How Do You Identify the Cause of a Penalty?

Jonathan

New Member
I would like to know what steps you need to take in order to find out what what penalty your website has been hit with. Just to be clear I am not talking about manual penalties that you can check in google search console. I am specifically refering to google algorithm updates.
For example if you have been hit by panda how would you identify and fix it.
 

elcidofaguy

Active Member
First of all how do you know you have a penalty?

For example a lot folks think they have been hit by a penalty when in fact it could be down to other reasons such as a website which once provided an awesome backlink no longer does or perhaps they have been hit with a penalty and as a consequence your website is part of the collateral damage in that the value of the link has gone down and as a consequently your rankings have been impacted... Does that mean you have been hit by a penalty? No it does not...

In order to figure out if you have been hit by a penalty you need to do some digging around:

1) Check your web traffic stats. Any significant drop in traffic? On what day did that drop happen?

2) Check your backlinking profile - is there any sites which once provided a link, now no longer does?

3) This one is critical - how well does your website respond to search. If your brand/website name does not rank #1 then for sure you have a penalty.. You should also check post names and unique snippets of content... In otherwords is their anything unusual?

4) Check for which dates G has released it updated spam algos.. Although beware that the word on the street the panda/penguin will soon be running concurrently...

5) If you think its Panda - then identify the cause e.g. does your site have thin garbage content? If Penguin then perhaps it relates to your backlinkimg profile... Check your website against all listed causes which contributes to the penalty...

Once you have implemented the above tests - you will then know with a reasonable amount of accuracy whether your website really has a penalty...

Hope that helps!
 

WPMints

New Member
1) Check your web traffic stats. Any significant drop in traffic? On what day did that drop happen?
Significant drops in traffic can be caused by dropping keywords in search engines. It is hard to detect a penalty from analyzing traffic.

2) Check your backlinking profile - is there any sites which once provided a link, now no longer does?
Are you talking about loosing backlinks? if that, it could not happen
 

elcidofaguy

Active Member
Significant drops in traffic can be caused by dropping keywords in search engines. It is hard to detect a penalty from analyzing traffic.


Are you talking about loosing backlinks? if that, it could not happen

I'm sorry to say that there is not one bit of what you said makes any sense to me - so I would appreciate your clarification...

What do you mean it is hard to detect a penalty from analyzing traffic? Its the first obvious sign.... If you have traffic stats which is x per month - which is repeated month after month noting upper/lower ends and then a massive drop with a vertical line - what does that tell you???? Its not rocket science....

For example:

Google-Penguin-Chart.png


Then you go onto stating that you cannot lose backlinks... This happens all of the time e.g. web site changes content removes your backlink, website expires etc... There are tons of reasons why it happens... All links which come into your website are not owned by you... In otherwords you have no control over them... You thinking it never happens tells me one thing... and that is you have no idea on what you are talking about or you are confused ... I assume its the latter with letting you off...
 
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