Have your pages plummeted down the rankings?
A Drop In SEO Traffic
The chances are that you’ve received a Google Penalty. There are a number of reasons, but generally, Google does not like the way you are trying to increase your rankings or they think that your site delivers a poor user experience.
Google penalties are hugely damaging to your search traffic and your business as a whole. The key is to act quickly and that is where our penalty removal services come in.
We will recover you from any penalties and get you out of danger. We will also teach you how to avoid these situations.
The Impact of Penalties
A penalty can be applied to a single page, multiple pages or even across an entire site.
This will mean a significant drop down the rankings for multiple keywords or in the most drastic cases, complete removal from the search results.
Following a Google penalty, some businesses have even taken the extreme step of changing their entire digital presence. With our expertise and penalty advice, there is no need to panic.
Through analysis, we will determine the cause of the penalty and build a long-term strategy to repair any damage done.
Why have you been penalised?
There are two types of penalties – manual and algorithmic. A manual penalty is applied when the Google web spam team review your website and decide that it does not meet their standards. These penalties can be applied at any time and you will be notified via Google Search Console.
An algorithmic penalty is applied automatically when your website triggers something in Google’s search algorithm that violates the webmaster guidelines. You won’t be notified of an algorithmic penalty, so you need to keep your eyes open.
We can constantly monitor your keyword rankings and site traffic so we can instantly react if need be.
Google is always checking your website
Penguin & Panda Penalties
Google’s algorithmic penalties never stop looking for offenders. The Panda update was designed to stop sites with technical issues, poor or thin content from ranking. Sites with original, high quality and fresh content are rewarded.
Penguin prevents sites with suspect back-links from ranking. So if your site has paid for, low quality or irrelevant links, Google is unlikely to promote your site up the rankings.
It is easy to upset Google if you don't know their rules. That is why we offer training courses in the correct way to do things.
Detailed diagnosis of Google penalties
Penalty Recovery Service
We look at your SEO from every conceivable angle to uncover the problem. We use a number of specialised tools to dig deep and investigate where your website is breaking the guidelines.
Your analytics will help us uncover when the penalty was applied and our full 250 point SEO audit will diagnose exactly what caused it.
When we have identified if the penalty is just on a single page or site-wide, we create a bespoke strategy to make sure the penalty is removed quickly.
Don't scrimp on SEO penalty recovery
Don't Be Tempted
When you are in a penalty, losing traffic, losing revenue and in a state of panic - it can be easy to select the cheapest Google recovery agency. Don't do it...
If you hire a cheap agency to save money, it will end up costing you much more later on. Pay a bit more and chose a consultant that you trust to deliver.
Get your SEO rankings & traffic back
Google Recovery Success
A Google penalty is bad for your rankings and bad for your reputation.
We have a 100% track record in helping businesses recover quickly and effectively.
Our processes are proven and the results speak for themselves.
Every client that we have helped has successfully returned to full health.
Trusted By Legal Professionals
Google Penalty Consultant
You can depend on our consultants to recover your website, or a clients' website, from a Google penalty.
Our CEO, David Reid, is trusted by lawyers and courts to act as SEO expert witness in Google penalty disputes.
David advises lawyers on Google manual and algorithmic penalties, and successfully defends or pursues £1 million plus legal cases.
Contact us now so he can help to quickly recover your site.
If you want to know the ins and outs of Google, then you need to speak to David. He astounded me with his knowledge on Google Penalties and gave me a master-class on the areas companies need to steer clear of to avoid dropping down the search rankings.
Gerry Brennan, Adviser at The Federation of Small Businesses
Has my site been penalized by Google?
Google Penalty Checker
Sometimes it is easy to tell if you are already in a Google penalty. Your traffic will have dramatically dropped off, or you may have received a warning in Google Search Console.
But what if your traffic has only slightly dipped or none of your SEO activities are producing improvements - you could be in a penalty!
Complete our consultation form and one of our Google consultants will check for you now.
If we discover that you have been penalised, we will give you a free consultation to discuss the next steps.
