SEO penalty recovery
Your traffic has dropped. Overnight, or slowly over a few weeks, and someone at your company has said the word: penalty. Before you go any further, something almost nobody will tell you on a sales call: you most likely don't have a penalty at all.
- Since 2008 Doing SEO in Google
- Diagnosis Before any promise
- +500 SEO projects
We say it because we see it all the time. A project arrives in a panic, convinced Google has punished them, and when we look, what happened was something else. A core update that changed the rules. A technical problem that had been brewing for months. A migration that went wrong. They all feel the same from the inside (traffic falls and you don't know why), but they're fixed in completely different ways. And if you get the diagnosis wrong, you can spend half a year working in the wrong direction.
So the first thing we do isn't promise to recover you. It's find out what actually happened to you.
Is it really a penalty?
A manual penalty (what Google calls a "manual action") is rarer than it seems. It happens when someone on Google's team reviews your site and decides it has breached their guidelines, almost always for artificial links or content built to manipulate. When it happens, you know: a notice appears in Search Console. If you don't have that notice, you don't have a manual action, however far your traffic has fallen.
What happens to the vast majority is something else. A core update: Google updates its algorithm, the criteria change, and sites that were doing fine lose positions without having done anything wrong. It isn't a punishment, the bar simply moved. Or a technical drop: something on your site (a migration, a template change, a crawl block, an indexation problem) that Google reads as your site having got worse.
Working out which of these three happened to you is half the job. The other half is fixing it. But without the first half, the second is guesswork.
How we tackle it
In this order. First understand what happened, then decide what can be done, then execute it and measure. Without the first part, the other two are guesswork.
- 01
The diagnosis
We look at when the traffic fell and cross-reference it with Google's update calendar, with the changes made to the site, and with what Search Console says. The exact date of the drop usually tells most of the story: if it matches a known core update, we know where we're headed; if it matches your last migration, somewhere else.
- 02
The plan
We tell you what we found, no dressing it up, and what can be done. Sometimes it's cleaning up a toxic link profile. Sometimes it's rebuilding content Google has stopped considering useful. Sometimes it's a technical fix. And sometimes (we'll tell you this too) the damage is so deep that rebuilding works out better than recovering. We'd rather tell you that than charge you for a recovery that isn't going to arrive.
- 03
The execution
We implement what was agreed and we measure. Recoveries aren't instant: Google has to crawl, reassess and reposition your site, and that takes time. Which brings us to the uncomfortable part.
How long this really takes
If someone promises to recover you in a month, be suspicious. It doesn't work that way.
Here's a case we know well. Gallina Blanca, one of Spain's best-known consumer brands, was carrying an algorithmic filter from Google for low-quality content: thousands of near-identical recipes uploaded by users without oversight, and a link profile dirtied by sites copying that content. The recovery work (cleaning the content, sanitising the links, tidying the site) was long. Coming out of the filter didn't take weeks. It took more than a year of sustained work.
Sistrix tells it, not us, in their analysis of the case. We bring it here because it illustrates the only honest promise anyone can make about a serious recovery: it can be done, but it takes months, not days. Anyone telling you otherwise either doesn't know this work, or is telling you what you want to hear so you'll sign.
The numbers speak for themselves
- Since 2008 Ranking sites in Google
- +500 Projects completed
- 4.6/5 Rating (35 reviews)
- 95% Client retention
- +30 People on the team
Frequently asked questions
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Probably not. A manual penalty is rare and always comes with a notice in Search Console. A sharp drop is usually down to a Google core update or a technical problem on the site. They feel the same, but they're fixed differently, so the first thing is to identify which of the three it is.
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By checking Search Console. If there's a manual action, it appears in the relevant section with the reason. If there's no notice there, you don't have a manual action, even if your traffic has fallen.
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It depends on the cause and how deep the damage is, but count in months, not weeks. Google has to crawl and reassess your site after the changes, and that process is slow. Anyone promising a recovery in days isn't being honest.
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Not always, and we'd rather say so. There are cases where the accumulated damage is so great that rebuilding works out better than recovering. When we see it that way, we'll tell you before you spend on an effort that won't pay off.
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It's an update to Google's algorithm that changes how it values sites. It isn't a punishment for doing something wrong: the criteria simply move, and a site that fit before may stop fitting. Recovering means understanding what changed and adapting the site to the new criteria.
Where we start
By finding out what happened. The first step is always a diagnosis: we analyse your drop, date it, cross-reference it with everything above, and tell you what caused it and whether it's fixable. From there you decide with information, not fear.
If your traffic has dropped and you don't know why, tell us what happened. We'll take a look and give you an honest read, even when the honest read is "this isn't what you think".
Request your free SEO penalty recovery diagnosis
We'll analyze your current situation and send you a prioritized report with the most profitable opportunities. 30 minutes, no commitment.
No commitment.