort. These steps will help you avoid future penalties and be an important component of any reconsideration request you submit. For more detail on which links to remove and how to handle the Disavow process, see
How to Know Which Links to Disavow in Google.
How to Manage an Outreach Campaign
It’s important to structure your outreach campaign for link removal in a way that’s easy to track and also can be submitted with any removal requests as backup. Consider taking a systematic approach that you record in a spreadsheet or other document with the following information:
- Site name
- Link URL
- Keyword anchor text
- Page URL that the link goes to
- Contact information
- Details of the contacts
Attempt to connect with site owners at least three times before you discontinue your campaign. Send a personalized message, and add a copy of your email contact to your file so you can quickly follow up and reference the contact. If after the third try you haven’t heard back or they’ve refused, just add the site to your Disavow file. One note: you’ll occasionally get a dishonest site owner that will request money to remove your link. If that’s the case, never pay. Instead, just note it in your spreadsheet (including a copy of their email response) and move on.
How to Submit a Reconsideration Request
If Google hits you with a search engine penalty and you’ve taken the steps to correct the problem, it’s time to submit a Reconsideration Request. Reconsideration requests can be submitted via Google Webmaster Tools. There are three guidelines to keep in mind for a successful Reconsideration Request:
- Ensure you’ve done the work up front: One of the most important aspects to a successful reconsideration request is ensuring you’ve truly addressed the problems before you submit. If the problem is with links, have you removed all the offending links? If your issue is one of usability, have you restructured your site with the user experience in mind? Take the most rigorous perspective possible – because you know Google will.
- Submit backup: If you’re facing manual penalties or are submitting a reconsideration request to Google, note this information in your file. Include your spreadsheet outlining the work you’ve done to have links removed and what you’ve submitted to Disavow. Be as detailed and comprehensive as possible, remembering that this provides important evidence of your commitment
- Take responsibility and demonstrate your plan: Once you’ve identified the source of the problem, it’s important to take responsibility, demonstrate your commitment to change, and lay out a plan for moving forward. For example, if your issue was with content, you might note that you’ve created an editorial calendar and added a noted freelance writer to your staff. Google doesn’t impart manual penalties lightly, and taking responsibility and learning from the experience makes them more likely to forgive moving forward.
4 SEO Tactics that Will Result in Penalties Every Time
There’s a growing list of SEO tactics that are more likely than not to push you into Google’s bad graces. We’ve touched on these in several places, but here’s a checklist of the SEO approaches that should be avoided at all costs. If you’re currently engaging in any of these approaches, stop today and start the process of improving your site now before you get into trouble.
- Content spinning, scraping, or duplication: High quality content is a must-have for every SEO strategy. Poorly written content, content stolen from other places, and duplicate content are all signs of a bad site and one that’s going to get you slapped with a penalty.
- Buying links: Links are one of the most important aspects of a good search engine ranking. They’re also the biggest area of pitfalls. Don’t ever buy a link to your site. It violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and is a major target of search engine crackdowns. Instead of buying links, focus on earning them organically and building them naturally with great content.
- Links from poor quality sites: The days of building massive numbers of links from low quality sites, from blog networks, or from link wheels are over. If you have links from sites that aren’t in your niche or that were created explicitly for the purpose of building links (and nothing else!), it’s time to remove those.
- Overusing anchor text: Whether you’re guest posting, earning links, or taking another approach to link building, in 2014 webmasters must pay attention to their link profile. If roughly more than 30% of the links pointing at your site use the same anchor text and it’s not your brand name, it’s a red flag. Instead, look for a balanced range of links that use more diverse anchor text.
Finally, we’d like to take a look at how to maximize the value of conversion testing and metrics to ensure you’re getting the best result possible for your SEO efforts.