How many google penalties are there?
Google Manual Penalties
When it comes to Google manual actions (aka Google penalties), many website owners do not know they exist until it is too late.
Google is constantly monitoring the web for websites which violate their webmaster guidelines. They are reputed to have 1,000s of employees in their webspam team. When a site if flagged up, a member of the webspam team will review the website before manually applying a penalty, hence the term "Google manual action".
Our consultants have expert knowledge on every manual action, meaning we can get your website back up the rankings quicker.
Thin Content With Little Or No Added Value
This is when Google has decided that your website contains low-quality pages or pages with very little quality content.
Typically, the pages may be made from automatically generated content, thin affiliate material, content which has been scraped from other websites, or what Google consider doorway pages.
Hacked Site
When Google detects a security issue with your website, they will notify you via Google Search Console and also display a warning message in the search results. This will discourage people from visiting your site.
In our experience, WordPress, Joomla & Drupal sites tend to be hacked more than any other CMS.
Unnatural Links To Your Site
Links pointing to your website can be out-with your control - which makes this penalty all the more worrying. For some website owners, they may choose to build links which Google perceive as deceptive or manipulative.
Likewise, if you participate in link exchange schemes or pay for links, this is a clear violation of Google's webmaster guidelines.
Unnatural Links From Your Site
Historically, Google would only penalise websites which had manipulative links pointing to the site. Now, Google will also penalise websites which are facilitating deceptive links directed at other sites.
If you are being paid to include links on your website, even as advertorials, then you may be at risk of a manual action.
Cloaking And/Or Sneaky Redirects
This penalty can occur accidentally or as a result or your own actions. When Google detects that your website is displaying one version of content to their search bots and a different version to users, it will result in a penalty.
Owners of subscription or paywall based websites should be particularly careful not to accidentally be seen as cloaking content.
Pure Spam
If Google notices areas on your website which they deem spammy, then you will incur a Pure Spam action. They look for automated content, scraped content from 3rd party sites and multiple violations of their quality guidelines.
All website owners need to make themselves aware of the latest Google Webmaster Guidelines so that they do not inadvetantly violate them.
Spammy Structured Markup
In this case, Google has noted that the structured data markup on your website violates their data guidelines.
Common violations include: including structured data which is irrelevant, inserting markup into content which is invisible to visitors or attempting to abuse structured data fields.
It is paramount that your web developer tests all structured data on your website for compliance with Google.
Sneaky Mobile Redirects
As Google focus on mobile experiences for users, this is an important violation to be wary of. If your site redirects mobile users to content that Google cannot view, then you are at risk.
Google does not appreciate the following situations: inserting code that redirects mobile viewers only, adding code to display ads or display monetised content which results in mobile users being redirected elsewhere, and finally, code added to redirect mobile users to malicious websites.
Cloaked Images / Image Mismatch
This is another variation of the cloaking penalty. In essence, Google bots are shown different images of what is presented to humans.
A common cloaking technique is to show obscured images by overlaying another image on top and showing one to the user, and one to Google. For mismatched images, this occurs when a thumbnail depicts one image and the full-size image is totally different.
User-generated Spam
One of the early techniques used to create back-links to websites and then later abused through commercialisation or monetisation techniques. User-generated spam is usually found in user profiles, forums, and blog comments.
Typical examples include: creating user profiles named "5 star holidays" which links to another website - this is not logical, creating posts that are similar to advertisements or are off-topic.
Hidden Text And/Or Keyword Stuffing
This is one of the "old school" techniques which unethical SEO's performed many years ago. Unfortunately, some modern-day marketers still adopt these techniques on websites.
Continually repeating keywords on web pages will be seen as keyword stuffing. When keywords are used out of context in a blatant attempt to manipulate search rankings, Google will look unfavourably on this.
Hiding keywords off-screen or behind images by using CSS, or placing white text on white backgrounds is also frowned upon.
Spammy Free Host
Google has detected that many websites hosted on free hosting providers are used by spammers and unethical marketers.
