One of the worst things that could happen to a website is when it gets hit with a Google manual penalty. This will stop the website from showing up on any Google searches and even put an end to active ad campaigns. Fortunately, with the assistance of experienced digital marketing specialists, it is possible to overcome this issue and continue to generate organic traffic.
Let us understand what these penalties are, why they happen and how we resolve them.
What Are Google Penalties?
Penalties are actions taken by Google to prevent a website from showing up in search results. Google applies two types of penalties to websites:
Algorithmic Penalty
Google usually announces major algorithm updates months in advance to allow webmasters and SEO specialists to make necessary changes. However, for each major update, there are hundreds of unannounced minor updates.
After each of these updates, many websites experience a sudden drop in organic traffic. This is the so-called algorithmic penalty, which actually is not really a penalty, but a temporary after-effect of an update.
Manual Penalty
A Google manual penalty (or manual action) means that a Google team member analyzed your website, found a violation of the search engine’s guidelines and manually removed the site from search.
In this situation, you must act quickly and strive to resolve the problem. Google manual actions are not taken lightly – they are applied for serious reasons, such as:
- User-generated spam
- Unnatural links to and from the website
- Thin content with no value throughout the site
- Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing
- Using a spammy free host for the website
How to Overcome a Google Manual Penalty
Our digital marketing specialists follow a clear protocol whenever a client’s website has received a manual action from Google.
1. Identify the Reason for the Penalty
We will start by analyzing the reason for the manual action. The information appears in Google Search Console, under the Security & Manual Actions tab.
The Google team will provide the exact reason for the action, including the pages in the website which violate Google guidelines.
2. Go through the Entire Website to Fix All Issues
SEO and digital marketing specialists do not leave anything to chance. They will not only fix the issues on the identified pages, but also look for other potential violations on all the pages of your site.
At this point, they may even suggest a full SEO audit, to prevent any future penalties. In some cases, it is necessary to:
- Rewrite parts of the website code
- Change the hosting provider
- Rewrite content to make it useful and valuable for users
- Change website structure, removing obsolete pages
3. Resolve Unnatural Links
As unfair as it seems, your website may receive a Google manual penalty through no fault of your own. Instead, you have many links from websites flagged as spammy pointing to your site.
The first step in this situation is to identify the websites and contact their administrators asking them to remove these links. In most cases this will not happen, but there is a clearly documented process of trying this amicable way of solving the issue.
Next, the SEO specialists will disavow the toxic link. This means creating a special file telling Google to ignore the respective links. The file is then uploaded in the Google Search Console in a special section.
4. Submit a Reconsideration Request to Google
After making sure that all the potential Google guidelines violations are resolved, the digital marketing specialists will use the Request Review function in the Google Search Console to have the manual penalty lifted.
The Google team will review your website and then post the final decision. Since a real person will perform the task, this can take some time – up to several weeks.
Let Our Specialists Help You Avoid a Google Manual Penalty!
While manual actions can be resolved, it is always better to avoid getting them. The digital marketing team at EverConvert will make sure that your website complies with the Google guidelines and constantly makes necessary updates.
We are always informed of upcoming algorithm changes and make sure that your website will meet the new requirements. Contact us today to start discussing with one of our consultants about your future digital marketing and SEO strategy!
