New Google tool available to help recover lost rankings
Was your dental website penalised due to a poor back-link strategy?
Back in late April of 2012, Google unleashed a punitive update of the algorithm it uses to rank websites designed to demote websites that had pursued an over-aggressive back-link strategy. Many websites, including those in the very competitive dental marketing sector were hit and hit hard. For those affected, new patient patient acquisition from their websites reduced significantly over-night. The Google “Penguin” update was significant and really shifted the goalposts for the SEO industry.
Why was I hit and what can I do about it?
In a nutshell, your site was hit due to over aggressive link-building by your SEO company, very likely too many low quality links all structured in the same way and targeting just one or two pages on your site. Google deemed this unnatural and levied a range of penalties ranging from complete bans through to significant demotions for key search terms.
Google advises that the only way to recover is to clean up your link profile and get rid of the low quality “spam” links that have resulted in the penalties. Since April, we have been contracted by several dentists to help clean up their sites to re-establish the Google rankings. This involves trying to contact the websites that provided the links in the first instance and requesting removal – in some cases this has been successful, in others not; it all relies on cooperation from the guy who provided the link. This has been a frustrating time for many site owners who have been hit by penalties – often in a business-critical way.
New hope for affected websites
Removal of poor quality back-links is an arduous process and in some cases, near impossible. However, there is now some very good news in that Google has introduced a tool which allows a website owner to identify a bad-link and formally “disavow” it so that Google ignores it. This is obviously very important for links that have proved impossible to remove.
How do I use the link “disavow” tool?
The simple answer to this is “cautiously”, in fact Google only advise that it is used by “power” users and only after you have tried every other means to have the links removed manually. We recommend that you contact us for assistance to:
- evaluate if you have actually been affected by a Google penalty
- advise on the best way to remove any poor links, possibly including use of the new Google link “disavow” tool
Getting this wrong can lead to even more problems with Google so please do not treat it lightly.
If you think you are one of the large number of dentists whose websites have been hit by recent Google over-optimisation penalties and lower search ranking, please get in touch on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to assist.