Getting a Google penalty can be one of the most frustrating and confusing challenges for many webmasters today. It is hard to see a website you have put so much time into, and many times either fully or at least partially supports your family, get penalized in the rankings. I would like to talk to you about our recent experience with getting one of these penalties, and what I did to start to turn things around.
Let me first give you a little background to my career. I have been in the SEO industry for just over 4 ½ years. I worked at a large agency for the majority of this time. Just in the last 7 months I switched over to doing in-house corporate SEO for one company. We are an enterprise level solution for survey software. Needless to say, it is a very competitive industry. It just so happens the penalty that was given by Google happened to be an affiliate site to this domain.
When I first got started at this new company, their rankings were horrible. The last webmaster didn’t believe in link building, thus the website didn’t rank for a wide range of important phrases. Just weeks after I got hired, the website started to generate significantly more traffic. Just a few weeks ago, the rankings completely tanked for an important affiliate site. The problem came when we became too dependent on automated link building networks. Build My Rank is definitely the best network I have ever worked with in my career. Rather than looking for links with featured guest posts, link exchanges, infographics, and partnerships we took the easy way out. There is no question this was one of the reasons the website was penalized. However, it wasn’t the main reason. The real kicker came when we tried to use a service called SEOLinkMonster. It was actually partially our fault. Rather than setting up a spun article to be distributed, we just sent out static content. Their service passed this article out to a wide range of sites. Google noticed that all of our recent links had been generated by these questionable link-building services. This triggered an algorithmic penalty to be added to the domain.
It has been 3 weeks since the penalty was placed on the website. It looks like the rankings are starting to come back. Right after we noticed the drop in rankings, I deleted as many of the junk links as possible. I feel this is a reason Google is starting to give us placement back on the first page. The other thing that is important to do is file a reconsideration request in Google Webmaster Tools. This is a platform where you can tell Google exactly what happened. Don’t get your hopes up for a quick response back from the search engine. It usually takes at least 2 weeks to hear anything.
The main thing I want to advise is that you don’t become too dependent on 1 network or form of link building. It takes time and effort, but be sure to obtain links the natural way as much as possible. It is much easier to do quality link building so you never have to deal with a Google penalty.
10 comments
Aasma says:
Apr 20, 2012
Hi Jon,
Congrats, you’re getting your top ranking back. Though I have heard from lot of people that once you get banned it’s almost impossible to lift that ban.
Jon Wick says:
Apr 30, 2012
Aasma, we definitely aren’t banned from Google. There has been a penalty placed on the domain. The rankings definitely aren’t as good as they used to be. Hopefully, we can get things fixed soon.
Scott says:
Apr 22, 2012
I cannot stress enough how important it is to be genuine with Google. I absolutely use no backlink or SEO techniques that involve automation, software or bots. Under no circumstances do I use black hat techniques that will defame my quality content or give any impression that I am not playing by the rules. Google is smarter than we think.
Anna says:
Apr 22, 2012
I think that this new filtering system for over-optimized sites is really useful. Don’t misunderstand me, I do the SEO stuff, too. But in the last few years, there have appeared a lot for junk sites made only for SEO reason. Trashy content with high rankings. And this hasn’t been a good way I think.
Andrea says:
Apr 23, 2012
That’s why the SEO methods are no longer available. The search engine algorithms are changing, the online marketing strategies should be updated as well.
Ray says:
Apr 25, 2012
Seems like Google has been making a lot of changes or updates lately. At least more frequently than they did years ago. It is almost getting to the point where you don’t even know what kind of seo tactics Google will decide to hit next.
Lesleyanneyp says:
Apr 26, 2012
Google becomes more and more unpredictable when it comes to SEO. Being penalized by Google is the last thing that webmasters would like to experience, thanks for sharing this post.
Wade Balsdon says:
Apr 28, 2012
These posts always concern me as I so do not want to be penalized. Have you heard about IMA automator and what is your take on it?
aarbeez says:
May 17, 2012
what is this IMA automator ?
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