Penalty Removal

"My traffic is plummeting, what's happening to my site!?"

A line we've heard far too often from incoming clients, this question is most easily answered by breaking down penalties into two categories: manual and algorithmic.

What are Manual Penalties?

Manual Penalties come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They occur when a client has, knowing or unknowingly, done something so grotesquely bad that a physical employee at Google reviewed your site and slapped a penalty on it. They can also be incurred from hacked sites or sneaky malware. These can be crushing for businesses and can involve them getting taken off of search engines entirely. However, don't fear, because all manual penalties are removable.

We see an abundance of these during major algorithm updates and they're certainly fixable, but it can require a large amount of documentation and work to correct the mistake. Some manual penalties can be fixed in a few hours where others can take months to get removed. If you've received a manual penalty, it's often not something you want to attempt to fix without the help of a highly experienced professional. We'll jump in, work directly with you and help remove the headache before it hemorrhages too much of your traffic.

What are Algorithmic Penalties?

Less severe than manual penalties, but oftentimes more confusing, algorithmic penalties are when Google's algorithm (not a human) assesses you with a penalty for an undesirable action. Unlike Manual Penalties, these involve 0 communication and can be very hard to identify and root out. Nearly all high-traffic websites will incur some type of algorithmic penalty over the years and many may not ever know that they had one. With several combined decades of experience, we have (too much) experience with these and can help you root it out.

If we suspect you have an algorithmic penalty, the best choice is often to start an SEO campaign and have us go through and apply Best Practices to the site.

Think you might have a penalty? Let us help you root it out! Click below or Contact Us to get started: