Got Hit With a Google Penalty? How to Diagnose, Fix, and Recover From the Recent Helpful Content Update

If you've ever received one of those gut-wrenching Google manual action or algorithmic filter messages, or simply experience a drastic drop in your organic lead flow or call volume, you know how severely penalties can damage your traffic and bottom line.

After spending years on the front lines of growing organic traffic, I've refined a 7-step process to methodically identify issues, transform content, prompt reindexing, and rebuild backlinks to regain lost rankings.

I'll break down the key steps I take to get back into Google's good graces after receiving penalties from googles HCU or for low quality content, thin content, scraped content, misleading information, and other violations.

Step 1: Pinpoint Problematic Pages

The first step is running detailed content analyses using multiple tools like Surfer SEO, SEMrush, Ahrefs, GSC or Screaming Frog to identify specific on-page and off-page optimization issues down to the page and sentence level.

By comparing reports and honing in on the worst areas, you can create a priority hit list of pages to overhaul.

Step 2: Transform Weak Content into Authority Content

Next, armed with the analytic insights, perform and in-depth content critiques assessing existing information quality, depth, uniqueness, credibility, and structure.

Rewrite and enhance the content to improve its usefulness, accuracy, attribution, visual presentation - ensuring it meets Google's Helpful Content Update quality standards.

Step 3: Verify Credible Sources

A vital but often overlooked step is rigorously fact checking and validating external references and data cited in your content with scholarly publications to back up claims with integrity.

I've seen penalties result when sites fail to provide robust attribution. I've also seen immediate recoveries by simply linking to a reputable source while stipulating that the article has been reviewed by an "expert."

Step 4: Boost Scannability

In addition to information quality, Google favors content presented using best practices for on-screen readability - with ample paragraph spacing, formatting, and relevant visuals to ease consumption.

Optimize around these UX principles to keep readers engaged.

Step 5: Carefully Interlink Related Content

Another technical issue I frequently encounter on penalized domains is inadequate internal linking structures failing to provide article context and connect topics.

Your internal linking must be related to other articles. You want to help search bots better crawl, categorize, and grasp your niche focus and expertise.

Step 6: Submit Updated Pages for Re-Indexing

Once pages meet quality and technical requirements, prompt Google to re-evaluate and hopefully restore rankings by directly requesting indexation in Google Search Console.

Ideally, you'll start to see a positive difference in the "Performance" tab of GSC when comparing the 7 day window.

Step 7: Rebuild Backlinks from Authority Sites

The final step is working on getting quality referring domains. Sending press release links are NOT the way to go. You need to garner legit, real, and do-follow links from earned media. A featured article from an active and relevant website is the secret to this part of the process.

This external validation signals to Google your cleaned-up pages offer value worthy of ranking.

Regain Your Lost Visibility

Following this proven game plan, you should regain rankings after devastating penalties.

If you have questions or need assistance recovering search visibility after a Google penalty, don't hesitate to reach out.