Did you receive notifications about Google penalties? Then you must have violated Google’s guidelines. There’s always a chance to get back up and continue to put your SEO website traffic on the rankings. However, users may find the process challenging as it takes time but at the same time, restoring your website’s search engine ranking and visibility is also essential.
The process of regaining your website from being penalized is a tedious process. It may involve multiple methods to follow. But the good news is penalties can last for 10-30 days or months, depending on the severity of the issue your website is involved in. Overall, google penalties are definitely fixable.
Recognizing Google Penalties
The first thing you would wonder is recognizing if you received Google penalties. Determining if there are any penalties may require you specific tools or simply just checking out messages from Google itself. To make it more convenient and efficient, there are actually tools you can use to quickly spot Google penalties such as:
- SEMrush;
- Website Penalty Indicator;
- Screaming Frog and;
- Ahrefs
These SEO audit tools assist you in recognizing potential penalties from Google. They mainly analyze different aspects of your website’s performance and if your website was also able to follow the guidelines. However, these tools don’t necessarily identify penalties but they can flag issues that are associated with penalties.
Recovering from Google Penalties
Receiving google penalties can understandably worry users. Nevertheless, there are ways you can consider while waiting for the penalty’s duration. The process may need time and dedication before you’ll be able to reach the solution. The results, however, can be rewarding to your SEO website traffic if done successfully. Anyways, here’s a detailed overview of the steps you can consider.
Check for ranking problems
If your website suffers from a ranking problem, you may need to check if it’s caused by a Google penalty. Website Penalty Indicator, for instance, is an ideal go-to tool to accurately figure out what’s affecting your site. Another well-known tool is Ubersuggest. This tool is responsible for providing users a full report of SEO-related issues and errors that need attention.
Check Algorithm Updates
You can start by logging in to your Google Analytics dashboard. From your dashboard, you can start by reviewing your traffic drops and compare it to any recent Google algorithm changes. Basically, if you found your SEO website traffic drop simultaneously as a known algorithm update, then it might be potentially penalized by Google.
Go for SEO audits
Technical SEO audits can help identify various SEO errors affecting your website. In addition, they can also assist you in identifying drops in traffic. SEO audit also offers insights about the areas of improvement you need to focus on. Through this way, you can easily take down notes on what to avoid the next time around.
Here are important things to focus on when performing a technical SEO audit:
- Front-end factors (content, keywords, and metadata);
- Back-end hosting and indexing;
- Outside references and;
- Link quality
Go for content audit
Running a content audit reviews your current content performance and helps identify the cause of your penalties if it’s related to your content. When managing a website, it’s vital to regularly optimize and update it to maintain its high performance.
So when going for content audits, you can start by using the same tool mentioned above, Ubersuggest. You may want to click Search and proceed to Site Audit. Additionally, tools like Blaze and DynoMappe also help you unveil the root cause of your content issues.
Clean your backlink profile
Bad backlinks are best removed to maintain a healthy website since they can lead to both algorithmic and manual penalties. In fact, Google previously released updates that mainly focused on low-quality and spammy links. However, if you find the process tedious, you can always count on tools like:
- Ahrefs backlink checker
- Link Detox
- Majestic SEO and;
- Google’s Disavow Tool
Conclusion
Google penalties are not an extremely common issue for all websites, however these penalties occur regularly. This happens when specific websites violate or fail to follow Google’s guidelines. In most cases, websites engaging in spammy and unethical SEO practices are more likely to receive the sanctions, affecting your SEO website traffic.
Overall, staying informed about the SEO trends and maintaining your website quality will definitely steer you away from potential google penalties that negatively impact your website.
