Jane poured her heart and soul into creating a website for her business, and then one day she woke up to find that all her traffic had vanished. From 1,000 visitors a day, she was down to 100. This was not just a shock to her, but it sent her into a panic. She knew right away that the site had fallen victim to Google’s penalties, and a Google penalty recovery process was initiated.
Here’s what that means.
Google penalty recovery means that Google has pushed your site to the end of the search results. This is a serious problem because you cannot regain the visibility you once had from that position.
A teacher puts you in a time-out for doing something naughty. In this case, the naughty behavior is what Google is penalizing you for.
The question is, how do you come out of a time-out? How can you improve your original search engine ranking?
Understanding Google Penalties and How Recovery Works
A Google penalty occurs when Google decides that your website has broken certain rules. This can be in the form of spammy content, fake links, or misleading pages. When Google penalizes a site, it does so by lowering the site in the search results or removing certain pages altogether.
You will notice that sometimes your website is doing well, it ranks high, and traffic looks great. Then one day, out of the blue, you find yourself in SEO jail. This happens because Google notices that you copied content or stuffed keywords on certain pages.
This will tank your rankings, and it is hard to recover from. A Google penalty is basically a violation of Google’s quality guidelines—and yes, they change, keeping SEO experts on their toes.
Sometimes the penalties are algorithmic, which means no humans are involved. Other times, the penalties happen because someone at Google checked your site and decided that you were breaking the rules. This leads to traffic drops and links being removed.
How to Spot if Your Site Has Been Penalized
Usually, a sudden and significant drop in traffic is a sign that Google has penalized your site. This can result in your content becoming invisible to users and losing rankings for multiple pages at the same time.
You’ll notice that Google Search Console has an option called “Manual actions,” which is where you will find whether Google has announced any penalties and whether your website aligns with its guidelines.
This will also give you an idea of what needs fixing. You need to understand what kind of penalty it is to recover from it. A manual penalty cannot be fixed by treating it like an algorithmic one.