Penalized By Google Question? (really need advice)

Hi jazzd1,

First of all is your website mobile responsive? Google have just made a change which does punish sites that are not mobile phone friendly.

As for checking to see if there is a problem with your domain name have you tried to do a Google search of your domain name at all?

There is a called archive.org where you will be able to see how your domain was used going back 20 years even. You may want to try that my friend.

Good luck mate

Ian G H

Honestly, there are 1,000 reasons why your website is not ranking well or it's possible that there's nothing at all wrong.,,,it could be that other sites are simply better than yours. So without physically looking at it and combing through your analytics/webmaster tools, we could be guessing all month and still not even coming close to the answer. Your only option is to find someone who really knows SEO and have them look through your site to see where the problems are.

To answer your question though, there's a big difference between being penalized by Google and just not ranking. If it's a straight penalty then they can de-index you, but that's usually not the case unless you're using some really hardcore black hat tactics.

Their algorithm penalizing you is different though- that's like a report card where you're graded for thousands of things. The more you do well, the higher they rank you. So it's technically a penalty but it really just means that others have put more effort into their sites than you have.

I hope that helps.

How competitive is your niche?

You might want to change your strategy and focus on less content and more outreach.

Check out a REAL seo expert's blog on how to do this. Check out backlinko.com The expert behind it, Brian Dean, was feature on WarriorForum's AMA series.

Be careful of SEO advice you get from random people here. Most don't have a track record (besides what they themselves claim). Brian's track record is solid and his advice is FREE.

You can also try tried and proven advice from the SEO Moz blog.

Don't waste your time on unproven advice from people with no rep.

jazz,
Google can be so unpredictable and fickled at times.

I have a few Sites that were successful for years. Then BOOM they dropped like a rock. NEVER recovered either.

No matter what I did.

Then I have some that had a few hiccups here and there but recovered fine.

It really is hard. Im sorry I do not have more concrete and useful info to give you.

But it can be tough and
The best advice I would give is to keep working at it and remain as White Hat as you can get



- Robert Andrew

Do you have Webmaster Tools on the site? If so, you'll know with 100% accuracy, if there is a manual penalty.

Algo penalties are more complicated to be sure, but you can work through some details to make sure those aren't in play.

How many articles do you have?

Links? Are they in niche? Where are they coming from etc?

Well there is a lot of misconception about Google will penalize a website which is not mobile friendly even though on their blog post they have clearly mentioned that if you have a mobile friendly website then you can get better rankings for mobile search but for desktop search there is no change.

For all other kind of reasons why google penalize a website you might want to look at this article here
My Top 7 Reasons Why Google Penalize a Website - Page·Locus Blog