Recovering From A Manual Penalty
If you have been hit with a manual penalty from Google it’s your lucky day! I know it may not feel like that when you see your traffic and rankings plummet but the alternative of dropping away without knowing why is a far greater dilemma. By getting a manual spam action, it allows you to quickly address the specific issues and then beg Google for forgiveness. Or as my dear old Dad would say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Unfortunately if your rankings drop from an algorithm change there is no clear path to reconciliation and usually it will take a lot longer to recover. If you have got the manual spam action it will look like this.
Here are the steps to get back on track.
Step 1. Disavow EVERYTHING!
– well at least every link from the time you started buying links. Even the good ones. Google’s Matt Cutts has said that this will show real remorse and contrition so they are more likely to absolve you from your sins quickly. Well he didn’t quite use those words but that was the gist.
Step 2. Submit a reconsideration request
– If you have completed step 1 properly you should hear back fairly quickly. Hopefully you get a message like this
If you have not disavowed properly Google will issue you a notice after every reconsideration request saying you missed a few links and to try again. This can go on for weeks so it is best to just disavow enmasse.
Step 3. Do some real SEO
– chances are you have neglected your site when it comes to real SEO. Creating great content, sharing it and having a well functioning site are the things you need to be focussed on. Forget about the backlinks.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
