One of the worst things that can happen when your business is knee deep in search engine optimization efforts is to get a manual notice from Google stating your site has been penalized for breaking one of their quality guidelines. These penalties are sent any time a Google employee finds something questionable about a website and could include anything that Google frowns on including keyword stuffing, spam content, duplicate content or any other number of “black hat” SEO tactics that Google feels your website is practicing. When you receive one of those penalty notices, it means that your site is going to fall from the search engine rankings and not climb back up until the penalty has expired.
If an unscrupulous SEO company is at work behind the scenes of your website they may suggest that you do nothing, allow the penalty to expire and wait to see if your search engine rankings begin to go up naturally after that point. But this is not good advice because while your website listing has dropped out of site on Google, you could be losing time and customers that could be adding revenue to your business. Also, if the penalty is not addressed and Google thinks that it is that big of a problem, your site could end up getting blocked and your chances of regaining and surpassing the rankings your site held before the penalty will be impossible to attain.
What this all means is that addressing the problems that Google is having with your site by making corrections and submitting a reconsideration request to Google when the site is in compliance with their quality standards is in your business’s best interest and this is something that you want to have done promptly before too much traffic is lost due to the problem.
Correcting whatever issue(s) Google has penalized your site for may require the assistance of a search engine optimization professional that is not the same person who caused the site to get penalized in the first place. If you or your staff members do not have the web design experience to handle it yourself confidently, it is worth the investment to hire a professional to go through your website to make any needed adjustments to get back into good standing with Google. The sooner this is accomplished, the sooner your website can continue to strive for top placement in Google in order to enjoy the benefits of more traffic and more sales.
