Google De-indexation - Index Recovery Guide & Resources
By in SEO on 3rd March 2008Everyone fears that one time when your site gets de-indexed by google, truth is no matter how many times it happens to people no one knows exactly what to do in those situations and they end up complaining about it in forums and such, so i thought why not line out the process of getting your site back into google index. Now, I would like to remind all of ya’ll that do not let your lively hood depend on Google!
Analyzing your mistakes and slips
You know its your fault because you either did something against Google’s tos and/or looked over something that later got you into hot water..
Here are the list of things you should start checking:
Duplicate Content
Its possible that you posted the same content over and over on multiple pages on your site and/or copied it from other websites, most of the time sites are de-indexed because they are stealing content from other sites that are already considered authoritative for that particular type of content and/or keywords A good way to find out if other sites have the same content is to run it through copyscape.
Mass Spam Links
Are you buying links on site that are hardly relevant to your site’s topic?
That is one of the biggest reason of de-indexation, gaming pr. If you are buying links solely for the purpose of getting a higher PR then google will definitely de-index you and even revoke your Pagerank. You can check your backlinks using a backlink checker, some of the best that i use are :
Selling Links
Everyone tends to be in denile for this one, no one wants to admit that they can’t sell links, its true though, if you sell text links on your site that are aimed at passing PR/Strength/Authority to the end site then thats a clear red flag, a good resource on this is Matt Cutt’s post on buying/selling links.
Getting Started on Fixing Things
So, I’ve outlined all the things get your site de-indexed, now its time to know what to do to make amends and get back into the google index.
On-Site repairs
First of all, you have to make sure everything is fine on your site, go for basic seo to make sure of that, these include:
- Proper Titles/Meta Tags , make sure all pages have proper titles and meta tags so that spiders can properly identify your content.
- Valid Coding, make sure your site has been coded in valid XHTML/CSS so that spiders can properly navigate your site. You can use the Validator to see if your site has proper coding or not.
- Navigation, your inner pages should be easily accessible to spiders and normal visitors so that all of the content gets indexed.
- Backlinks, if you have irrelevant backlinks then call the webmasters of those sites and have them removed.
- Content, if you have copied content then get new content to make sure its relevant and on-topic with your niche.
- Paid links, if you have sold links then add a no-follow them for now.
- Sitemap is a must, after you have added all the content and fixed everything, generate a sitemap and add it via Google’s Webmaster Central.
And some of my posts highlighting basic seo are:
- Basic SEO for Blogs - Money Bloggers
- 5 Tips that will boost your SERPs!
- Basic SEO and Promotion for Blogs
- SEO Tip 1 : Getting Indexed
- SEO: 3 Basic Steps
Removing Irrelevant Backlinks
If you have found the irrelevant backlinks on sites that are clearly a red flag then contact their webmasters asap and get those links removed, sometimes less is more specially when more means more irrelevant backlinks.
Contacting Google
Now that you’ve got your tasks finished its time to contact google, head over to the Google’s Webmaster Central and let them know that you have made the necessary fixes and your site is ready for a review to be allowed back into the index.
Another thing to note, only if you have a quality content site, only then can you get back into google’s index, on the other hand if you are running a MFA which gets its content via feeds..etc , then you won’t be able to do squat
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