Being penalized by Google is a major hit to your company’s online presence and can happen to anyone. Handling the penalty can be tricky and create a great deal of work, but it is important to take the penalty seriously and decide what the best action will be for your website.
Evaluate What Was There Before the Website Was Penalized – If there was just junk on the website then the site itself was never a valuable or reliable site. This means that even if the junk were to be removed, there would be little to nothing left of value on the website itself.
The tough part is when there is a site that has attracted highly credible links pointing to it. If the toxic links were removed from such a site and there were still be credible links that would lead to the site, the site itself may be worth salvaging. The website is about reputation, and if there is nothing that contributes to your businesses reputation on the website, it may just be time to kill the site and start afresh somewhere else.
Beware of Taking the Penalty With You – Oftentimes Google will follow you to the new website and penalize the new one if you continue to use the same content at a different domain. It may be well worth your time and effort to start completely over to avoid dealing with a repeat issue.
Google’s Matt Cutts discusses how, on the other hand, it may be in your websites best interest to disavow all the links that was given to the website in the time frame that the company knows the issues began. This catches Google’s attention as it means that the penalty is being taken seriously, and radical action is happening to address the website issues.
Killing a website is never easy – Sometimes it’s also not practical, possible, or even necessary. One has to weigh carefully the value of the time and effort needed to work on the existing site to remove bad links, or whether it would be a better use of resources to completely start afresh.
No matter what your final decision is, it should not be made rashly or without thinking through all the issues that may be encountered. Hiring professionals, or at least getting a professional opinion increase odds you make a wise decision.