Dealing with a Google penalty is every website owner‘s nightmare. One day, you wake up and suddenly your traffic from Google has plummeted. Your rankings are gone, and pages removed from search results completely.
As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience, I‘ve faced Google penalties several times. And recovered successfully too.
In this detailed guide, I‘ll share my proven techniques to help you get your WordPress site reinstated in Google search.
Here‘s what we‘ll cover:
- What is a Google search penalty and its impacts
- Detecting if your site is penalized
- Step-by-step process to recover from penalties
- Best practices to prevent penalties in the future
Let‘s get started!
Contents
What Exactly is a Google Search Penalty?
In simple terms, a Google penalty refers to punishments applied to websites violating Google‘s quality guidelines.
If your site engages in practices like keyword stuffing, cloaking, paid links, etc., then Google can penalize your website in two ways:
Manual Actions
These are actual penalties directly conveyed to you by Google through Search Console. The notification will tell you the specific guideline violated, such as:
- Unnatural links
- User-generated spam
- Cloaked redirects
- Scraped content
- etc.
Manual actions are assessed by Google‘s trained evaluators based on the site‘s practices.
Algorithmic Penalties
When Google rolls out an algorithm update targeting issues like:
- Thin content
- Slow page speed
- Hidden text/links
- etc
Sites not following the updated quality guidelines get hit indirectly.
You won‘t get any notification, but will see a drop in Google traffic and rankings. Identifying these types of penalties requires analyzing your analytics data.
According to a Statista survey, 25% of websites have experienced Google penalties at least once. The impacts of these penalties can be devastating:
- 68% drop in organic traffic on average after a penalty.
- Loss of 50% or more in revenue in many cases.
- Removal from search results completely for serious violations.
Hence, it‘s crucial to be aware of Google‘s guidelines. Let‘s look at how to detect if your WordPress site is actually penalized.
How to Check if Your Site is Penalized
Follow these easy methods to determine whether your WordPress site is facing a Google penalty:
1. Check Google Search Console for Manual Actions
Log in to Google Search Console and go to Security & Manual Actions > Manual Actions.
This section clearly lists any manual penalties imposed by Google reviewers for guideline violations.
Some common manual penalties include:
- Unnatural links
- Hidden/cloaked content
- User-generated spam
- Thin or copied content
- etc
If you see a manual action listed here, then your site is definitely facing a Google penalty.
2. Look for Traffic Drops in Google Analytics
Open your Google Analytics account, and check for any unnatural drops in organic search traffic.
Compare current numbers to a previous period when traffic levels were normal.
A sudden decline in organic traffic without any site changes likely indicates an algorithmic penalty. Google has lowered your rankings or delisted pages without notifying you.
I recommend comparing at least 6 months of traffic data to detect any algorithm penalties.
3. Check Keyword Rankings Using Tools
Use a rank tracking tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to see if your site has lost rankings for important keywords.
A noticeable drop in rankings for head, mid, and long-tail keywords indicates a penalty. Google has reduced how prominently your site appears for those search terms.
This method also uncovers algorithmic penalties that don‘t have manual actions.
4. Search for Your Site Directly on Google
Do a simple site search on Google to check if your pages are still indexed:
site:yourdomain.com
If very few or no pages show up in results, your site may be completely delisted due to a serious penalty.
You can also search for a unique sentence from your old content. If you can‘t find those pages anymore, specific pages likely got removed from Google‘s index.
5. Review Your Site‘s Quality for Any Suspicious Issues
Google hands penalties to sites violating its quality guidelines. Audit your overall website for any suspicious issues:
| Site Area | Common Issues Causing Penalties |
|---|---|
| Content | Thin content, duplicate content, scraped content, over-optimization with keywords (stuffing, hidden text, etc.) |
| Backlinks | Unnatural links, paid links, suspicious linking patterns |
| Technical | Site speed issues, crawl errors, broken pages, sneaky redirects, cloaking, etc. |
| Security | Malware, hacked site, etc |
If any such problems exist, that‘s likely the reason for your penalty. Time to fix it!
