Does Google throttle back the search performance of a penalised website/page after the penalty has been removed?

[OctopusHR]

Hi Mozzers.

Back in 2013 my website www.octopus-hr.co.uk was hit by a Penguin 2.0 penalty owing to a harmful backlink profile built by a dodgy SEO consultant (now fired). The penalty seemed to apply to the homepage of the site but other pages were unaffected.

We got what links we could removed, disavowed the rest and were informed in September 2013 that the penalty had been removed and our re-inclusion request had been successful. However our website homepage still ranks poorly for the search terms we're targeting in the UK: "HR Software" "HR Systems"

On page factors are in my opinion pretty well optimised for these search terms. In terms of link building post penalty we've focused on high authority and relevant sites. I believe that compared to most of our search competitors the back link profile to our homepage is in pretty good shape, however it still ranks badly.

Has anyone had any experience of a penalty hangover from Google in the past? Are there other things I should consider?

Thanks

David

[AlanMosley]

Remember that a lot of links you had are now no longer, removed or disavowed you cant expect to rank the same.
Also how long has it been since you had penalty lifted. It may take a while for all things to equal up again.

[Dr-Pete]

If reconsideration worked and you got a reply from Google, it's likely that you were facing a manual penalty (either instead of or in addition to Penguin). So, it may be that Penguin or some other algorithmic penalty is in play (echoing what Andy said).

Once a penalty expires or is lifted, I'm unaware of any kind of dampening on the site (like, 50% penalty for 3 months and then 25%, etc.). This is much more likely to be a situation where you have multiple layers of problems (some could be technical, etc., and not penalties) and you've removed just the top layer.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

if you drop me a quick mail over David (address above) I can give you a little more detail. Wouldn't be something I could do here.

-Andy

[OctopusHR]

Thanks Andy for your kind offer, if you're happy to have a quick look at our link profile your feedback would be very much appreciated.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi David,

I can run a quick scan for you and tell you what sort of shape your link profile is in, but what 'could' have happened is that since the penalty, another algorithm has come along and hit you for something else. A little awkward to guess exactly though, but have seen this happen on a number of occasions.

Edit-- OK, your link profile isn't too healthy I'm afraid David. One even listed as Malicious... If you want to drop me a mail over, I will give you a little more info info@inetseo.co.uk

-Andy