Ranking at the top results of search engines is every blog, store, or website’s aim. Yet, not all strugglers get benefits from it. Many aspects count to rank a keyword at the top. At the same time, during this process, many domains get Google penalties. This can be bad news for any online business. To fix it, the process is a bit technical but curable.
Impact of Google Penalties
A penalty has numerous impacts, and a website has to bear its consequences. For instance, here are the top 3 effects:
- Drastic Drop in Organic Traffic
A significant decline in organic traffic is one of the most immediate and noticeable impacts of a Google penalty. Search engines are the lifeblood of online visibility, and a penalty can effectively bury your website pages deep in search results.
Ultimately, the drop translates to fewer visitors, less engagement, and decreased revenue.
- Loss of Search Engine Rankings
A Google penalty can result in your website losing its rankings for specific keywords or, in severe cases, being de-indexed entirely. Losing your position on the first page of search results can be catastrophic for any business relying online.
A decrease in ranking correlates with a loss in organic click-through rates (CTR), further diminishing your site’s reach and conversion potential.
- Damage to Online Reputation & Credibility
A less tangible but equally concerning impact of a penalty is the damage done to your online reputation. Users often correlate a high search engine ranking with credibility and trustworthiness.
However, falling off the first page or disappearing from search results altogether can create a perception that your website could be more trustworthy.
This could have even long-term implications, such as a decline in brand equity & customer loyalty. At the same time, it takes so much time and effort to rebuild.
How to detect and remove Google penalties?
To check for Google penalties takes a lot of work. There is no such thing as breaking the news that there are Google penalties on my site. In fact, many indicators can tell us the root cause of the decline in traffic or sales. Some of them are mentioned below:
- Google Core Updates
Within a specific time, Google launches core updates for search engines. The goal is to provide better results to searchers using different algorithms such as E-E-A-T. Inside them, the mini-updates disrupt the running websites.
For instance, a website is gaining traffic of 1.5k/day. Suddenly, it drops to 550/day. It shows that the updates hit the website. It can be due to poor User Experience or Slow Load Speed.
Meanwhile, the site owner thinks my site got a penalty from Google, which needs to be corrected. The actual reason is their competitors are fulfilling the factors of ranking, which you may need to look into.
In such cases, gaining back those positions will be easy when the website has no longer issues.
- Check Spam Core
This is a clear indicator to identify a Google Penalty. Anyone can check the domain’s spam score from various online tools. It shows the credibility of the domain based on its referring do-follow backlinks.
The ideal way to check spam score is as follows:
- Open any reputable tool.
- Add the exact domain in it.
- Submit it and see the spam score (SS).
- Search Console Errors
In the case of a manual penalty, Google will usually provide details about the violation via the Google Search Console since everyone cannot access paid tools.
So, another way to analyze the site metrics is using Search Console. Whenever a website issues due to penalties or updates, it will show up on the console.
Further, the analyzer can utilize tools like web vitals to identify the load time, page layout after the initial load, and other technical stuff.
- Fixing As Per Updates
Once the issues are analyzed, and you’ve done all the cures. If still, you’re not getting traffic, it is a sign that you may have a penalty. The actual things start from here when you have to fix it again.
The first step is identifying the type of penalty. Google issues both algorithmic and manual penalties, each requiring a different resolution approach.
For algorithmic penalties, which often result from updates like Penguin or Panda. Whether it’s unnatural links or keyword stuffing, immediately correct these violations.
- Disavow Bad Links
These links are toxic or spammy backlinks. These are commonly coming from low-quality or irrelevant websites to your site. Also, it can negatively impact your website’s search engine ranking.
You can use the Google Search Console’s disavow tool to mitigate this harm. It will inform Google that you’d like these links removed as referring backlinks to your site.
Essentially, you’re asking Google not to count these bad links when they evaluate your website’s authority and relevance. Disavowing these damaging links can improve your site’s SEO health and safeguard your online presence.
Hire Expert SEO Services Providers
Going through all of the above steps is easy. But it can take up to months to get the actual results. This means the invisible time can’t be gained again. So, to recover from google penalties we recommend you hire a Digital Marketing Agency like Detral.
Our expert SEO team manages everything from scratch to the top. Whether on-page optimization or off-page tasks, we perform all professionally and implement the latest strategies.
