Google Penalty
Website Banned By Google? SEO Smarter, Stronger, Longer
I'll be a Devil's Advocate here and tell you why getting a site banned by Google is a great SEO learning opportunity for multi-site owning Affiliate Marketers. For others, such as businesses with a single Life-Or-Death website or blog getting completely de-indexed by Google is nothing short of fatal: Your baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. If that happens, fix your site's problems (if you can), get on your knees and BEG for forgiveness at the Google Reinclusion Altar - and your livelihood may be given back to you. Maybe. Someday. Eventually. Never.
Cut Your Losses And Move On: Sometimes a new, clean domain may be your best strategy to rebuilding traffic and regaining lost profits. Even if you have a site that's not totally banned - and 'merely' under a Google penalty - there's a lost OPPORTUNITY COST that hurts you and your revenue stream twice over while waiting or hoping to get traffic again from Google. I wasted a year with a Google -50 Penalty before starting fresh with a new, and instantly profitable domain addressing the same niche.
Be Here, Now: De-indexing or Google Penalties happen in a split second. It may take you only hours - or days to realize it. DO NOTHING. CAUSE NO HARM. Spend your initial time assessing the depth and degree of your traffic loss before you take any action.
Enjoy The View: It's actually interesting to see where your remaining traffic comes from without Google 'overwhelming' and dominating your stat logs. Challenge yourself to envision and build a web empire, or business model, or traffic stream - that is steady and profitable without one iota of traffic from Goog's monopolistic grip. It's a noble and achievable goal - to survive the dependency you may have took for granted.
Lean into your Remaining Strengths: SO WHAT if Google dumped you? Your stat's CAME FROM / REFERRING SITES should soon be showing you much more clearly where your supplementary link-building efforts really did pay off. Revisit sites that drove intermittent traffic and figure out how to get them to drive more.
Refine and Improve existing blogs, Lenses, HubPages and Web Presences that already work. Build back links to those posts, articles, pages and profiles to keep them high on Google's radar - even if your own domain isn't listed anymore.
Thrive By Your Wits! Live lean and mean. This is no time for desperate Black-Hat, mega-backlink blasting on a soul-less Zombie who's already eaten your lunch. Dust the gray off your best White-Hat and move forward.
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Stop pining away for love lost and look to friends you do have. And that should start at Bing Webmaster Tools: Verify your site if you haven't, Review the site data if you have. These are your lifelines to free, organic search traffic at those #2 and #3 Search Engines - but also to all the PARTNER SITES who use Bing/Yahoo index data as well. That includes Search Aggregators like DogPile, WebCrawler and many, many others.
Perhaps most important of all, know that Bing and FACEBOOK partnered years ago. Don't underestimate the current - and future - implications of this alliance. This is a secret weapon that these two powerhouses wield discreetly - and may be more powerful in the internet's future than most realize.
Closer to home - Start spending A LOT more time with your website statistics. That means pouring over your StatCounter or G.Analytics or whatever you use to get a clear picture of what keywords are working for you NOW, what levels of traffic Bing/Yahoo/Ask/Etc is capable of sending you NOW. Look for traffic driving strength in all your tertiary site sources. That means Everything Else: From HubPages and Squidoo Lenses, Article Sites, Blog Networks, Directory referrals, Twitter, StumbleUpon, et. al.
Dump Google Back! If AdSense isn't your primary revenue model, remove it and STOP sending them profits if you can live without their nickel and dime earnings.
After studying your site's historical data: YANK Google Analytics and Google Webmaster code off your site pages so you CEASE to give them direct access to your site's metrics to continue to Reward or Punish you with.
Switch your search habits and don't look back. CHANGE your default web-browser search box to Bing or anyone else - and stop feeding the hand that bit you.
REBUILD from scratch. Say it and do it differently - and SMARTER - if you start a new domain targeting the same niche. In particular, be less aggressive with link building. Aim for fewer, higher-quality links initially - and let your keyword research and well-crafted on-page content attract organic search traffic more naturally.
Cut Your Losses And Move On: Sometimes a new, clean domain may be your best strategy to rebuilding traffic and regaining lost profits. Even if you have a site that's not totally banned - and 'merely' under a Google penalty - there's a lost OPPORTUNITY COST that hurts you and your revenue stream twice over while waiting or hoping to get traffic again from Google. I wasted a year with a Google -50 Penalty before starting fresh with a new, and instantly profitable domain addressing the same niche.
Be Here, Now: De-indexing or Google Penalties happen in a split second. It may take you only hours - or days to realize it. DO NOTHING. CAUSE NO HARM. Spend your initial time assessing the depth and degree of your traffic loss before you take any action.
Enjoy The View: It's actually interesting to see where your remaining traffic comes from without Google 'overwhelming' and dominating your stat logs. Challenge yourself to envision and build a web empire, or business model, or traffic stream - that is steady and profitable without one iota of traffic from Goog's monopolistic grip. It's a noble and achievable goal - to survive the dependency you may have took for granted.
Lean into your Remaining Strengths: SO WHAT if Google dumped you? Your stat's CAME FROM / REFERRING SITES should soon be showing you much more clearly where your supplementary link-building efforts really did pay off. Revisit sites that drove intermittent traffic and figure out how to get them to drive more.
Refine and Improve existing blogs, Lenses, HubPages and Web Presences that already work. Build back links to those posts, articles, pages and profiles to keep them high on Google's radar - even if your own domain isn't listed anymore.
