Assistance with the investigation and mitigation of SEO related problems such as rank-drops, penalties and manual actions.

In Brief:

  • Random recovery attempts can do more harm than good.
  • SEO crisis is sometimes traceable outside of the marketing department.
  • A review of the current strategy can prevent future SEO problems.
  • Search related penalties can be long lasting and costly.

fingerprintForensic SEO is the practice of uncovering cause and effect as it relates to current rank or traffic scenarios. Often the scenario involves a drop in ranking, or perhaps a penalty (manual or automated) from Google or Bing search engines. Understanding the reasons this happened and knowing what the next steps are offers the best chance to minimize damage to your site or brand.

An incorrect or inconsistent approach to a penalty removal or traffic recovery can cause long-term issues. We will only use best practices on your behalf. Some scenarios are simple and recovery might only take a few hours. Unfortunately, many are not, and require a full project with a systematic approach.

Many SEO related problems come about by use of outdated or misguided attempts at search engine manipulation.

Landing Page Project Elements

  • Clearly Define the Issue

    For the rest of the project to be successful, we need to fully understand the situation. Many misunderstandings about how search engines work are misinterpreted as penalties. This discovery phase gets everyone on the same page.

  • Gather Evidence

    Investigate the “before and after” of the situation, and try to understand what caused the problem. Assemble evidence about previous traffic, ranking, link profile, and recent SEO activity that might be implicated.

  • Document the Recovery Strategy

    After connecting the evidence to the most likely reason for the rank loss, create and present a recovery strategy to the client, along with any efforts needed and resources required. Set expectations about likelihood and timeline of recovery.

  • Execute Recovery Strategy

    Start the repairs, changes, and improvements from the strategy that are most likely to mitigate the problem. Coordinate client resources and monitor impact of changes, making adjustments as needed. Communicate with Google and Bing on client’s behalf when needed, and re-submit or send reconsideration requests where appropriate.

  • Guide Team to Avoid Future Problems

    With the issues resolved, make sure all stakeholders understand what was done to repair the problem and how to avoid it happening again. This sometimes evolves into a longer term SEO Consulting strategy.

See Also