Getting Your Site Unblocked By Google - Assessing the Damage
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If following an honest check of all possibilities and all other causes have been ruled out, perhaps the site has been banned from Google. Should that be the case, the only thing to do is to weigh the options and look for solutions to the problem.
A webmaster has three choices in total. The first is to clean up the site to conform with the search engine’s published guidelines and try for reinstatement. The second option is simply abandoning the entire site and the domain name, and making a fresh start. The third possibility is some variation or combination of the first two choices.
The first choice is to clean up the banned website, removing every single one of the potentially offending items. That operation should take place regardless of what is chosen to do with the site. Showing Google serious effort about following the published webmaster guidelines to the letter or better will at least get Google to take a second look at the site.
This is no time for vague promises about maybe making some changes. They simply must take place. Politely writing to Google requesting reinstatement might also help the cause. Google’s response letter will be vague on their part. They will not commit themselves to returning a site to their listings until they are absolutely certain the offending activities are discontinued permanently. The bottom line, if the cleanup and salvage option is chosen, is to wait and see how Google responds. There are no guarantees.
The second choice is to abandon the website and domain name entirely. Creating a brand new site and registering a different domain name might be a good solution in some cases. Starting a new site involves registering a different domain, adding fresh incoming links, and writing entirely new website content.
When developing a replacement site, there should be no duplication of the previous banned site’s content. Everything has to be entirely different. Google will be watching the new site very closely so anything appearing on or relating to the site must be completely in compliance with the search engine webmaster guidelines.
A third option, involving a combination of the old and new site, might be the only choice for some website owners. In many cases, there are strong reasons for maintaining the site and the domain. That is especially true if the site domain is also the company name. Extra care must be taken if a previously banned site is to be continued, however.
An entirely new site should be started immediately, with absolutely no shared or duplicate content from the blocked site. No cross linking between the two sites should ever be considered, as the new site could face a penalty, for linking to a bad neighborhood. Place as much distance between the sites as possible.
To retain existing customers, let them click into the old site, but advertise a relaunch of the new site as a positive event. The visitor traffic will move to the new site if it’s worthwhile for them to do so. If the replacement site is larger and better designed, than its banned predecessor, migrating the customers and link partners shouldn’t pose too much difficulty. It will take time, however, to get everyone switched over to the new site.
A risky possibility for retaining visitor traffic is using a 301 redirect from the banned site to the replacement site. The danger of that idea is possibility that Google might penalize the redirecting site. Linking to a banned site is always frowned upon, and usually penalized in some way by Google. It is not a recommended idea. The site traffic will simply have to be rebuilt.
Next: Removing the Blocks >>
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