I have lost my website traffic a sudden. Google was the only source of traffic for my website. The only thing immediately came into mind was that Google has banned me or penalized my website ranking. But I was not sure, in fact initially I was not even aware of Google Penalty but when I gone through from many articles and Google webmaster guidelines I came to know that punishment from Google really exists. Though I was not aware with this before but now I knows the difference. If your website has been penalized by Google, it means Google has imposed a penalty on your domain and you will loose your rank. The penalty will remain until your website is clean from their violations while if Google ban your website you will not be having your website listed in Google index which means you have been de-listed or block from Google search.

My Story of News Website Banned by Google
It seems Google is going to crack down on all News websites which are formed by individuals. Why I noticed that is because I myself was banned when I was running a news website www.newsatweb.com in past. When my website has been started up generating Good revenue I employed few staff and speedup the work but after a short while I have been banned completely. Obviously I was not generating my news and all my work was not copy/past but it was copy/re-written, even though it is violation and now I understand this.

Google will Forgive and Lift the Ban?
I don’t think so Google will lift the ban from an news website violating quality guidelines. Except real international and local news websites, all individual news websites are based on copy and paste or rewritten content which strictly violated Google terms. I my self tried very hard to remove the penalty after lots of modifications in website and repeated consideration requests but Google did not given me a chance because Google knew I am not a real news source. So do not waste your time in this and try some thing real in which you can put your real efforts, uniqueness and quality.

A Natural or Human Mistake?
Look, why do you think it is Google who penalized or banned your website? May be this is disappearance is your own caused human mistake? Just like error in your robot.txt, your website sitemap or any similar activity which has forced search engine to show this behavior. The very first workaround would be to investigate your wesbite setup. Go to depth if you find any thing missing or malicious in your website.

Copied Website Content?
Remember Google is very strict with their quality concerns. If Google is redirecting heavy traffic to your website, giving you a reasonable rank, helping you for potential earnings then it is responsibility that your website should comply to their quality guidelines. Google do not wants any money to get you listed in their search engines, Google sending traffic to your website for free then why you are making you trick by having copied or poor content? Think on this.

Do You own a Spam Website?
If you own a website with spammy contents, Google will not let you stay for longer in their search results. This is an straight violation of Google terms. The reason is simple, you are supposed to offer quality contents instead client lands on your pages and found nothing for what he was looking for. There is absolutely no need to have spammy pages, if you are a serious webmaster you should follow the Google guidelines.

I have been running different website portals since 2006. Initially I never given importance to sitemap as I didn’t knew it’s importance. The main reason of ignoring the Sitemaps is as it was difficult to understand and implement if you do not have good technical skills. Many websites has explained about the Sitemaps but I never found it easy. Today I am going to explain what is Sitemap, How to create Sitemap for Google. I will also explain about XML Sitemap Generator and Location.

What is Sitemap
Before I explain what is Sitemap I hope you understand about search engines indexing. If you all your webpages are listed in search engine it means you are indexed but what if you add new pages or alter existing pages how come search engine will know when and how your website is updated. You have submitted your website to search engines when you have initialed created your website or may be when you started SEO for your website. After that initial steps, you must know the way to notify the search engines about your website changes. Like you add new content or you may be altering or updating the existing content, may be you are updating website daily and those updates are not reflecting in search engines.

Sitemaps is just like or notifier or communicator between your website and search engine bots. In simple words sitemap helps to crawl all your  website updates by search engines as soon as the changes are done in your website. You just need to make sure that your Sitemap is properly built and updated when you make changes on your website. Many websites do not have the effect of Sitemap as it is not properly built and many other similar reasons.

Sitemap for Google
In my personal opinion I rate Google as number one search engine in this industry. Having Google Sitemap will be a very plus point for your website. You will be having opportunity to listed and being updated in Google specially when you are website new, usually a new website may take months to fully crawl for search engines while having Sitemap will make it fast.

Google says itself in their Website Guidelines that you must have a XML Sitemap for your website so that your website can be crawled regularly by Google. In Google Sitemap you can specifically indicate the metadata  about various categories in your website just like images, videos or mobile.

