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Penalized by Google? Here’s How You Go About It?

February 11, 2014

If you are someone whose site has been penalized by Google or are suspecting yourself to have been a victim of such a circumstance, then be glad, you have come to the place where you can get a solution. There are three steps discussed below, which are usually employed by SEO companies India to help you restore the lost value of your site and get it back to its previous position.

Diagnose The Problem

2012 has been a tough year for webmasters as well as SEO companies as all the tactics that they had invested time and money in, were not working anymore. While some sites that had suffered the sudden strike from Google, have managed to gain back its usual place at the popular search engines; there are others who have failed to gain back their past glory.

Well, if you happen to be one of those then the first thing that you need to do is find out the evidence that has resulted in you believing that your site has suffered a rank penalty. For the purpose of analyzing your site you should be using Google Analytics. This is one of the important steps to recover from Google algorithm updates.

Next, you need to review your traffic over long span of time, ideally, you should be comparing it to the same span of time in the last year. Doing so will allow you to see if the drop in your traffic visit is usual or not. You never know, may be this time, in the previous year, was also a quiet period for your business. However, make sure that you check the traffic only from organic sources, to find out if there is a clear and specific decline in organic traffic.

Now, if you are sure that your site has suffered a Google penalty, you are required to find out which Google algorithm update is responsible for the situation. Unless you are aware of your fault, fixing it can be difficult.

webmaster-tool-notification

You are firstly required to check in Google Webmaster Tools. This is a must use tool because Google is the only place that genuinely advises you on improving your website and send notifications to you if there’s a problem. These tools can also be used to find out if your site is technically fit.

In Google Webmaster Tools, you should keep an eye on the alerts and warnings that appear on the dashboard. So, in case if you have got an unnatural link warning, you know the exact problem.

However, not all the time do you get notifications in Webmaster Tools. Under such circumstances, a free tool, called Penguin by Barracuda, comes handy. You need to log into your Google Analytics account using the tool, and find out the organic traffic of your site according to dates of updates by Google overlaid. In case you have been hit by a Google update, you will clearly be able to see which update caused the decline.

Resolve

Penguin Attack

Professional SEO companies India opine that if your issues have been caused by the Penguin update, no matter if you have received an unnatural link warning, you need to carefully assess your link profile. Some of the harmful backlinks may include: low-value directory links, site-wide links, links on low-quality and irrelevant websites and paid links.

Google-Penguin-Recovery

Backlinks are of various types; hence, you need to use quite a few link analysis in order to assess your link profile. Some of the most trusted ones are: Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, Link Detox and Open Site Explorer.

bad links

disavow links

Next, you need to export these tools into spreadsheets. The data-format will be distinct for each. So, you need to make a uniform column and data structure before you combine all the links into one spreadsheet. This way you can remove duplicates and have a good indication of your total profile of backlinks.

Panda Attack

panda-recovery-graph

If you find Panda to be the reason behind your fallen rank, then you need to evaluate the content across your website as well as others, fishing for duplicated content, keyword stuffing, pages poor on content, inferior quality content, keyword bolding, etc.

You need to make sure that your site does not have any duplicate content; i.e., no similar looking content. You need to note that a page called “ Flavours of Ice Cream” and “ Ice Cream Flavours” are likely to be treated as duplicate content. You also need to ensure that no other site on the internet copies your content, for this is considered plagiarism and is severely punished by Google. Copyscape is a tool that can be used to find out if your web content has been copied by others. Besides, each of your website-page needs to have at least 250 to 300 words.

Punished for Exact Match Domains

In case you are certain that it is EMD and not Panda update that is responsible for your falling ranks, it is time you focus on improving your brand identity.

What you need to do is create high quality backlinks that has got branded anchor text and engage others actively on social networks. Try to secure your brand names on as many networking sites and social profiles as possible, as well as industry-relevant forums and niche directories. Guest blogging is also a great way of building links. Lastly, you should also try producing quality infographics and content which can be used to advertise your brand all across the web-world.

The last resort and one of the steps to recover from Google algorithm updates when it comes to recovering from EMD issues is to re-brand your business using a new domain which cannot be considered to be exact-match keywords. This way you need to set up redirects from your original site and start promoting your new website and brand.

For instance, if your site puppies.com have been hit by an EMD update and its rank has not been restored at any cost, you can re-brand it by purchasing a new domain name like cutepuppies.com. Doing so can be costly, but it is the last way in which you restore your site’s rank in Google.

Please note: If you suspect that you have been hit by EMD update, it is better to double check the reason for the fall in rank is EMD update and not Panda. Many companies, in the past, had come up with new domains only to find out that it was actually the content was the culprit.

Review

Once you are done with all your problem-fixing attempts, give some time to Google to re-evaluate and re-crawl your website.

Over the next months you need to monitor your traffic, again comparing to the same time-span in the previous year in order to identify normal seasonal trends. You will see traffic increasing to your site if you have all the necessary changes efficiently. You should neither except to get back your ranks overnight nor reach the rank of the past, but your site should anyways, be getting back on its feet.

SEO companies India use these steps in dealing with Google algorithm updates. You too use the same and see the difference that these make in your site’s ranking.

Important Links:

For latest  updates, visit – Twitter Profile

For latest SEO Guidelines and updates, visit – SEO Blog

For Professional Digital Marketing Services, visit – www.indian-seo-company.com

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