Fortunately, many of Google’s algorithms are real-time nowadays meaning it can (sometimes) be quicker to remove penalties if a site is dramatically improved. On the other hand, there are still cases where a site may not recover fully for even years after remedying the cause of the penalty.

Given the complexity and severity of some penalties, we highly recommend that you seek the help of an SEO company to help remove your penalty. Not only will they be able to effectively diagnose the penalty, but they will likely have seen one before (you should ask them if they have when enquiring!). This would suggest they have more experience in helping a site recover. Not to mention the time it takes to do so, as a business owner such time would be better spent on other things.

Whether it is penguin, panda or a manual one, you will want to get this in hand ASAP. Manual ones are often times easier to work with as the reason behind it is clear and you can submit a reconsideration request once you have fixed your site. Algorithmic ones however are not so simple. They can be tough to diagnose and even harder to fix. Still, hope is not lost and some sites have gone on to have huge SEO success even after receiving a Google penalty.

Patience is key with this. Also, remember to not take a similar approach as to what landed you the penalty in the first place. Any quick fixes or automated methods are unlikely to help here as this is likely what caused the issues in the first place. Careful what advice you listen to and only go with the most experienced and trusted SEO companies. High quality content, links and technical SEO is what is rewarded in the 2019 SERPs.

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Hackers are always looking for websites which they can exploit, either by injecting malware or by adding links to their other ‘money’ websites. Even worse, they might be trying to steal customers’ personal and payment information. Hacked websites are dangerous for visitors, which is why Google understandably try to prevent their users from visiting them by placing a penalty.

Secure your website to lessen their appeal to professional hackers. Image courtesy of Pixabay

Impact on hacked websites

Once your website has been flagged and penalised by Google, your traffic will instantly nosedive as your spiral down the search rankings. At times, your website could even be entirely excluded from search results. In one survey, 45% of respondents claimed that the level of traffic to their website never returned to normal even after resolving the issue. This means, even though you can get any hacked penalty removed by Google, things will never be the same – so spend time securing your website now.

Fixing a Google hacked penalty

Forget about Google for a second. The first thing you need to do is to regain control of your website. Contact your webhosting provider and domain registrar to secure control and ownership of the website first.

Once you’ve done so, quarantine the website to prevent anything and anyone else from being affected.

If necessary, engage an expert SEO agency to help. Otherwise, perform an audit of the site to find out the type and extent of the hack. Use anti-virus software to clean and sanitise the website. Fix the vulnerability which led to the hack.

Once you’ve completed the remedial process, you may file a reconsideration request with Google.

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Search engines became wise to their tricks and start to ignore such obvious attempts at manipulating them. However, old habits die hard, and some website owners still believe in the effectiveness of such tactics.

Keyword stuffing is just not worth the hassle in the long run. Don’t do it. Image courtesy of Pixabay

Not all hidden contents are bad though

Sometimes, websites have perfectly valid reasons to use hidden content. The most obvious reason is to hide content for paid or registered subscribers. Large publishers like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg uses this method.

Another good reason is for navigation. Many websites use drop down, animated or interactive menus to prevent their entire homepage from being dominated by menus. Large parts of the menu stay hidden until they are moused over. There are also websites which use JavaScript commands to delay complete page loads to speed up load time.

While the reasons above are all legitimate, they are sometimes still hit with a false positive.

Remedy for a hidden content penalty

Whether you’re a relic for the 90s or just unfairly flagged by Google, the remedy for a content penalty is not too difficult. Immediately remove all CSS styling or Javascript commands to hide content from your website.

Remove all hidden keywords that have been stuffed in your website. Review your content, and edit those with excessively high levels of keyword stuffing. This applies to title tags, meta description and alt text for images as well.

Once you’ve completed the steps above, file a Google reconsideration request and wait. Alternatively, out source your penalty recovery to an experienced SEO company who can help expedite the whole process.

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Nevertheless, once a website’s content becomes low-quality, thin, spammy or filled with scraped content, then Google drops the axe.

Spam is delicious, but spammy content will get you in all sorts of trouble with Google. Image courtesy of Bodo Akdeniz

Types of thin content that can get websites penalised

Google has a low tolerance for websites dominated by low-quality content such as:

• Scraped content – duplicate or copied content obtained using scrapers

• Spun content – content which are spun (synonymised) using software to appear original, but are unusually illegible

• Auto-generated content – content which are generated automatically using software. Can be spun, copied, or translated

• Thin content– just a couple lines of sentences wrapped around advertisements or promotional materials

• Doorway webpages – websites designed to funnel traffic to another website

If the issue is not severe, Google will just partially penalise the website. If it is severe, then the penalty will be site-wide.

How to fix Google content penalty

The remedy for a content penalty is quite simple. The first step is to remove all spun, scraped and auto-generated content, especially for affiliate pages. Disable any automatic content software or RSS content feed to prevent new low-quality content from being produced. You may need to use plagiarism detection software like Copyscape to detect duplicate content on your site.

If those pages are not important, remove them completely. Otherwise, replace the weak and thin content with fresh, unique and well-written content which do not contain grammatical errors. You must also absolutely remove funnel or doorway pages. Once you are satisfied with the remedial actions, submit a reconsideration request to Google. Or, remove your penalty by having a search engine optimisation service offered by countless agencies to do just this!

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When Google finally let the hammer fall, not only will the buyers face the consequences, but the sellers as well. The link sellers usually operate large private blog networks which will all get penalised.

Be wary of backlinks – they could come back to haunt you. Image courtesy of Pixabay

How do you fix backlinks which violate Google’s guidelines?

The first step is to download the list of offending links from Google Search Console. Get the webmasters for the referring links to remove your links from their website. If the webmaster does not comply, or if the list is just too long, disavow those links from the Console. Once you are cleaned up your link, submit a reconsideration request to Google. Make sure you get every single one of them before submitting a request. Otherwise, the request will just end up being rejected.

Can you fix the penalty caused by outbound links?

If you’ve been identified as a link seller, chances are, your domain will be blacklisted. However, if you are simply caught up in a link exchange web, then immediately add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the offending links. This will prevent crawlers from following the links, and thus, sanitise them in the eyes of Google. Or better yet, just remove the backlinks, since there isn’t likely a good reason for them to stay. Tried everything? If you have had no luck, an SEO company who specialises in penalty recovery could have a better chance.

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Adhere to Google webmaster’s guidelines, or run the risk of being penalised. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

What is a Google penalty?

A Google penalty is when your website is demoted in or banned from search rankings. Sometimes, your website completely disappears from search rankings, even when using highly specific keywords. It is one of the worst things that can happen to a website.

Your traffic flow would come to a screeching halt. If you have no alternative source of traffic, such as social media referrals or pay-per-click, your entire business could go under.

Why do websites get penalised by Google?

Google uses a proprietary algorithm to generate search rankings, which is influenced by reportedly 200 ranking signals. These signals are meant to be natural to ensure that they are able to deliver accurate and relevant search results to users.

However, some webmasters go overboard when trying to get ahead in the rankings by manipulating some of the signals, or by using black hat tactics on their website. There are also ignorant webmasters who inadvertently break Google’s rules. And then, there are the innocent website owners who fall prey to sabotage by competitors.

Fortunately, Google offers remedial solutions and measures to help website owners dig themselves out of the hole. In most cases, websites can get back on track in a few weeks or months. Some websites which are too far gone though, will end being blacklisted.

We’ll be looking at some of the common causes of Google penalties in the following pages. If you know you have received one and want it removed, you might want to skip straight to having an SEO agency take a look at your site and helping.

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