Need advice on overcoming a Google penalty
-
Here is the situation. Our website for our primary product (www.thetablift.com) has received a penalty by Google. Not long ago we had excellent rankings; (1st page) for some of our primary keywords, like "tablet stand". Now we are not in the index at all.
Here is what happened (or at least what seems to have happened in my non-SEO opinion). Around October 2016, we had the "bright" idea to try and emulate a campaign that Eat 24 did, utilizing inexpensive traffic from advertisements on porn websites. The idea was a play on a joke we often hear about our product being perfect for certain activities where one needs to free one's hands while watching a screen. Of course this is not how we market our product (it is a best selling mainstream product), but we wanted to see if we could emulate the success of another mainstream brand that utilized this kind of non-mainstream advertising.
The immediate result was a whole lot of traffic, but obviously the wrong kind, as it did not convert. So we pulled the plug after about 3 days. Flash forward several months later and we not only lost our great SEO rankings, but we were removed from Google's index entirely. I assume the reason for this is that somehow the website got dinged for being somehow related to porn. But of course it has nothing to do with that.
So the question is: how do we go about getting un-penalized by Google? We had build up some solid SEO over the previous couple of years, and I'd like to get back to where we were, if possible. Oh, and this may or may not be relevant, but we also switched from www.tablift.com to www.thetablift.com a few months before we did this campaign. However, we used permanent redirects and did a textbook changeover, so I don't think that had any bearing. But I can't be sure.
What are the steps to reverse this damage, if any? Thanks!
-
Done, thank you!
-
Yes, you'll need to remove it.
In WordPress, if you go to Settings > Reading, it's most likely that your developer has left the box checked that says "Discourage search engines from indexing this site".
Uncheck that box and you should be all good.
Cheers,
David
-
One other thing: should this tag be removed altogether? Thanks!
-
Holy cow, thank you!! I will do that ASAP. I had no idea that tag was in there, nor do I know how it got there! Thanks again.
-
David's right if your right click 'view page source' in chrome you will see:
This tag appears on every page of the site.
Remove the tag but also check the backlink profile and check you are not listed in a load of dodgy low DA directories. It may highlight any other issues you may have.
-
Nothing to do with a penalty. Nothing to do with negative SEO.
The problem here is that your site is noindexed...
Remove the meta robots noindex and I'd say you'll start to see your site ranking again.
Cheers,
David
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What should I do if same content ranked twice or more on Google?
I have a Bangla SEO related blog where I have written article like "Domain Selection" "SEO Tools" "MOZ" etc. All the article has been written in Bengali language. I have used wp tag for every post. I have submit xml site map generated by Yoast SEO. However I kept "no index" for category. I know well duplicate content is a major problem for SEO. After publishing my content Google ranked them on 1st page. But my fear is that most of the content twice or more. The keywords are ranked by post, wp post tag and Archive. Now I have a fear of penalty. Please check the screenshot and please suggest me what to do. uRCHf yq7m2 rSLKFLG
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AccessTechBD0 -
If we migrate the URLs from HTTP to HTTPS, Do I need to request again an inclusion in Google News?
Hi, If we migrate the URLs from HTTP to HTTPS, Do I need to request again an inclusion in Google News? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Should I worry about rendering problems of my pages in google search console fetch as google?
Some elements are not properly shown when I preview our pages in search console (fetch as google), e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
google maps, css tables etc. and some parts are not showing up since we load them asynchroneously for best page speed. Is this something should pay attention to and try to fix?0 -
Google + and Schema
I've noticed with a few of the restaurant clients I work with that Schema isn't contributing at all to their SERP -- their Google + page is. Is there any way to have more control over what Google is pulling to help make UX better? I.e. showing photos of the restaurant without a logo, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anti-Alex0 -
Google Phone Numbers
What process is performed to get a company's phone number to show as "A" on google maps. Google displays the phone number for the company on the map as "A" first. It would be beneficial to get that position. Is there a sub-category of seo that does this? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Does Google prefer Wordpress Blogs?
In creating a regular brochure website such as one for a dentist or doctor, do you see any SEO benefit to having it based in a Wordpress blog? I do see the SEO benefit of having an actual blog on the site and continually updating that, but simply using the Wordpress platform as a CMS - does that give the site any benefit? If there is a benefit, is there a way to duplicate that advantage without going through the trouble of creating a Wordpress template for the site? Maybe just publishing a sitemap.xml, and feed, etc? Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Ranking Factors for Google
Yesterday a blog post appeared on SEOMOZ titled 'A Tale Of Two Studies' - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-tale-of-two-studies-google-vs-bing-clickthrough-rate It suggested some of the ranking factors Google and Bing take into account when ranking. A few of them I want to talk about: Social Signals, Age of Domain and H1 HTML Tag So I thought age of domain and H1 both had some weight in Google? I guess not! And social signals, now I know it gives some weight but its right up there in the list for both SE's, so should getting likes, tweets, plus1's now be part of my everyday link building? Bing-Google-CTR-Infographic-e1321978731479.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Need advice on local search optimization
HI all, I've found myself in a puzzling position and not quite sure which direction to push my current SEO project so if anyone who's done this particular type of SEO can offer some suggestions I'd be eternaly grateful. I am currently working on a project for a Law Firm based in New Jersey. Lets say the town they are in is Garfield. What I really want to try and achieve is see them appearing in the number one spot whenever anyone within Garfield or the immediate area searches for a lawyer relating to the individuals need. E..g searches like "personal injury lawyers", "real estate lawyer". The problem is I can see how I can easily make it to the number one position if people are specific and enter garfield in the search term but in reality they wouldn't be doing that. An additional problem is that peoples ISP's in garfield aren't located in Garfield, in some cases they're as far away as Newark so when they're doing a search for 'real estate lawyer' google is bringing up results for the Newark based firms. It seems using tools like market samurai to look at the traffic and competition is proving useless as searches like the ones I'm doing for local business are so closely tied to the ISP location I don't really know whether to target broad range searches like "Real Estate Lawyer", or to be really specific and include the town name in my page titles, H1 tags etc... I hope I put across my dilemma and someone can help me chose which direction to go in.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davebrown19750