Google Sitemap Generator
It is easy to generating or creating Google Sitemap, remember Google accept Sitemap Protocol 0.9 which you can study at www.sitemaps.org. I know a good website XML-Sitemaps.com which is an Sitemap Generator for Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. Please do not ignore Sitemaps as search engines will better crawl your website and this gives exposure to more visitors for your website. If you running an open source CMS, you may find an XML Sitemap Generator plugin or component offered by CMS vendor.

XML Sitemap Location
The website webmaster will be setting up the Sitemap location according the nature of their website, just like in my case I have http://www.webseorank.com/sitemap.xml and you can also define Sitemap.xml path in your robot.txt file. This basically depends on which URL’s you want to be included in your Sitemap.

Submit XML Sitemap In Google Webmaster Tools
Rememberto submit your Sitemap.xml in Google Webmaster Tools and this will allow Google to keep updated your website information their search engine.

Please understand the fact till today, you will not find an article how to use the H1, H2 and H3 Tags properly in your website. You may find large number of articles on Google in which it is described how to use H1, H2 and H3 Tags but yet you will see everyone is different, you will not find any standards or authentic way of using these Heading Tags. Using these Tags in your website looks very easy and simple but do you know how this can result for your website?

Today I will be explaining you my real experience of using H1, H2 and H3 Tags in one of my website which was penalized by Google due to webmaster quality guidelines. I hope you understand the fact that using Heading Tags is second most effective technique for increasing or promoting your on page SEO Rank. Everybody want’s that, I wish all my website pages are ranked with page rank 9 and for this I have attempted to apply all techniques on website www.newstaweb.com which was later penalized after real success. I will not blame Google as I know I have use Heading Tags aggressively.

I would be suggesting you to watch Google Webmaster Help Videos for Heading Tags. You can find the related videos with following Title in Youtube. I am sure you will not find a better explanation any where else.

Title One “More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?”
Titke Two “Does the ordering of heading tags matter?”

My purpose of writing on Heading Tags is to increase the awareness for using proper Heading Tags. The very first mistake I did and notice the same on many website is that Keyword Stuffing. Remember, Google strictly disallow keyword stuffing in your Headings, Content, Keywords and Tags. Obviously it looks unnatural as well and this simply shows that you wanted to cater all the traffic of these keywords that is why you are stuffing it Headings with keywords. Within the SEO Community it is still a dispute that what is the proper use of Heading Tags in SEO (H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6). In my case I used H1 and H2 Heading Tags in website aggressively and mostly they were over stuffed. Result appears after few days when Google penalized my website.

This obvious that H1 and H2 Heading Tags have more weight-age then H3 H4 H5 and H6. Now as the SEO Experts has used it aggressively in past, search engine bots no longer gives that much importance to Heading Tags than before. Yet I think that still H1 and H2 Heading is very effective specially for on page SEO. Remember, having aggressive use of Heading Tags, keyword stuffing in Heading Tags is considered as violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines. Instead you write target keywords in Heading Tags, I suggest to write a better title which suits your content and this would surely gives you better mileage then a spam based heading for your content.

I my self is now working as an SEO Expert. Now I knows the black and white of SEO for which I was not aware of for a long time and my various projects were penalized by Google with-in the period of two months to ten months. What has really f***ed up my projects, the real SEO I did. It is true that every webmaster wants a top rank for website. Truly it is not a big deal to get an attractive rank for your website within the matter of few months. The question is how long you are going to stay on your rank.

Look, when you are growing you will be coming under observation of Giants in your industry and many other who are going to apperciate you as well as those who are being jealous and want your upside down. Why is so? May be because the war of professional jealousy or may get the highest rank. Whatever is the case, My experience says if you going to move unnatural you will be penalized by Google soon. At least Google will no let you move on with un-natural techniques for ranking up your website.

