Remove a Google Penalty in 5 Steps
Anyone with an interest in search engine optimisation will be aware of Google’s crackdown on ‘black hat’ seo techniques over the past few years, in particular with the Panda and Penguin updates.
Luckily very few of our own sites have been negatively affected by the updates. However increasingly, we are taking on new clients that have been hit, so we are tasked to restore the website’s previously healthy rankings.
So how can you recover from a penalty? Here is a list of ways you can clean up your website and improve your rankings.
1) Identify the problem
Sign in to webmaster tools and find out whether you have definitely been given a penalty. If you have been given a site-wide penalty, it is going to be particularly difficult to recover and it could be advisable to start again with your seo.
If you have been given a partial penalty, there is a higher chance of recovery, but it is going to take a lot of time and effort to do so, so don’t expect to achieve number one rankings again anytime soon.
2) Clean up your on page optimisation
Is your website full of spammy sounding text? Is it littered with ‘dentist location’ in inappropriate places? Remove these keywords and anchor text immediately.
Is your content unique? Google loves unique fresh content, so make sure that your text isn’t scraped from somewhere else. Content shouldn’t be there just for Google, your website is designed to drive patients to your practice, so write as if you are speaking to a new patient in a clear, easy to understand manner.
3) Clean up your backlinks
There are many tools available to help you with this. In webmaster tools you should be able to see a list of other websites which are linking to your website. Copy this list into a spreadsheet and identify any which you think could be deemed as spam. For example, web directories and websites which have nothing to do with dentistry.
Next, visit each and every one of these websites and contact them to remove the link, ensure that you keep a note of the date that you first sent the request. Unfortunately spam websites are notoriously slow at removing bad links, so after your first request wait two weeks and then try again, remember to note down the date.
4) Diasvow
Hopefully, after your third attempt at contacting the webmasters with links to your site, the majority of them have been removed. If there are any outstanding, this is the time to use the disavow tool in webmaster tools. You should use this tool with caution as Google say that simply disavowing all of your bad links is not enough and they will not lift the penalty if this is what you do. This is where the spreadsheet documenting your hard work removing the backlinks comes into play.
5) Reconsideration Request
At this point, upload your spreadsheet documenting which links have been removed and when, in addition to which you have disavowed, to Google Drive and click the button for a reconsideration request. Google will then go through your website and judge whether they are happy to lift the penalty.
Do not be disheartened if they do not lift the penalty immediately, as the majority of the time they do not. In this case, you will need to start the process again and use a different tool such as open site explorer, to see if there are any links you have missed.
Once your penalty has been lifted, unfortunately it doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get your rankings back; it means that you have been given a clean slate and will need to build on your seo again, in a ‘white hat’ manner.
If you think that your website may have been affected by a Google penalty, give Dental Design a call and speak to a member of the SEO team who will be happy to help.
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