If the website has been penalized then, it is not the end of the world. You can recover from a penalty by following some steps. But, first how to know whether your website has been penalized or not? Penalties can be automatic or manual. With manual penalties, you’ll probably be told, but you may not always know you’ve been targeted if the cause is algorithmic. For algorithmic penalties, here are some clues to know-
1. Your website is not ranking well for your brand name any more. That’s a dead giveaway. Even if your site doesn’t rank for much else, it should at least do well on that one keyword.
2. Any page one positions you had are slipping back to page two or three without any action on your part.
3. PageRank for your site has inexplicably dropped from a respectable two or three to a big fat zero (or a measly PR of one).
4. The entire website has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
5. Running a site search – site:yourdomain.com keyword – yields no results.
6. Your listing – when you eventually find it in Google – is for a page on your site other than the home page.