If you run a business that provides goods and services on the Internet, then you know the value of a high ranking with the search engines. This helps you to draw a much larger audience to your site whenever someone searches for a term that directly relates to your business.
The sad truth is that if you are not in the first two or three pages when someone searches for a term related to your organization, you may as well be dead. You are not going to last very long if people cannot find you, and this is why a marketing firm or an outreach agency will focus its work on improving these rankings understanding how vital they are.
When You Have Taken a Hit with Google
Where you appear in the search engine rankings is dependent upon a number of factors. This includes the popularity of your site, the relevance of your material and keywords, as well as the number of backlinks from articles to your site. All of these can help to push your site to a very high ranking with Google.
What many people do not realize is that there is another major factor that can cripple the success of your site. This is referred to by Google as a manual action penalty. When Google has imposed a manual action, they are removing specific pages, maybe even an entire website from their search engine algorithms. This means that when someone searches for a term related to your site, certain pages or the entire site will be restricted from appearing as part of the results.
The problem is that even if a site has corrected its error that does not mean that it is going to be restored to their previous ranking. In fact, in a recent meeting that involved Google’s John Mueller, he explained that the expectation that site owners should have is that they will likely never return to their previous ranking.
It Is Time to Face Reality
Mueller explained that if a site has faced a manual penalty, it will continuously be viewed as suspect by the algorithms. This can mean that if a site has a number of bad links to it that, even after those links have been removed, the lingering effects of the penalty will still have a strong effect on the overall ranking of the site.
Mueller was quick to explain that this was not a generalization that would be applied to every site. Some will bounce back, but the vast majority will face the likelihood that they will be impacted by this penalty long term, maybe even forever. For business owners, that can mean a substantial decline in revenue depending upon how much of their business comes via search engine terms.
What Can Be Done?
For those site owners who are facing this situation, it can be stressful, to say the least. You may have already put in a substantial amount of effort to boost your presence through the search engines, only to be marked by one of these manual actions. Now, you are concerned that there may be nothing you can do to fix the problem.
This is where your only option may be to turn to a marketing firm to assist you in overcoming this challenge. The benefits of using one of these organizations are substantial, starting with the fact that they can directly work with Google or modify your site in such a way as to restore your reputation with the algorithms.
In addition, they will know other methods that can be employed to assist in restoring rankings. This may occur through a modification of the design of your site, a change in the way that keywords are listed, or other similar design modifications that may go unnoticed by customers but could directly affect the way your site is searched.
Guilty in the eyes of Google
One thing you need to be aware of is that you may have to spend a considerable amount of money to repair the damage caused by one of these manual penalties. It is not simply a matter of paying a few dollars to a guy who claims he can improve your search engine optimization. You need to hire the right firm to assist you and be prepared to pay to improve your rankings with specific keywords related to your business.
Mueller even pointed out that a “paid campaign” may be a significant factor in the restoration of your site with the search engine. The necessity of hiring a firm like this comes from the manner in which Google has labeled your site.
Mueller explained that the primary issue is that often a site faces a manual penalty because it has been viewed as having an “artificially inflated” ranking. What he explained is through the actions of the site, including links that may not have been proper, the ranking of the site was substantially increased beyond where it should have appeared in the search engine rankings.
Once the penalty has been imposed, the algorithms will continuously see this site as a suspect. Unfortunately, Mueller explained, cleaning up the site from whatever led to the manual action “essentially means in the past your website was ranking in an artificial situation.” In other words, your fixing of what was broken is essentially an admission that you had done something wrong in the first place.
You May Have to Pay the Piper
What this means is that you face an uphill battle. You need some expert advice in assisting you in restoring your reputation with the search engine giant. It is clear that failure to have a good ranking in Google will limit your potential growth, so you must do all you can to regain your reputation with the search engine.
You are going to have to spend some money to get back into the good graces of Google. However, you want to make sure you spend that money wisely, and this is where you need help. You cannot just throw money at the problem haphazardly and expect that instantly you were going to be back to normal. You need to hire the right firm that understands how to best assist you.
In other words, you need to do some research. You want to spend your money with a company that can deliver. It is recommended that you find firms that have a reputation for assisting companies who have faced this kind of manual penalty. Oddly enough, the best way to find a firm like this is to do a search. Isn’t that ironic?
