Top 12 Reasons Why a Website Is Not Recovering From Google Penalties

Google has recently launched their Penguin 2.0 update to take down the spam websites and links from their search engines. This update can dig down a whole site looking for each and every small corner of spam possibility. The impact was huge on many blogs, as literally hundreds of bloggers have started to find out alternatives to come out form the penalty. Google reported that only 2.3% of English-US queries are affected, which turned out to be a bit costly for many people. And if you are one among those people who are unable to understand why your website is not recovering from Google penalties, then this article is for you.

Top 12 Reasons Why a Website Is Not Recovering From Google Penalties

Ever since the Penguin 2.0 update, I found many people who stopped posting articles on their websites. I understand that you are recovering your website from penalties, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post any articles in your website/blog. I’ll come to that later, but start writing immediately without having any second thought. Today I’ll discuss about various aspects which are not allowing you to recover from previous and present Google penalties.

Before you get into the recovery, understand where exactly the problem lies. This is very important, as many of us don’t know from where we are getting the bad links to our site. Most of us are not bothered about looking into our inbound and outbound links except the traffic and page views. This should change, as each and every link pointing to your site is extremely important.

Let’s consider that your site has been penalized by Google Penguin or Unnatural links penalty (Sorry!). Now the first thing you do is to stop writing any further articles, and start search the whole internet to recover from the penalty. This is good if you do initially, but most of us spend weeks of our time reading the same stuff again and again. So gradually you abandon the site without writing any articles, and keep worrying about the traffic and page views.

Stop doing this, and start posting fresh content every day. This keeps your blog engaging with your readers, and shows Google that your site is still authoritative. Let’s hope that you follow this simple technique to keep your blog engaging here after. Now let’s get into the article in detail. So let’s check out the Top 12 things which are stopping your site to not recover from Google penalties.

1) Paid Content:

If you are smart blogger/webmaster, you always keep a track of your paid links in an excel sheet. Most of us don’t write this information, as the paid links are meant for a life time period or an year. Remember to always track your paid links, as removing them on time is very much needed after a penalty. It would be much better if you stop selling paid links in your blog for passing page rank and authority. Google finds this as the biggest sin in link building activities.

2) Manual Cleaning:

Most of us are lazy enough to remove the site spam links from Google manually. So we simple go to Google Disavow Tool and submit a list of unwanted domains and links found in our blog. Let me tell you one thing, the Google Disavow Tool doesn’t work that quickly to take down the spam links pointing to your website. It is estimated that Google Disavow Tool can take up to 4-12 months to clean up the submitted spam links.

So don’t waste your time with it initially, and start sending mails and requests to other bloggers/webmasters to remove the link asap! Also remove as remove links manually before submitting to Google Disavow Tool (applicable for only Google Unnatural links penalty)

3) Google Reconsideration Request:

Don’t ever submit to your site to Google Reconsideration Request page, without getting penalized by Google Unnatural Links Penalty Warning. I observed many people submitting their site to Google Reconsideration after the penguin update. This is extremely sensitive, as you are giving the Google web spam team unwanted information to look into your site for spam and unnatural links. So your site might have a chance of facing double penalty one after the other.

4) Blogrolls and Footer Links:

If your site is still sending or receiving site wide links from other blogs, do take them off immediately. Google hates site wide links which pass page rank and authority. If you want to still send some links to your friends and partners, then make them as “nofollow’.

Don’t Miss: Why You Shouldn’t Exchange Blogroll Links in 2013

5) Irrelevant Guest Blogging:

People who guest blog on other irrelevant blogs are asking for trouble from Google. Never ever guest blog on irrelevant blogs with low PR and domain authority. These links will do more harm than benefit in long run. So avoid guest blogging on irrelevant sites throughout your life. In fact you should stop writing guest blogs for a while after the penalty or Google slap. Take a break and enjoy a small vacation.

Don’t Miss: Google will Penalize Guest Blogging Websites

6) Spam Commenting:

Though there are many benefits of comment marketing, we still don’t use them in a smart way to benefit our site. I saw many people who literally spam with their comments on other blogs. They don’t care about the relevancy, authority and value from the blog which they are getting the link from. This is very important, as spamming on other comments might push you in black list on various platforms. People follow different approaches to spam the comments on blogs. Few of them are,

• Write multiple comments on same article.
• Try to engage a useless or unwanted conversation
• Commenting on sites for just back links.
• Insert spam links in their comment.
• Use automated software to leave comments on other sites
• Hire stupid people to comment on other sites, and many more.

You should stop doing this asap, as Google is seeing all your site links coming from other websites and forums. You should stop getting more nofollow links after a penalty, and focus more on producing amazing content with proper discipline.

7) Buying Links:

If you are buying links from low quality sites, you will never recover from a Google penalty. This could be worse if you are buying dofollow text links using Exact Match anchor text. This will literally ring the bell in Google’s eyes that something fishy is going down here. So avoid buying text links with exact Match Anchor text. In fact you can spend little money to get backlinks from high authority sites like Wikipedia, DMOZ and Yahoo directory.

8) Bad Neighborhood

If you are linking back to bad/dangerous sites, Google will never look into recovering your site again. I saw people who link back to spam forums and blogs for extra money and influence. If you are on among them, then Google is not gonna entertain you for much longer. We also forget to recheck our links, where the chances of linking back to restricted and penalized sites are much higher. So always take care of your outbound links, and make sure you are not linking to penalized sites.

9) Submissions:

Sometimes we are stupid enough to submit our sites to bad article directories for page rank and traffic. This can be extremely dangerous when your site same content for different article directories. Google will treat your content, URL and profile as spam, and stop recovering your site from penalty. So stop building unnatural links via article and blog directories.

10) No Social Engagement:

If you are not socially engaged with anyone, Google will consider your site as low authority in that niche. A blog with high social influence is always treated good by Google. Especially when you are engaging your readers on Google +, Facebook and Twitter. Be socially active with different accounts, and make some authority for your blog in that niche. This will make Google to come running into your site with positive signals.

11) Bad Content:

If you are not focusing on quality content, then Google will obviously be not interested in showing it people. The search engines are very smart nowadays. They know what is quality content, and how it can be helpful for their users. Don’t forget that we still have Panda Algorithm to take care of low quality content. Start producing quality content whenever you can, and make sure to connect with your readers on social media via comments, pings, shares and etc.

12) No High Quality Links:

If your blog is not getting high quality inbound links, then Google might not be interested to look back into it again. Start getting high quality natural links via different sources and activities. Your inbound links can be dofollow or nofollow, which is as equal as saying, Something is better than nothing.

If you start following all these above mentioned activities, I bet Google will surely look into your site as before. Don’t worry much about losing your traffic and page views, as nothing is permanent when you dependent on Google search engine. Also understand that Penguin 2.0 is much smarter than ever before, and can really screw up your whole website within fraction of seconds. You have to be very cautious about link building and white hat SEO while making reputation.

I hope this information will help you to recover from Google penalties asap! Keep smiling and one day Google will get tired of upsetting you again and again. Please feel free to ask your queries in the below comment section. 🙂