Important Signs That Show Your Website Was Hit by a Google Penalty

A Google Penalty Can Be A Disaster For Your SEO Rankings!  

Google penalty can be devastating for any business, more so if the majority of your sales and leads come from your website. But it’s not the end of the world. You can always turn to search engine optimisation specialists. Who can provide a Google recovery service, helping to rescue your site and reinstate it’s rankings.

Type of Google Penalty: Algorithmic vs. Manual Penalty

There are two types of Google penalties: manual and algorithmic. A ‘manual’ penalty is more straightforward. You can see exactly what the issue is in Google’s Search Console, so you can fix the problem and submit your website for reconsideration.

The more menacing type of Google penalty is the ‘algorithmic’ penalty. It comes suddenly without warning or explanation. While there’s no way to determine with 100% certainty that your website has indeed been penalised.  There are tell-tale signs which indicate your website has been hit:

Sign #1: Sudden Drop in Your Organic Traffic

Did you notice a dramatic decrease in the number of organic visitors coming to your site? Check if Google released an algorithmic update at around the same time your traffic dropped off. If these two events coincide, it’s possible that you were affected by the update and need to re-optimise your website.

But don’t jump to conclusions. Perhaps the drop is attributable to your seasonal content decreasing in popularity. If most of your blogs is about air conditioning because you run an AC business. For example, you might see a natural drop in traffic during the colder months, simply because people are not looking for information about your products.

Sign #2: Sudden Drop in Rankings

Use tools such as SEO ranking checkers (like SEMrush) to analyze how your rankings have changed over time. Is there a big and sudden drop? Your site may have been penalised.

Sign #3: “Manual Action” Notification

Log in to Search Console to see if you have received any notifications. If so, take the appropriate action right away. Not sure what the action required means or don’t have the technical skill set required then it’s best to speak to a web developer or SEO expert.

Reasons google may impose manual actions: on websites that have unnatural inbound links, thin content, keyword stuffing.

Sign #4: Your Website is Missing from Google Search 

To test if this is the case, simply type in your exact domain name in the Google search bar (for example www.yourwebsite.com). Is your website gone? If it’s very new, perhaps Google hasn’t been able to index it yet. But if your website has been around for quite some time and is suddenly not showing up, then you may be dealing with a major penalty. Perhaps it was permanently removed, banned, or deindexed, which is the most serious penalty google can impose on a website.

How to fix a Google Penalty

The key to fixing a Google penalty is to understand why you were penalised in the first place and designing a recovery plan that addresses the issue.

This may involve replacing duplicate or thin content with high-quality and original text. Ensure that your website satisfies the search engine giant’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) guidelines.

It may also involve analysing and manually reviewing all domains that link to your website. Removing and disavowing any toxic links. This process is long and tedious because you have to communicate with different webmasters and ask them to remove the links. You also need to submit disavow.txt files using Google Webmaster tools. 

If you don’t have the technical search engine optimization skills to fix your penalty and are afraid that you might make the problem worse, then it’s best to leave this task to an expert Google recovery service provider.

Google Penalty Recover Specialist 

You can count on Angry Apple Media. We are proud of our success rate in fixing Google penalties and reinstating search rankings. Our objective is not just to resuscitate your penalised website but also to help it to thrive over the long haul.

Need assistance? We can help. Contact us today by completing our Free SEO Review form. One of our friendly team will be in touch shortly to discuss your road to SEO recovery. 

We will review your website and recommend the best Google penalty recovery strategies for your particular case.