Last year, Google revised its site reputation abuse policy to target manipulative third-party content. As a result, several large websites and publishers saw ranking drops after getting hit by manual actions. But what can you do if your business receives a manual action from Google?
Google has added extra information to its manual actions documentation to help impacted businesses, specifically for its site reputation abuse policy. I’ll share the recommended next steps and explain why your business might receive a manual action in the first place.
Next Steps From Google
Google has revised its recommended actions for sites impacted by the site reputation abuse policy. Following its step on deciding what to do with the harmful content, Google now suggests:
- Move the violating content to a new domain. If you link from the old site to the new site, use the nofollow attribute in those links. Avoid redirecting URLs from the old site to the new site, as redirecting may introduce the site reputation abuse issue again.
- Use noindex to exclude the violating content from Search indexing. To make sure your noindex rule is effective, don’t block that content with your robots.txt file.
- Redo the violating content as first-party content.
- Remove the violating content from your site.
Google provides an additional warning for businesses to be cautious if they decide to move the content to an established site or subdomain since it might exacerbate the issue.
If you’ve addressed all of the issues outlined by Google, you can request a review to have your content reconsidered. Google recommends providing details on the issue, how you’ve fixed your pages, and the results of your changes. Requests can take time to be assessed, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t hear back from Google immediately – you’ll receive email updates about its progress.
Why Have You Received a Manual Action?
If your content has been flagged for violating Google’s site reputation abuse policy, it means your pages violate Google’s guidelines. Human reviewers check content to make sure it’s not manipulating the rankings or search results to combat illegitimate websites taking the top positions in the SERPs.
With constant Google volatility, you might be tempted to take a shortcut to stay ahead in the SERPs. But Google’s always watching, and the consequences of cheating the system will cause more damage than the general ups and downs of algorithm updates.
Google will notify your business if you’ve received a manual action through Google Search Console. In the message, you’ll be able to view a report that will outline the affected pages and provide a description of the issue.
So, hope isn’t lost if you receive a manual action from Google – address the issue swiftly, and make sure your content complies with Google’s latest policies to avoid another manual action.
0 comments