Need advice on overcoming a Google penalty

[csblev]

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!

[csblev]

Done, thank you!

[davebuts]

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

[csblev]

One other thing: should this tag be removed altogether? Thanks!

[csblev]

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.

[Nigel_Carr]

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.

[davebuts]

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