Case Study – Website Ranking Recovery After A Google Penalty

How do you recover the search positions of a dental website which has crashed in Google?

Here at Dental Media we are well-regarded for our work with search engine optimisation, an expertise which we’ve developed over the last 15 years as Google has evolved.

One area of expertise we offer for dentists is recovery of their website rankings after their sites have been relegated by Google, i.e. where search results have fallen away significantly. This can happen for various reasons but the most typical one is where the website has been compromised by poor SEO. When this happens, Google can penalise a website and destroy its ranking results overnight – a pretty awful thing to happen, particularly where a dentist has been used to getting a significant influx of new patients from the web.

Before we step into how we help dentists recover from these ranking penalties, here’s a quick recap on why it can happen.

How does bad SEO get websites penalised?

This is a huge topic and one we can’t cover in detail here. In simple terms, SEO agencies are constantly evolving to try to stay ahead of Google and to give their website clients an edge with search ranking. However, lots of them have pushed the envelope too far in terms of what is acceptable and what complies with Google’s own web publishing standards. Google has progressively tried to tackle this by changing the way they evaluate the quality of websites and is quite punitive where SEO has been over-zealous.

It can take a while for Google to catch up with you but when they do, if you are pushing it too hard with your SEO, then expect a penalty to come and for your website positions to plummet in the search results. Unfortunately this can be very difficult to recover but it is possible and it’s exactly where the team at Dental Media can help.

Search ranking recovery – what needs to be done?

The extent of recovery work needed when a website has been penalised will depend on how bad the penalty actually is. Google can hit sections of your website but also the whole site where bad SEO has been widespread. Often, a small clean-up is all that is needed; however it can be the case where a domain is irrecoverable where poor SEO is egregious and has been going on for a long time. In some cases, it can be more cost-effective to start again with a new website on a new domain name.

So what do we do to evaluate a recovery project?

SEO audit

The first thing we do when a dentist approaches us to assist with a website ranking recovery is a comprehensive audit. This will essentially fall into two parts:

• On-site audit – here we check a range of factors including the technical configuration of the website and performance against latest Google standards. We make a deep-dive into analytics for the website and also “Search Console” data where those services are available. This is completed in conjunction with reviewing the website content and how appropriate it is to support good ranking positions.
• Off-site audit – here we look at various factors which are can influence website performance and which involve third-party websites. In particular we will look at the back-link profile to check for bad links and also the current status with reviews for the business.

Recovering search engine ranking – next steps

Here is a typical sequence of activities we use to re-establish dental website ranking after search results have crashed:

• comprehensive audit – on and off-site factors
• website content review – rework on-page features in line with latest Google standards
• existing content refresh – remove/enhance any stale or thin content
• add new, engaging content, suitably optimised
• improve technical performance e.g. page loading speed (desk-top and mobile)
• back-link clean-up – remove (“disavow”) poor back-links; seek out new, compliant back-links
• monitor and review

How long does website ranking recovery take?

Again this depends on the scope of work required and it can take weeks and sometimes months. In a few cases, where thousands of poor back-links are found, clean-up of these can take a long time. Where Google has issued a manual rather than an automatic (algorithmic) penalty, the recovery process can be very drawn out.

Patience is certainly required and my advice is to expect longer rather than shorter timescales.

What does SEO ranking recovery cost?

In a similar way, this depends on the scope of work required. Suffice to say it isn’t a trivial activity, requiring experience, diligence and a lot of hard work. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s easier to start again with a new website on a new domain name, but this would be as a last resort.

Summary

When a dentist’s website is relegated in the Google rankings, this is often down to some type of penalty being applied. This will typically result from some form of poor SEO being used, either on the website, off the website (back-links) or a combination of both.

Unfortunately this isn’t a rare occurrence and often happens when UK marketing agencies outsource work to ill-disciplined teams overseas who don’t operate to modern optimisation standards.

Clean up and recovery is possible but can be a drawn out and expensive exercise depending on the extent of work required.

Dental Media has been successful cleaning up and re-establishing Google search positions for a lot of dentists and we’ll be happy to help if you are in a similar situation with your own site. For no obligation advice and to start the process, please call our team on 01332 672548 or use the website contact form.