In my ten years of professional experience, I have never seen such a sophisticated search engine which believes on quality and eliminate the unnatural ranked websites. Webmasters and SEO specialists used too working with unnatural techniques can never help you to stay on top. Ultimately they will cause for Google Penalty, then why to pay for junk SEO? I remember whenever I was involved in any back links program, either paid or unpaid, I was hit with Google Penalty within few days.

What I suggest you not to go for this junk practice of unnatural SEO which can destroy all your efforts, investment and time, remember time is money and this is major investment for your business. Even I rate time more than your business capital. It is very often when you will be getting many SEO offers everyday in your mailbox, on websites advertisements sections..etc, you just need to avoid that.

You can check other articles on this website for true and natural SEO Tips that you can follow by your own. Don’t become the victim of any catch advertised around. You do not need to pay and even if you pay you must understand what exactly they would be doing for you. You also need to evaluate if your website violate any Google Webmaster Guidelines. Never put your self on risk when planning for your website SEO. At least once read the Google Webmaster Guidelines before you proceed for your website SEO. I am sure reading Guidelines may take few hours but this will never let you down in the long run.

I have been in great shock today when Western Union agent said “Your payment from Google has been reversed.” I have been using Google Adsense since 2008. I never experienced any problem with my Adsense account or Western Union payments. Google keep sending my Adsense payments on time and I collect them from my Western Union agent in a day or two after the MTCN number is issued within Adsense interface.

It was on Sep 3rd, 2011 when I went to my local Western Union agent and given my MTCN number. Initially he said that he is facing some delays retrieving my MTCN number data and he requested me to wait for 15 minutes. I have been sitting near the counter and I have seen people are coming and their payments are being released received from around the world. I have interviewed few people and one of them was also came for picking up his Adsense payment and he did not faced any trouble. His payments was released and this was more worried some for me that what is gonna happen with my $2000.

My bad luck is that I totally depends on Adsense earnings but making long story short is that after about 20 minutes agent called me and said that your Payment is on Review and if you like to wait, I will attempt checking after another 15 minutes. After half an hour he said your payment has been reversed to sender. I said what and he repeated exactly these words “Google has reversed the payment around 10:00AM”. He did not given any reason but he said that the payment was reversed by Western Union to your sender Google Inc on call.

This shocking news had made me in deep stress. My all dreams were collapsed on the spot as I am bit emotional. I immediately came back to home and verified my Adsesne account is functional. If they have recorded any violation, they suspend the Adsense account but in my case they did not which means the problem is elsewhere.

I have contacted the Western Union head office and they did not helped. I have then contacted several other Western Union agents and they replied the same answer, I didn’t slept that night and I have gone through with Google Adsense Forums and Guidelines again and again and didn’t found any clue except the reason if your account is blocked due to any violation, your Adsense payment will be canceled.

Finally I have opened a thread at Adsense Payments Forum and even after two days no one helped me. I later found a form in which they have requested bit more information if facing any trouble while receiving the money from Western Union. It looks like they will response me within a week if they have really received my form. Anyways I will be sharing their response within a week or two. Hope for the best and those who are facing any trouble may submit their comments below and we will try to find the way out.

I remember when first time my website was penalized by Google I blindly taken many actions just like a mad bull. I didn’t care of many things which I should knew before I submit Google Reconsideration Request for my website and instead I fix it, I made it more worst. Later I learned this is not the way I gone through. I had have to investigate the things first. My experience says if Google has imposed any penalty on your website, 99.9% chances are that you are on wrong side. Google will not hit until or unless you violate there terms.

In fact I was emotionally attached to my website when it was penalized by Google. My Alexa rank was around 29,000 and my monthly traffic was over one million visitors. After Google penalized my website, it was completely removed from Google Index. That was a new’s project, and after passing some time I learned that I have made number of Google Policy Violations which had appeared with drastic results. My website www.newsatweb.com was not had even a single link in Google Index. Later I understand that it was all my fault, all my mistakes which has lead towards this serious penalty.

I suggest, filling a Google Reconsideration Request should be your last step, just avoid submitting it very quickly. If it is your website or you are emotionally attached to this website in anyway then you need to under few steps:

1-Please relax and then investigate why your website was disappear before you submit Reconsideration Request to Google. If you believe you have not violated any policies, your ranking will be restored 0-60 days probably. However if are you are no longer indexed in Google, then you must be violating so carry on your investigating.

