Smart Traffic SEO Tip #29 – Are You Sure it is a Google Penalty?
Worried that your traffic and rankings have suddenly changed negatively? Do you think that Google has penalised your site?
The most obvious sign of Google penalty is the sudden negative change of rankings and a drop in visitors. Remember though that rankings do fluctuate every now and then. However, if it’s continuously decreasing after a week or so then maybe it’s time to consider looking for a penalty.
First you can check if you’ve got duplicate content issues. Google wants consider only one version of page and try and filter out the duplicates. Too bad if the one Google considers as the relevant page is actually not the one you are optimising for. It is better deal with duplicate issues first because your ranking problem could be a result of the fact that you’ve got pages similar to your optimised page and not because you’ve got penalty.
Next step, check your pages: do pages contain hidden text/links? how about keyword stuffing? are they linking out to bad sites? If yes, then deal with them and get them fixed.
If you don’t find any issues then run a relevancy check. Are the pages still ranking for their titles? Are they relevant for your targeted keyterms? If not then do the required onsite work by revising not highly relevant titles and content.
If the page is already relevant and issue-free, then it’s time to check the links. You might have just lost some inbound links, Google has devalued some of them or your competitors outrank you due to the quality and quantity of your inbound links. In this case you don’t have a penalty, what you are experiencing is a result of link loss. Look at what improvements can be made to your pages to make other sites want to link to them.
Bear this in mind; fluctuation always happens. This exists because Google actually focuses many factors for rankings. So, it is not always a penalty that can cause you ranking troubles. It could actually be the overall performance of your site and your competitors.
