SEO recovery (one-off)
Rankings dropped. Traffic dropped with them. Here’s the diagnostic process.
Rankings dropped. Traffic dropped with them. Either you’ve taken an algorithm update, you have a manual penalty, your site has a technical issue nobody noticed, or someone ran a negative-SEO campaign against you. The diagnostic is the entire value — without knowing the cause, the recovery is guesswork.
This is hourly or project-scoped work. Three phases with explicit go/no-go gates between them. Per the plan: “No guaranteed outcome or timeline — recovery depends on Google’s next crawl/reassessment cycle, not a fixed SLA.”
What the service delivers
Three phases. Diagnostic billable. Recovery quoted before you commit.
Phase 1: Diagnostic — forensic analysis, written report: what happened, why, what it’s worth, realistic recovery expectations
Phase 2: Recovery — hourly or project. Only after you sign off the plan
Phase 3: Protection (optional) — convert to Core or Growth retainer
Rank tracking with SERP Volatility Index context (industry-wide vs. your site specifically)
Penalty reconsideration requests (manual Google actions)
Disavow file preparation for negative SEO
Technical SEO fixes for indexing / canonical / redirect-class issues
Tracking for the affected URL set across the recovery period
Per the plan: “No guaranteed outcome or timeline — recovery depends on Google’s next crawl/reassessment cycle, not a fixed SLA.” Hourly because effort genuinely varies by cause.
How I run recovery cases
Diagnostic, then go/no-go, then execution
- Step 1. Diagnose. Forensic analysis of the drop. When did it start? Which queries? Was it gradual or sudden? Was it Google-wide (SERP Volatility spike) or specific to your site?
- Step 2. Stabilise. Stop the bleeding. Manual penalty? File reconsideration. Technical issue? Fix the same week. Negative SEO? Disavow and document for the reconsideration file.
- Step 3. Recover + protect. Weeks/months of work reconstructing what was lost. Track movement in the dashboard against the volatility index.
Questions
The drop’s not going to fix itself
Four usual suspects. (1) Google algorithm update. (2) Manual penalty — a real human at Google has flagged your site. (3) Technical issue you didn’t know about — indexing problem, canonical mishap, redirect chain, slow pages after a template change. (4) Negative SEO — competitor-driven or spammy backlink campaign aimed at your site.
Honest answer: depends on the cause. Technical: 2-4 weeks. Algorithm drift: 3-6 months. Manual penalty: 4-12 weeks. Negative SEO: varies widely. We can’t promise timelines because we don’t control Google’s crawl schedule.
Hourly or project-scoped, not flat — per the plan. Technical issue: 4-10 hours. Algorithm drift: 30-80 hours over months. Manual penalty: 10-25 hours. We quote explicitly after the diagnostic.
Retainer work is forward-looking — keep the rankings coming. Recovery work is backward-looking — figure out what went wrong, fix the specific issue, get back to normal. Same skillset, different problem framing.
Algorithm updates happen to everyone. Whether your site was disproportionately affected requires forensic analysis. Often the answer is content depth + internal linking + relevance signals.
Sometimes that’s the honest answer. For low-competition niches a recovery process almost always works. For ultra-competitive niches the analysis might be that recovery isn’t realistic.
If rankings drop suddenly and stay down 2-3+ weeks: investigate. If rankings drift gradually over months, that’s usually either algorithm normalisation or genuine erosion. The dashboard’s volatility context tells you which signal you’re seeing.
Ready to see what you're working with?
A ranking drop rarely self-corrects. The earlier the diagnostic starts, the less cumulative traffic you lose. The first conversation costs nothing.
A quick honest note.
Fees cover the work we do, not outcomes we don't control. Once a fee is paid, it's not refundable — the work begins immediately. Search engine rankings, third-party platform decisions, audience reception: those are outside anyone's control. What we control is doing the work, reviewing it personally, and showing you every step in the dashboard. Full terms.