Thrive By Your Wits! Live lean and mean. This is no time for desperate Black-Hat, mega-backlink blasting on a soul-less Zombie who's already eaten your lunch. Dust the gray off your best White-Hat and move forward.
------------
When Google Doesn't Love You Anymore
Stop pining away for love lost and look to friends you do have. And that should start at Bing Webmaster Tools: Verify your site if you haven't, Review the site data if you have. These are your lifelines to free, organic search traffic at those #2 and #3 Search Engines - but also to all the PARTNER SITES who use Bing/Yahoo index data as well. That includes Search Aggregators like DogPile, WebCrawler and many, many others.
Perhaps most important of all, know that Bing and FACEBOOK partnered years ago. Don't underestimate the current - and future - implications of this alliance. This is a secret weapon that these two powerhouses wield discreetly - and may be more powerful in the internet's future than most realize.
Closer to home - Start spending A LOT more time with your website statistics. That means pouring over your StatCounter or G.Analytics or whatever you use to get a clear picture of what keywords are working for you NOW, what levels of traffic Bing/Yahoo/Ask/Etc is capable of sending you NOW. Look for traffic driving strength in all your tertiary site sources. That means Everything Else: From HubPages and Squidoo Lenses, Article Sites, Blog Networks, Directory referrals, Twitter, StumbleUpon, et. al.
Dump Google Back! If AdSense isn't your primary revenue model, remove it and STOP sending them profits if you can live without their nickel and dime earnings.
After studying your site's historical data: YANK Google Analytics and Google Webmaster code off your site pages so you CEASE to give them direct access to your site's metrics to continue to Reward or Punish you with.
Switch your search habits and don't look back. CHANGE your default web-browser search box to Bing or anyone else - and stop feeding the hand that bit you.
REBUILD from scratch. Say it and do it differently - and SMARTER - if you start a new domain targeting the same niche. In particular, be less aggressive with link building. Aim for fewer, higher-quality links initially - and let your keyword research and well-crafted on-page content attract organic search traffic more naturally.
Google Hates My Website - Surviving Penalty
It happens. You may have a website that GOOGLE HATES for reasons that you might never understand, for something you did or didn't do that was completely unintentional. You may simply have a website that is waaaay too competitive for your niche or keywords - and you find the few hits you do get from Google are only on the most obscure long-tail phrases.
Below is a good example of a MINUS-50 penalty from Google. It's down to position #11 in my StatCounter referring sites where normally Goggle is the #1 traffic driver.
At Google Webmaster Tools, I see the Minus-50 Google penalty: basically the only keywords it shows are in the 40's or 50's -- indicating my keywords can't get above Page 4 or 5 of search results. So clearly this site about Apple Solid State Disk Drives is not banned. It just fell on the wrong side of some Google algorhthm that no amound of keywordfutzing, on-page SEO optimization, DE-optimization, or backlink building can seem to overcome.
So what if this happens to your site? Well, notice the 'No Referring Link' in position #1 in the top graphic. It's still a hefty amount of site traffic. And elsewhere there's strong-enough search traffic from Bing and Yahoo, Blog posting, Forum posts, Press Release, Hub/Lens, Social bookmarks, and RSS feed submissions to fill in the breech and still deliver enough eyeballs to make the site worthwhile.
If nothing else it shows that YOU DON'T NEED GOOGLE - and effective, broad-based link building across the internet is your best defense of the all-too-frequent fluctuations of Google's SERP trends and endless changes.
Maybe some day, Goog will let me out of the prison. Buy why wait and hope? I simply registered a new domain, built another site for the same niche - and Goog seems to like that one better. For the time being anyways...
Lesson: Don't put all your SEO/SEM eggs in one basket. Redouble and diversify your backlink building efforts to seek out traffic elsewhere. Goog ain't the only game in town.
Below is a good example of a MINUS-50 penalty from Google. It's down to position #11 in my StatCounter referring sites where normally Goggle is the #1 traffic driver.
At Google Webmaster Tools, I see the Minus-50 Google penalty: basically the only keywords it shows are in the 40's or 50's -- indicating my keywords can't get above Page 4 or 5 of search results. So clearly this site about Apple Solid State Disk Drives is not banned. It just fell on the wrong side of some Google algorhthm that no amound of keywordfutzing, on-page SEO optimization, DE-optimization, or backlink building can seem to overcome.
So what if this happens to your site? Well, notice the 'No Referring Link' in position #1 in the top graphic. It's still a hefty amount of site traffic. And elsewhere there's strong-enough search traffic from Bing and Yahoo, Blog posting, Forum posts, Press Release, Hub/Lens, Social bookmarks, and RSS feed submissions to fill in the breech and still deliver enough eyeballs to make the site worthwhile.
If nothing else it shows that YOU DON'T NEED GOOGLE - and effective, broad-based link building across the internet is your best defense of the all-too-frequent fluctuations of Google's SERP trends and endless changes.
Maybe some day, Goog will let me out of the prison. Buy why wait and hope? I simply registered a new domain, built another site for the same niche - and Goog seems to like that one better. For the time being anyways...
Lesson: Don't put all your SEO/SEM eggs in one basket. Redouble and diversify your backlink building efforts to seek out traffic elsewhere. Goog ain't the only game in town.