How to Recover Your Site from a Google Penalty
Once confirmed, here are the proven techniques I‘ve used to recover penalized WordPress websites successfully:
1. Perform an In-depth SEO Audit
Conduct a complete technical and onpage SEO audit using a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
This helps uncover specific problems causing the penalty, for example:
- Onpage SEO issues like thin content, over-optimization, etc.
- Technical problems like site speed, security, crawl errors.
- Unnatural link building patterns.
- Content scraping, duplication.
- Keyword cannibalization or stuffing.
Document all the errors found. This will help you prioritize what to fix first when requesting reconsideration.
2. Disavow or Clean Backlink Profile
Unnatural backlinks cause many manual penalties. If your site has been building paid links, comment spam, etc. then a link penalty is likely.
Here‘s how I‘d recommend cleaning it up:
-
Disavow Unnatural Links via Google Disavow Links tool. Provide a list of spammy domains you want disavowed.
-
Remove Bad Links by directly contacting websites and requesting deletion. Most will be happy to remove paid or irrelevant links.
-
Fix Link Patterns like pages having only outbound links. Make internal links appear more natural.
Cleaning up backlink issues removes the root cause for several penalties.
3. Improve Content Quality
According to my experience, poor content quality is another common reason for penalties.
Audit your posts and pages for optimization issues:
- Rewrite or remove thin, duplicate, or auto-generated content. I‘ve seen sites penalized for having thousands of thin pages.
- Delete outright copied or scraped content. Google can detect plagiarism.
- Ensure you have considerable original analysis and insights. Fluffy content with no substance gets penalized.
- Add more multimedia like images, infographics, videos, etc. to demonstrate expertise.
- Fix keyword stuffing by replacing terms with synonyms and related phrases. Vary your writing.
I‘d recommend removing or merging pages with little unique value, and improving the quality of top pages. This can help recover from thin content penalties.
4. Fix Technical SEO Issues
Several technical problems can also lead to manual or algorithmic penalties, based on my experience.
Audit your WordPress site‘s technical SEO elements:
- Improve site speed performance. Google recommends keeping pages under 2 seconds load time on mobile.
- Check Search Console for crawl errors and fix anything blocking Googlebot access.
- Ensure site security by installing a firewall, conducting malware scans, updating software, etc.
- Make your site mobile-friendly. Google has been penalizing non-responsive websites in the last few years.
- Fix exact duplicate title tags, meta descriptions, H1s which appear manipulative.
- Check for proper implementation of structured data markup. Invalid schema can get your pages excluded.
- Remove sneaky redirects, cloaking or anything else that tricks users.
Fixing technical problems reveals the engineering health of your website. This can help reconsideration requests.
5. Research Google Algorithm Updates
When hit with an unexplained ranking drop or traffic decline, I research recent Google algorithm updates thoroughly.
- Look for updates specific to your niche – health, finance, real estate, etc.
- Follow experts like Moz, SearchEngineJournal, SearchEngineLand for analysis of updates.
- Check the specifics of each update and compare them to issues you found in your audit.
Understanding Google updates gives insight into algorithmic penalties without manual actions. You‘ll know what guidelines changed and what steps to take.
Over the years, keeping up with Google updates has helped me proactively optimize sites and avoid penalties.
6. Submit a Polite Reconsideration Request
The final step is to submit a reconsideration request to Google asking them to review the penalty.
For manual penalties, file the request via Google Search Console:
In your request, be sure to:
- Be polite and respectful in your tone to reviewers. Hostility can hurt your cause.
- State you fully understand the specific guideline you violated, and link to Google‘s documentation around it.
- Explain thoroughly the steps you‘ve taken to correct the issue completely. Provide screenshots where applicable.
- Assure the issue won‘t repeat in the future, and you will adhere to Google‘s guidelines. The site is made for users, not just rankings.
- Request a reconsideration of your penalty and reinclusion in search results.
For algorithmic penalties without manual actions, you can still submit a request via Google webmaster forums or reconsideration form.
Note – it usually takes 4-6 weeks for Google to respond to reconsideration requests. Be patient and keep improving your site.
I hope this step-by-step guide helps you recover your WordPress website from Google penalties, whether algorithmic or manual. Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions!
