3 Steps To Recover From Google Penalties
If you’ve been faced with a penalty from Google, don’t panic. You can always recover from this! There are many common SEO penalties that you may and may not be aware of. And with Google constantly updating their search engine to improve user experience, it’s easy to miss something new that Google penalises.
If you’ve been faced with a penalty from Google, don’t panic. You can always recover from this! There are many common SEO penalties that you may and may not be aware of. And with Google constantly updating their search engine to improve user experience, it’s easy to miss something new that Google penalises.
Maybe in the past you carried out some black hat SEO tactics that you weren’t aware were unethical, or maybe there are many broken links or 404 pages on your site that creates a bad user experience. There are many reasons as to why your site may be being penalised by Google, but here are 3 steps you can take to recover.
1. Find Out Why You’ve Been Penalised
Sometimes it’s easy to figure out why you’ve been faced with a penalty from Google, like if you’re aware of any black hat practices that have been carried out on your site like keyword stuffing or paying for back links.
However, many businesses aren’t aware of why they’ve been slapped with a Google penalty. In these cases, it may be useful to hire a digital marketing professional like Absolute Digital. The professionals can carry out a thorough SEO and content audit of your site and check for any errors including duplicate content, poor site framework, 404 pages, broken links, slow load time and much more. From here, a plan of action can be decided to address the problems.
2. Create A Plan And Fix The Problems
Now that it’s clear why you’ve been faced with a Google penalty, your digital marketing professional can begin planning a fix. This may not be a quick fix, as you may need to rewrite any duped content, fix any broken links, reduce ads, fix 404 errors, rewrite meta descriptions or title tags etc.
Your plan will include priorities to fix what Google considers to be broken so that the time it takes for you to recover from Googles penalties will be quicker. Patience is a virtue when it comes to recovering from Google penalties, but you will be thankful of a better, faster site in the end.
3. Submit Your Request to Google
By submitting a request to Google, you’re basically asking Google for forgiveness from your sins. Always have proof and documentation of the steps you’ve taken to fix the issues to hand in case Google requests this.
If you don’t fancy getting in touch with Google directly, you can always wait it out. Around a month after your changes go live Google should have started re-indexing your pages and you should see changes on your analytics.
Takeaway
It’s always good practice to carry out regular audits of your site and put certain guidelines in place to avoid Google penalties. However, if you do face Google penalties, don’t take this personally!
Even some of the biggest sites have experienced penalties and have had to plan tough strategies to recover. If you’ve been hit with a Google penalty, stay calm, contact a digital marketing professional and set guidelines in place to prevent this happening again.