How to Take Your WordPress Website Off Google Search Results
You launched your website, worked hard to create content, and posted regularly. Then one day, you wake up and your site isn’t there anymore. It’s been removed from Google Search results because it’s allegedly violating Google’s webmaster guidelines.
You’re not alone. This happens all the time and there are a variety of reasons why. Maybe your content is too political, maybe your theme isn’t Google-friendly, or maybe you’re just shooting yourself in the foot with bad SEO.
When this happens you’re faced with two options. Either rebuild the site from the ground up which is a complete waste of time or hope that Google’s ranking fixes everything.
Neither option is ideal, especially if you’re a small business owner who’s already stretched thin by the pandemic. If you’ve got a growing business you can always hire a web developer to help you fix this problem. But for now, let’s assume you’re doing this by yourself.
First, you need to identify the problem. Are you having trouble ranking for certain key phrases? Are you getting a lot of ‘soft’ 404s that mean users are getting directed to an empty page when they try to visit your site?
If so, that’s a problem and you need to fix it. Use Google Search Console to review traffic and determine the root cause of the issue. It could be that your theme isn’t cutting it, that your keyword research is lackluster, or that you need to be ranking for more competitive phrases.
Once you’ve isolated the problem, you can begin to solve it. Maybe you’ve got a lot of pages that aren’t performing well and you want to consolidate them. Or you’ve noticed that your site consistently ranks well for certain key phrases but for others it doesn’t, and you want to find out why.
There are a lot of moving parts to a successful website. Between content, design, and functionality, there are a lot of things that could be improved. Once you’ve gotten everything to work smoothly, you can sit back and enjoy the results. Of course, if you want to keep ranking you’ll need to keep updating your content and monitoring your site’s performance.
Fixing ‘Soft’ 404s
If you’re getting a lot of soft 404s, that is, 404 errors that don’t damage your site’s performance but instead just redirect the user to another page, then you need to fix that problem. You can do this a couple of ways. You can either remove all the duplicate content on your site or you can put redirects in place.
The first step is to determine why you’re getting these soft 404s. Is it because someone is trying to rank you for certain keywords but they’ve entered a wrong URL? Are you getting lots of people searching for your site’s name instead of the products/services you offer because there is no website available for that topic?
Once you’ve isolated the cause, you can begin to solve the problem. You can remove all the duplicate content, consolidate your product listings, or put redirects in place. You can also try experimenting with different keywords to see which ones bring in the most traffic. If you’re doing this through SEO, you’ll want to make sure that the redirected pages are properly optimized.
Avoiding Google Search Removals
Another potential problem you could run into is having your website removed from Google’s search results because it violates Google’s webmaster guidelines. This could happen for a variety of reasons, but oftentimes it’s because your site has a lot of duplicate content or it contains thin affiliate links. If you’ve gone through the effort to build high-quality content and set up a blog and then someone decides to pull the plug, it’s frustrating.
To prevent this from happening, you need to make sure that your content is original and doesn’t contain duplicate material. If you’ve got an existing site that you’ve decided to use as a blog, make sure that you’re constantly comparing content across platforms to see if you’re duplicating anything. Look for cross-posting between your blog and your site, both of which should be dedicated to producing quality content for your audience.
Make sure that your content is high-quality. This means using a combination of strategies to build a healthy ecosystem. When trying to grow your audience, make sure that you’re regularly engaging with your readers on social media. You can also consider offering a free monthly newsletter or providing some amazing content that’ll be valuable to your audience.
If you want to keep your content on social media, consider using a tool like Hootsuite to manage your various accounts. You can see all your accounts in one place, which makes it much easier to keep up with activity across platforms. Plus, it provides you with a single place to manage all your content – whether that’s a blog post, photo, or video – which is invaluable. You can use Hootsuite to schedule content, track your performance across platforms, and analyze the results of your efforts.
There are a variety of moving parts to a successful website. Between content, design, and functionality, there are a lot of things that could be improved. Once you’ve gotten everything to work smoothly, you can sit back and enjoy the results. Of course, if you want to keep ranking you’ll need to keep updating your content and monitoring your site’s performance.