If you read our post on Tuesday July 8th and feel that your website may have been penalized by Google, doing nothing will not make the problem go away. Neither will simply disavowing any links in your Google Webmaster Control Panel. It takes work to get your business back in the SERPs and Google wants you to sweat to get it.
Although we do not provide placement remediation services and none of our clients we webmaster or have optimized have been hit by a penalty, I do have several AdWords clients that have had problems with their organic placement and have shared with me their pain and process.
I will share with you one client’s story and how he worked to fix the problem.
First, he had been hacked several times through WordPress bringing his site down. Although I am not privy to an SEO tactics he may have taken on the side, he did tell me he received notice from Google that his site had been penalized. In his case, it was over links. Google even gave him an example of the types of links that had caused the problem.
To remediate the issue, this person created a spreadsheet of all links and hired temporary staff. Then he went through every link record he could find in the Google control panel to review if the link should be allowed to stand or not. For those that were questionable in character, he contacted the webmaster of each site or tried to do so, on four occasions. Each activity date and time was documented in the spreadsheet. He then disavowed the link in the Google Webmaster control panel if he could not get a concrete response that promised to take down the link.
After nearly two full weeks of work, he then asked for a site review and attached his working spreadsheet (as a Google doc) to the resubmission request along with a note about what had happened and that he was not going to take these questionable actions again.
After three weeks Google responded and removed part of the site suspension and gave additional insight as to what else needed repair. He then worked the next set of links/problems in the same manner and after two weeks sent in his document and resubmission.
His site has now been fully recovered on Google. What nailed him were links of questionable nature. The key to his recovery was showing Google his work via a Google docs shared spreadsheet. I have had other business acquaintances state that they have disavowed links but have not gone through the trouble to communicate with Google and their sites have not recovered.
What is interesting to know from this positive recovery is that even when Google stated he had full recovery, there appears to be a filter of a set period of time that just has to expire before the site can pop back up on Google.com.
Although we do not perform Google remediation services you may need to promote your business on AdWords while you are trying to remediate your problem and we can certainly step in and help get your business generating leads again using Google AdWords pay per click services. Learn from those who have been less fortunate when it comes to getting penalized and run a “clean” site and don’t hire or practice “shady” visibility enhancing services.
