Research shows that 60% of websites get 87% of their traffic from search engines. If luckily you are part of that 60% or you want to be, do you know how devastating it will be if you no longer get organic traffic from search engines?
There are thousands of websites out there doing the same thing you do so search engines (google) won’t hesitate to churn you out if you don’t follow their guidelines.
Sadly, if you get banned once it is not easy to get things back to normal after the ban so you have to be very careful with what you do if you don’t want to go back to square 1.
Even if they unban you, it will be hard for you to pull things back especially if you have many contents.
The worst of it all is when they ban you and you don’t even know if you are banned or not!
To check if you have been banned simply go to Google and type site:yourdomainname.com (replace your domain name with your domain name), if your pages are displayed fine! but if they are not
There are two things involved, in it is either your website is not indexed yet or you are completely banned.
We wrote a guide on “why your website is not showing up on Google here” so we won’t want to waste time on that here. We wrote a step-by-step guide on how to make google index your site faster there.
So even if your website is not new and your website still does not display on google then you need to read that and even if your website got indexed and you later discovered they were removed you still need to read that.
If after following those steps your website still did not get indexed then you need to know why your website was banned by Google first. Then you can proceed to check how you can solve it and get everything back after you are banned.
I will explain further just keep reading, if you unban it without knowing the reason(s) you were banned, you will still get banned again
Table of Contents
- Reasons Why a Website May be Banned by Google
- 1. Black hat SEO
- 2. Poor uptime
- 3. Spam and paid backlinks
- 4. BackLink velocity and repetitive anchor text
- 5. Plagiarized articles or images
- 6. Robot.txt Errors
- 7. 301 permanent Redirection for adverts
- 8. Be careful when buying an expired domain
- 9 Numerous 404 errors
- 10. Watch those you link to
- 11. Paid traffic
- How to unban a banned website
Reasons Why a Website May be Banned by Google
1. Black hat SEO
What is black hat SEO? Let’s not waste time on this, I already wrote a guide on the “meaning, differences and techniques of white hat, grey hat and black hat SEO here”.
Black hat SEO is one damn thing that can get you banned by search engines, gone are the days when you can do some sort of black hat SEO and go scot-free.
Nowadays there are algorithms that will easily track you down like Google Panda, penguin, etc.
2. Poor uptime
The funniest thing about poor uptime is that it discourages your audience, discourages you the webmaster, and also discourages search engines.
Everyone is losing here unlike black hat SEO which you will gain something at least before you get caught, uptime is annoying and that is why you need to be careful when choosing a hosting registrar for your website.
When a website goes down for many weeks it tells search engines that the website is no longer existent and that they should remove it from their index.
If you notice it takes search engines months to remove all your pages as they think you may still be back but who knows? your case may be different.
Even if all your pages are not deleted instantly, your website will start losing its rank little by little as no search engine wants to direct its pages to a non-existing website.
3. Spam and paid backlinks
Unlike before, search engines can track paid backlinks and devalue those links, dropping backlinks on spam websites seems not to be working nowadays and it can even get your website blacklisted and banned.
You should be careful where you get your link from and to even crown this all Google gave away to disallow links that can harm our website so there is no excuse for us anymore ( Can you now see that link building is fast going into extinction?).
Nevertheless, you can still build links just trust your sources and most time do it in a very orderly manner.
4. BackLink velocity and repetitive anchor text
Recently when I discovered that repetitive anchor text could get a website banned and damage SEO ranking, I was shocked.
Indeed this is another way Google traps paid and automated links, they have the same anchor text and the velocity of the link is very high like a 2 weeks website getting thousands of backlinks with the same anchor text looks weird.
Doing this will not only devalue your SEO rank but may get your website blacklisted and banned.
5. Plagiarized articles or images
This is the easiest way to get banned by Google, just duplicate content without the owner’s consent, the person files a DMCA report or reports you to Google directly then the ban follows.
Nowadays a common plagiarized image can get you banned if you are not careful with them.
6. Robot.txt Errors
Many don’t even know the meaning of robots.txt, by default WordPress has them.
Robots.txt contains the pages your website should not index and most times your sitemap is also included here with your wp-admin and that is exactly why your dashboard (backend) doesn’t get indexed. An example of a robots.txt page is shown in the image below.
There you will see disallow, allow, and sitemaps. If your posts and pages are included it is better you remove them else they will never get indexed.
Allowing important pages on your robots.txt file will easily tell search engines never to index them
7. 301 permanent Redirection for adverts
Search engines expect you to do a 301 permanent redirect to another domain name. So when you move to another domain name, setting a useless permanent redirect to another domain name.
Often could easily tell search engines that you have parked and they should delete the old domain name and also delete all your indexed pages.
Avoid useless redirects for advert purposes as there are other ways to make money without doing that, I wonder how such websites gain an audience, Immediately I see such websites I press the red button.
8. Be careful when buying an expired domain
This is why I always when readers when going for an expired domain name with high authority.
The person who dropped the domain name did not just drop it, there are reasons for it and some of the reasons include AdSense and Google search engine ban.
When you want to buy a domain name you need to check if the domain name is not serving a ban because if it is google will not index its pages and you will surely suffer for it.
There are still ways to get it back if you need which I will explain later but make sure you don’t interlink to their old pages to get traffic because you will still be penalized.
9 Numerous 404 errors
When Google already indexed a page and found too many 404 errors, it is a sign that the website no longer exists or existed a long time ago.
They will surely remove those 404 pages from their index and completely remove all the pages as time goes on.
10. Watch those you link to
Linking to websites that encourage illegal acts like hard drugs, gambling, etc. Even when you can’t avoid linking to them just make it nofollow to avoid stories that touch.
11. Paid traffic
Panda will always trace paid traffic. The only way you can go scot-free is if the visitors arrange with the paid traffic to stay a little longer on your website.
But if they don’t am afraid something worse can happen as you may get a serious setback with your organic traffic.
How to unban a banned website
So how exactly then can I get my website back after the ban?
1. If it is a life ban, the easiest solution is to abandon the domain name for a new one.
2. Another option is to mail them, just go to them. File a request therefore consideration, you see this on how to write it.
Alternatively, you can also send a message here. If you committed a crime, You have to beg them the best way you can and promise them that you won’t do it again.
Write a lengthy letter please and don’t make the mistake of abusing them. State your offense and don’t even think of lying please as they know what they banned you for.
Am not sure if you will get a reply but they may act on it if they do you will notice some changes in a few weeks.
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