Google is smart enough to detect spam, whether it’s been done around content or links. Though, Google algorithms consider links as the most important entity, they can smartly distinguish between genuine links and links that are stuffed for SEO reasons. Link spam may negatively impact your search rankings that can eventually tank your visitor traffic.
The article articulates how you can diagnose and fix search engine penalties you may be incurring on your website.
Brainpulse in in the business of SEO for over 20 years and being the consultant here I have seen people randomly find tricks to rank better. Frankly speaking, I don’t know if any such trick does exist. Way back, tons of content stuffed with keywords were prominently used to rank pages. But with the Google algorithms in place the method is now obsolete.
Interestingly, I still observe people for their quench to use tricks to come into top rankings. To get it done, they even don’t mind using manipulative link building, Private Blog Networks and redirecting expired domains etc.
Like I always do, I would recommend you to focus on providing best information and value content to bring tremendous brand recognition and authority for your website.
Google Penalties that hit the Spammers:
Back in 2012 when Google just released Penguin algorithm update, manual actions by Google were pretty frequent. Webmasters, on that duration, were flooded by emails requesting help removing a Google penalty. During that period most of the webmasters and site owners requested me to help them with pure spam penalties.
Being an SEO consultant, I assume it the worst thing if a website is imposed with pure spam penalty since they take quite more time to recover. In recent past, I witnessed a significant drop in the number of manual actions by Google. Google, though, penalized good number of websites for unnatural links over the last year. Those are the websites that heavily violated Google’s guidelines on link schemes.
Ways to identify if website is penalized:
Well, if dipping traffic and rankings are bothering you, check if Google penalty is behind that. Go to your Google search console account then click on Search Traffic → Manual Actions to find if any manual penalty is there.
Algorithmic updates are relatively difficult to diagnose. Explore Google Analytics to check organic traffic on your website during a period. Look for traffic drops that may be due to suspected algorithm updates.
Besides, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether an algorithmic update has affected your site. In some cases, seasonal dips can interfere with analysis. Or, it may be that perhaps a competitor has just started to outrank you. A drop in traffic is not always due to a penalty.
Standard procedure to fix the penalty:
Fixing the penalty needs good amount of work to be done and depends upon the type of penalty that is given. If Google is to be believed, webmasters can remove any kind of manual action but that doesn’t always result in improvement in rankings. That means even after removal of bad links and complete disavowing of unnatural links, it’s not likely that you are going to get your good rankings back. Recovery may take time and in many cases it will not be as good as it was before penalty.
I will recommend you to perform a full technical site audit to find rouge element and review the site in accordance to Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines.
Be Google Penalty Safe-
Google doesn’t consider every manipulation a violation. That means if you have built few spammy links and published a bit of copied content, you likely don’t have a penalty or manual action. Dive deeper into website to find its flaws. Go your competitor’s site to check the parameters where he is doing well than you. Notably, websites that deliver value to their visitors are ultimately the winners.
Play with rules-
Tricking Google may cost you heavily. Work on website quality and information it produces. Acquiring backlinks in mass is going to be seen as a link scheme by Google. Doorway pages won’t help you either.
Google has a very simple rule in place for observing penalty. The search engine giant goes through every indexed page of a website to determine quality. So, all you need to do is to produce quality information and offer something unique to your readers.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.