Historically, these type of people have created websites on free hosting servers to create back-links or to host malware sites.
If Google observes that a particular host is facilitating web-pages or websites that are considered spam, then they have been known to penalise the hosting provider.
This will affect every website on that free host.
Job Posting
This is not listed on the official list of Google Manual Actions yet. However, our consultants have noticed a warning message appear stating that it may result in a manual action.
Job posting on Google search result pages (SERPs) directly through Google is a relatively new feature. If you are a recruitment agency, then we recommend that you adhere to the guidelines below to minimise the risk of a penalty.
What is the Google Panda penalty?
Google Panda Penalty
Google Panda penalty was introduced to combat low-quality websites and sites which offer a poor user experience.
- The first algorithmic penalty released in February 2011
- It targets low-quality websites or thin websites
- Frowns upon websites that simply scrape (plagiarises) content from other websites
- It is against sites which contain large amounts of advertising, affiliate content and monetization
- Targets websites with quality issues, checking elements such as speed, keyword stuffing etc.
- Looks at all site pages and considers the overall quality
What is the Google Penguin penalty?
Google Penguin Penalty
Google penguin primarily exists to stop websites from ranking highly as a result of using spammy link-building techniques.
- It is an algorithmic penalty, first released in April 2012
- Penguin targets websites with spammy back-links
- Prior to September 2016, Google would penalise a website if it violated the webmaster rules
- When you were in a penalty, you had to clean up the back-links and then wait for the next update to occur
- The algorithm was often updated 6 - 12 months apart
- Since September 2016, spammy links are now devalued
- Google now check back-links in real time
- Only high quality and authoritative back-links count
What is a Google Penalty in SEO?
Google Penalty Removal FAQs
Google Hummingbird
Launched in August 2013 and aims to return results based on “searcher intent” to answer the questions searchers are typing.
Google Pigeon
Launched in July 2014 and looks at local searches and aims to return better results depending on the searcher's location (including Google Map searches).
Google Mobilegeddon
Launched in April 2015 and ranks websites which are mobile friendly higher in mobile search results than those which are not.
Google Rankbrain
Launched in October 2015, Google uses machine learning to understand the meaning behind search phrases and aims to serve the best results. You can read more on Google Rankbrain here.
Google Possum
Launched in July / September 2016 - this update looked to provide better results for a business closer to where the searcher was located.
Google Fred
Launched in March 2017, this was unofficially named Fred by the SEO community and targets thin website with affiliate links or advert centred content. Includes low-quality blogs sites for the sole purpose of generating ad revenue.
It depends on the type of manual penalty and severity.
Once the penalty has been cleansed, a reconsideration request is sent to Google to ask a member of the webspam team to review and reinclude your website. This part of the process can take 7 - 21 days alone.
Our consultants have experience of recovering "unnatural links" penalties which affected the entire website in 3 weeks.
Once recovered, traffic continued to grow incrementally. We worked with the client for the next 3 years to further increase their traffic.
We work with all types of clients
Client Testimonials
We can't thank you enough. You got us back when others failed. Our business was severely suffering when our website got hit with a Panda penalty. I guess we hadn't properly understood what was required from an SEO point of view, and we didn't even know about Google webmaster guidelines.
Director of Travel Agent
"You get what you pay for" was true in our case. We hired three freelance marketers to look after our SEO & PPC. When we didn't get the results we were promised, we asked two other agencies to improve our campaigns, they also failed. It wasn't until we later spoke with David that we learned we were in a Google penalty!
Co-founder of Construction Company
When we inadvertently put one of our clients into a Google penalty, we reached out to David and asked for his help. He immediately sprung into action, identified the penalty and recovered our clients' site for us. We learned a hard lesson, but if we ever needed his help again, we would call him straight away.
Owner of Communications Agency
START RECOVERING YOUR SITE TODAY
Free Penalty Consultation
For a free consultation and/or Google penalty check, please send your details to info@yewbiz.com. We will perform a check on your website as soon as we receive the URL, then contact you straight back.
Please include your name and the URL of the penalised website in the email.