Google Penalty Recovery

Google Penguin penalties relate to link issues, and account for the great majority of penalties that affect e-commerce and lead generation websites. A website's link profile (the totality of links pointing to your domain) is an enormously important ranking factor in Google's algorithm. The Penguin algorithm update was initiated to identify low-quality, "unnatural" links. Many of these links were indeed created by SEOs intent on gaming the system, but others were created inadvertently by companies that were following — or thought they were following — link-building best practices at the time.

The process for Google Penguin penalty removal services starts with collecting and analyzing backlinks to isolate problem links from good ones. This work involves both science and art, as low-quality links are not always easy to identify. Telltale signs of a low-quality link include those from low page and/or domain authority websites, spammy link directories (i.e., directories that exist solely to generate links with no regard to user experience), site-wide links, paid links, links on Web pages with totally irrelevant content, links on spammy press release platforms, and links with over-optimized anchor text. While removing, or attempting to remove, bad links is important, not going overboard and removing good links is also important. Good links are hard to obtain for most companies, and will be hard to replace. Skill and experience are needed for the penalty recovery firm to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Once problem links have been identified, the host Webmaster must be identified and contacted with a request to remove or update the link. This step of the process involves a great deal of legwork, persistence, and patience. Google also offers a disavow tool to address bad links, but this CANNOT be used as a shortcut to avoid doing the hard work of reaching out to Webmasters to clean up links. Above all, Google wants to see effort.

The next step in the recovery process is to submit a reconsideration request to Google, advising it you have identified the problems, taken (documented) action to fix them, and initiated an action plan to prevent future occurrences. The reconsideration request should also explain why the problems occurred and express an apology.

Finally, the recovery team monitors traffic and rankings to look for improvement. The entire process can consume several months or longer, but with sustained and determined effort, penalties can be overcome.