If you have surprisingly found a drop in traffic when you have opened your Analytics account or seen a drop in your rankings it may be down to a Search Engine Penalty. However, not all penalties are permanent and there are things you can do to restore your rankings and traffic.
Step 1:
The first thing you should do is to check your Webmaster Tools account. There will usually be a note posted to your account when a penalty has been issued to your website. It will detail the reason behind the penalty. Apparently Google has sent over 700,000 messages in January and February this year compared to the number sent in the whole of 2011.
Step 2:
Of course these notices are only really issued if there are known penalties applied to the site. If your site has suffered a drop in rankings or reduced traffic from a change in Google’s algorithm then you won’t receive any notices. For example, thousands of sites lost rankings overnight when the Panda 1.0 update went live. This then resulted in a loss of traffic and many industry leading sites suffered. The best thing to do if you think your drop is due to an algorithm change is to check the SEO news sites for any information about Google rollouts. Many webmaster gather on these site to discuss the potential rollouts.
Step 3:
It is also worth checking the following:
Is your site still indexed? Sometimes the biggest penalty is if your site has been removed from Google’s index. To check this enter “site:https://www.yourwebsite.com into the search bar. If there are no results for your site then it’s possible it’s been deindexed.
Have you started a new linking campaign? Sometimes when you start a new linking campaign your rankings can get caught up in what’s known as the “Google Dance”. Basically it means the search engine is trying to re-evaluate your site. This can affect your rankings for a few weeks until it settles down.
How old is your site? Although it’s not been officially confirmed by Google the age of your site can fall out of the SERPs before it is deemed as trustworthy. (Usually on site 2-6 months old).
What extend has your rankings/traffic changed? Is it all your keywords that have dropped rankings or just one or two? This will help establish whether you have suffered a site-wide penalty or a total ban. A total ban is more likely if all your traffic has been affected. It could be that a number of your site’s backlinks have been devalued.
Step 4:
Review your website and backlinks. The best tools to use are Google Webmaster Guidelines, Bing Webmaster Tools and yahoo Search Content Quality Guidelines. Look at your site and determine whether you are up to date on the site’s appearance, content quality and functionality. All this builds trust with your user and the industry you are in.
Step 5:
If you have identified any areas of weakness on your site or link building campaign then take steps to correct it. If you have been penalised then ask Google to do a reconsideration of your site. It may take time to delete links and update your content but it will pay off long term. Keep up to date with the latest SEO news and any potential rollouts.