2-Remove the violations of Google Webmaster Guidelines / Policies. Just like if you have copies or stolen content, you should rewrite all the pages which are violating or if penalty imposed due to any bad links, you must remove all the bad-links first else you may not able to restore it’s ranking. Remember Google will not tell you what exactly you did, you will need to find it by your own.

3-Make sure you have studied Google Webmaster Guidelines and you are no longer violating it. I would specially say that I have seen most websites are penalized due to violating Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

4-Once you have removed all violations from your website and you are read to file a reconsideration of your site, please follow the structure below:

-Your confession to the matter
-Explain what happened and why your website has violated
-What are your findings
-How did you resolve the issue
-Your future commitments to Google

After you submit the reconsideration request for your website, please stay patient as Google may take couple of weeks to respond. However in my personal experience, I was responded after within a week time. Avoid submitting duplicate reconsideration requests. One reconsideration request is enough for one domain.

The Ultimate goal of Google is to provide best experience to their visitors. They want to deliver the right and quality results to each and every person using Google.

Sample of Google Reconsideration Request

When my website was under Google Penalty, I have sent them the following Reconsideration Request after taking all necessary measures.

*———————————————*
Hello Google,

First of all my sincere apologize for the each and every violation I did.

Due to lack of information on Google Webmaster Guidelines, I have been using few tricks for my website promotion.

-I have been using few bad backlinks for my website.
-My content was not up to the mark and some was copied from other sites.

I undertake that I have removed all bad links for my website and also written all the pages again. All my website content is now unique, meets quality standards and not copied or match to any other website.

If any other action have triggered the Google Index and Rank Penalty, please either let me know or remove the block for my domain and I undertake that  I have read the Webmaster guidelines and now I will not violate again.

Thank you

*———————————————*
You must change this template according to your scenario. Please do not consider it as perfect, I have my own experience and just sharing for those who are not aware of these things. You may have good skills of writing or better convincing power. I just say Good luck for your reconsideration request.

Well I will be talking on real scenario’s. I have been victim of Google kick for my different websites. It is very true that your website can be penalize by Google any time if your website is involved in any activity that violates Google Policy. There is not a single reason why Google may penalize a website. I can not discuss all here as everything should be discussed briefly in order to explain the most common mistakes Webmaster or SEO Experts may cause.

I have been working on different kind of websites. The nature of websites were blog, news, media and education. Believe me I had been enjoying the large number of visitor and my earnings was like charm and a sudden I was badly penalized by Google. I must had done something wrong, as I believe Google uses very sophisticated tools and techniques which is making it more than perfect everyday.

All of sudden my dream castle was demolished when my blog www.latestexamresults.com went down from 50,000 daily traffic to 250 daily. For my most posts, I was on top three at Google search first page but that penalty has pushed me at the bottom of sixth and onwards pages. I can’t explain the pain and I blamed Google immediately. Later I started thinking over policies I violated. Even initially I dint believe that Google can kick me in this way but I realized I can not trick Google.

You must be thinking what was the reason behind this. The biggest reason was the bad links I have bough from one of my friend. That guy was running .edu domains and I knew that having back links from a .edu domain is equivalent to star type rating. Right after few days of those bad links which were 8-10 in numbers has caused me this great damage.

What I am trying to say is Google can penalize your website ranking or search engine position if you are involved in any bad links scheme. Either you are selling bad links or buying bad links, you can not avoid Google penalty. In my personal opinion, I found Google is running an extremely intelligent system which can pick up any un natural activity, their robotics are amazing.

Now your question what to do with an Penalized website in Google Index, I would suggest first removing any bad links against your website which you bought or submitted anywhere and once you clean from any bad links then submit a Google reconsideration  request. Hope for the best, if you did any thing wrong accept this when contacting Google. Be very true at your side. All your actions must comply to Google policies and you will see that you will stay longer in Google Index without any penalties.