GUIDE: How To Recover From A Google Algorithm Update

Howdy,

Here is my quick guide on how to recover from a Google spam update. It's nothing special, just pretty basic stuff.

• Completely remove thin and bad content which includes spun, translated, low-quality AI-generated articles, etc. You can use the "Google Removal Tool" to remove indexed URLs from Google.
• Set 301 redirects for 404 pages - missing articles. I usually redirect to the root or related articles. You can use 404 redirect PHP code or/and "WordpressPress plugin - 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager". It's free and does the job very well!
• Update and improve important articles with at least 3000 words / per article. Do not forget to add some additional things such as tables, images, infographics, videos, quotes, etc. Make a picture of your dog/cat/pig and put it on the blog. I believe that the unique pictures are a good signal to Google. Rewrite and improve the meta title as well. You can use "(Updated 2022)" at the end.
• Publish new content regularly. 1 article per week for the first month will be enough in most cases. Increase the number of articles over time. From my experience, around 1500 words per article is just enough. After a while, you can put together a longer article with 3000 - 5000 words.
• Disavow bad quality, spammy, domain aggregators links. In Google Search Console, click on “Search Traffic”, select “Links to Your Site", and download the list. Do some research and remove bad, spammy, and unrelated links by disavowing them. "Spam Score" by Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush are great tools to analyse backlinks.
• Share each blog post on your social media profile/page/wall, whatever you have. From my experience sharing posts on SM may help to index quite faster.
• Make sure that your WordPress template and hosting are fast enough. Otherwise, consider investing some money in fast theme and hosting.

It may take some time to recover, but sooner or later your site will start growing, slowly but constantly. Till now I was able to recover all penalized sites within 6 months. Anything is possible if you're willing to work for it.

Keep fighting & good luck to y'all!

Good luck to everyone.

Mactronn said:

Howdy,

Here is my quick guide on how to recover from a Google spam update. It's nothing special, just pretty basic stuff.

• Set 301 redirects for 404 pages - missing articles. I usually redirect to the root or related articles. You can use 404 redirect PHP code or/and "WordpressPress plugin - 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager". It's free and does the job very well!
  

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That's not something you would do to get rid of penalties.

A 301 is for saying something has permanently moved.

You would use a 410 - GONE http status code.

Mactronn said:

Howdy,

• Update and improve important articles with at least 3000 words / per article. Do not forget to add some additional things such as tables, images, infographics, videos, quotes, etc. Make a picture of your dog/cat/pig and put it on the blog. I believe that the unique pictures are a good signal to Google. Rewrite and improve the meta title as well. You can use "(Updated 2022)" at the end.
• Publish new content regularly. 1 article per week for the first month will be enough in most cases. Increase the number of articles over time. From my experience, around 1500 words per article is just enough. After a while, you can put together a longer article with 3000 - 5000 words.
  

Click to expand...

This is not true either. You don't just blindly add words to articles. Your content should be focused on the user intent. I've had clients reduce words from 1000 words to 300 words and suddenly they hit page 1. It just depends on the user intent. More words != better

Publishing 1 article a week will do nothing to help you recover from a penalty. Nothing.

Mactronn said:

Howdy,

• Disavow bad quality, spammy, domain aggregators links. In Google Search Console, click on “Search Traffic”, select “Links to Your Site", and download the list. Do some research and remove bad, spammy, and unrelated links by disavowing them. "Spam Score" by Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush are great tools to analyse backlinks.
  

Click to expand...

You'd NEVER make a decision to disavow based on moz's "spam score" metric. It's total garbage.

You'd also never just blindly disavow links because they're not related.

Mactronn said:

Howdy,

• Share each blog post on your social media profile/page/wall, whatever you have. From my experience sharing posts on SM may help to index quite faster.
• Make sure that your WordPress template and hosting are fast enough. Otherwise, consider investing some money in fast theme and hosting.

Click to expand...

Sharing blog posts in social media will also do nothing for penalty recovery. Speed of hosting has nothing to do with penalties.

You really shouldn't just blindly share made up stuff unless you've got experience. You're just creating complete misinformation here.

OK, then I made up stuff. If you say so..