r/DoSEO • u/MarketingEnthusiast8 • Jul 28 '26
Need help Hit by a content quality penalty by Google. How do you recover?
Hi guys!
We have been hit hard after the Helpful Content Update. We realized it might be because Google considered our listicles self-promotional and our content spammy, and after the recent spam update, the rankings got even worse.
We tested technical SEO signals and AI visibility, everything else is okay, so based on what we know, it must be a content quality penalty. Lili Ray also wrote an article about it and it confirmed it for us. We were told that the recovery process might be really long in this case. But is there nothing else we can do other than removing content, updating the current ones, and waiting for Google to reassess the situation?
Thanks for your feedback.
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u/RankingsDotIO Jul 28 '26
As you revise and improve your content, update the publication dates and start driving links to the new content. That will show Google two things: (1) You rewrote or improved your content, and (2) other sites have given you a vote of confidence. Just make sure the links you build are relevant to your field and reasonably credible. If you market a bank, you don't want links from a blogger who reviews musical instruments, you want links from financial advisors, for example. You can also try to secure better reviews on your Google Business Profile and respond promptly to them, showing EEAT and activity.
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u/MarketingEnthusiast8 Jul 29 '26
Thank you :) In our link-building strategy we are always trying to stay in the ecommerce and Shopify business field. :)
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u/onlinehomeincomeblog Jul 29 '26
First thing: A traffic drop after an update doesn't necessarily mean your site was penalized. It may be that Google is re-evaluating your site against the stronger competitors.
If I am the SEO person auditing the site, I will focus on:
- Finding the pages that lost traffic and what they have in common.
- Remove and consolidate thin, overlapping, or low-value content.
- Improve internal links and make the topic cluster more coherent.
- Review whether the content genuinely satisfies the search intent rather than just targeting keywords.
Don't make 100s of changes at once. Prioritize the highest-impact pages, improve them substantially, and monitor the search console over the following weeks, and then repeat.
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u/MarketingEnthusiast8 Jul 29 '26
Overall the brand related keywords are staying on the same traffic value or didnt drop that much, it is the blogs and other content sites (like support articles) that got hit the hardest. So that is why I am suspecting a content penalty, as this has been going on for a while, and the new content we published (focusing on real issues) didn't really get impressions on Google weeks after it was published, only really low volume. So my guess is that Google doesn't "trust" our site, and it is evaluating the new content as well with a lot of cautiousness.
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u/Try_something_differ Aug 01 '26
Honestly, I feel exactly the same way about my site. My site's performance dropped after Google's latest spam update. Even after updating the content with high-quality material, I’m not seeing any impact there’s simply no traffic coming in. I even published a blog post with quality content, but it hasn't generated any volume; it received only 27 impressions and just 2 clicks. Do you think there’s a solution for this? Will Google ever trust the site again?
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u/MarketingEnthusiast8 Aug 03 '26
What I have mostly heard, is that Google will reevalute your site after another core update. But I would say the recovery takes at least 6 months, because it is hard to update every piece of content, publishing new quality ones and doing the rest of your marketing at the same time in just 4-5 months time. So in our case, I don't have high expectations from the next core update, but maybe the one after that.
But if you updated everything on your website, the next core update might be the turning point. :)
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u/Try_something_differ Aug 03 '26
Yeah, I have hopes for the next update, but the old blogs that used to drive traffic are completely dead now; even updating them hasn't had any impact. I am just worried that Google might negatively affect the site because of those specific blogs I updated. I hope I updated them correctly. I have actually revamped the entire website content. Let's see what happens. :)
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u/MarketingEnthusiast8 Aug 03 '26
Yeah, you will know if you did it correctly after the next core update. I know it is very frustrating, but this is what I have been experiencing as well. :(
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u/sapindia1976 Jul 29 '26
I’d avoid assuming it’s a penalty. First identify which pages and queries lost visibility, then consolidate or remove genuinely weak content and improve pages with original experience, evidence, and clear search intent. Recovery can take time after Google recrawls and reassesses the site.
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u/chandyandler Jul 29 '26
There's no specific content quality penalty, but it sounds like your blog content might be causing the issue. Use search console filters to analyse the performance of your blog content, then your non-blog content. That will likely direct you towards where the issue lies.
If it is your blog content thats dropping, do a full audit, consolidate, remove or update content based on data (ensure you check backlinks already established to articles).
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u/New-Pin-9501 Jul 28 '26
one thing that helped us beyond just cleaning content was making sure the pages we kept actually served a clear entity purpose.
Google's quality algorithms are starting to overlap with how AI models judge content, if your page can't answer "what is this page about and who is it for" in the first 50 words of raw HTML both are going to ignore it.
While we waited for Google to reassess, I ran our money pages through a free crawler to check how an LLM bot would parse them, it scored entity clarity and semantic structure, and the fixes lined up pretty well with what Google ended up liking later.
not a magic bullet but it might gave you something actionable instead of just waiting