You Don’t Always Have to Act for your Google Manual Penalty to Disappear
For companies in Phoenix, SEO is critical for your business success—just like it is everywhere else. Unfortunately, search engine results list topping SEO for your Phoenix business is not a simple thing to do; you face search engine related competition both in and outside of your industry. This may lead you to push your web design team and the SEO company in Phoenix that you are working with to be creative regarding your attempts to dominate the Google search engine in a way that brings in qualified sales leads.
Unfortunately, you can also accidentally commit to what Google refers to as “black hat” SEO tactics, which will often result in a member of Google’s team circumventing the relatively limited capabilities of their current algorithm and harshly penalizing—anywhere from a slight drop in search engine results positioning to an outright ban—your website. This is known as a manual penalty.
Fortunately, you can usually get rid of this penalty by removing or altering the offensive content and filing a petition. In many cases, you may discover that in the process of submitting your petition—or after your petition was summarily rejected—that the penalty in question no longer exists. That is because your manual penalty has expired.
How long does it take for a manual penalty to expire?
This can take anywhere from a month to a few years, depending on the severity of the violation. Google does not provide infringing websites with a specific time period for manual penalty expiration.
When does Google notify you that a penalty has expired?
They don’t. That is why the possibility of you discovering that your penalty has expired in the midst of a petition submission exists.
Does an expiration of a manual penalty mean that you’re in the clear?
No. Even though a manual penalty will eventually expire, this doesn’t mean that you don’t need to have an SEO company in Phoenix fix the issue that caused the penalty in the first place. If you don’t, you will eventually face another penalty.
Also keep in mind that the expiration of a manual penalty does not mean that your website doesn’t have an algorithmic penalty. This could keep your site buried at the bottom of the search engine results pile long after the manual penalty has expired.
Manual vs algorithmic penalties
As the names suggest, a manual penalty is one that is imposed by one of Google’s administrators for a subjectively observed violation of their guidelines; an algorithmic penalty is one that is one that is caused by the artificial intelligence of the search engine itself, based on the detection of content and/or actions that violate its guidelines.
How manual penalties go away
While manual penalties do eventually drop off on their own, you should not view this as a primary resolution. First, you need to make sure that an SEO company in Phoenix adequately adjusts your website to make sure that the penalty does not return soon after it expires.
Second, you don’t know how long it will take for the penalty to expire (as we mentioned earlier, this could take years). This means that you should always have a petition filed to get the penalty removed as soon as possible.
How algorithmic penalties go away
If you are not careful, an algorithmic penalty will plague your website forever. This is because Google’s algorithm does a periodic review of all websites to determine whether or not they violate any guidelines. The only way to get rid of one of these penalties is to have an SEO company in Phoenix make the necessary corrections and then await the next update by Google.
How often are mistakes made by Google?
Not often, but they do happen. For instance, your Phoenix SEO company may tell you stories about previous client websites successfully petitioned to have penalties removed but still were being burdened by the penalties with no further ostensible recourse (this may also interfere with the penalty’s ability to expire). If this happens, your SEO company will have to find a way to contact a Google employee directly.
If you are facing a manual penalty and need help…
Contact us. We are a top SEO company in Phoenix and we have the resources to get your website back to competing for that top spot on Google’s search engine result lists.