how not to get penalized is more important than how to do seo

[hpad06]

I just got one site penalized in google to page 5+ from #3 on page 1.

only thing I did was adding adsense, and added about 100 links in 2 weeks period using ALN.

Before I do these, the site was on page 1 ,around 6-7th, after I do this, it's gone for every keyword.

I googled, and find may people hit by -50 penalty caused by thin content, excessive backlinks.

For me, my site can be considered as think content, as I only have 7 articles ( all unique written by people I outsourced, checked against copyscape).

What bothers me is, before I do much seo, my ranking wasn't that bad, after I did a little seo, it's gone to hell.

So seems to me, if anything triggered a penalty, all the time/money you spent on the site is wasted.

[options]

Originally Posted by hpad06

I just got one site penalized in google to page 5+ from #3 on page 1.

only thing I did was adding adsense, and added about 100 links in 2 weeks period using ALN.

Before I do these, the site was on page 1 ,around 6-7th, after I do this, it's gone for every keyword.

I googled, and find may people hit by -50 penalty caused by thin content, excessive backlinks.

For me, my site can be considered as think content, as I only have 7 articles ( all unique written by people I outsourced, checked against copyscape).

What bothers me is, before I do much seo, my ranking wasn't that bad, after I did a little seo, it's gone to hell.

So seems to me, if anything triggered a penalty, all the time/money you spent on the site is wasted.

Hi, you would'nt of got a penalty for adding 100 links in 2 weeks, thats nothing. you have just dropped in rankings i think. as for having 7 articles on your site thats more than enough content. sounds like your doing the google dance. Expect a jump in the next couple of weeks

[hpad06]

well, domain name was registered in 2009, so it's not sandbox.

when I search domainname.tld ,it's still showing first one, when I do site:domainname.tld, it's still here. but when I search domainname, it's on end of page 5 ( total 5 pages show up), so I think it's a filter penalty from google.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by hpad06

I just got one site penalized in google to page 5+ from #3 on page 1.

only thing I did was adding adsense, and added about 100 links in 2 weeks period using ALN.

Before I do these, the site was on page 1 ,around 6-7th, after I do this, it's gone for every keyword.

I googled, and find may people hit by -50 penalty caused by thin content, excessive backlinks.

For me, my site can be considered as think content, as I only have 7 articles ( all unique written by people I outsourced, checked against copyscape).

What bothers me is, before I do much seo, my ranking wasn't that bad, after I did a little seo, it's gone to hell.

So seems to me, if anything triggered a penalty, all the time/money you spent on the site is wasted.

7 articles isn't thin content. I have many #1 spots with just 3 articles.

What can matter however is how 'GOOD' those articles are. How unique are they? Were they rewritten from a single source? Will Copyscape say an article is unique even if you have replaced 5 words in a 10 word sentence?

I attended this webinar by Leslie Rohde the other day and he said Panda would penalize a site if it had common snippets of text within or with another site. And we have no control over these snippets because Google picks them randomly. A lot of people are going to disagree with me, but when it comes out of the mouths of people like Leslie Rohde, I don't argue. All the more reason why all the different pages should have different titles and different meta description tags.

I'm not saying this is what happened with your site because Panda would basically send it to the last page, not a -50 penalty! BTW, have you checked the last page of results as well for different keywords? Most likely this is just the regular Google dance.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by hpad06

I just got one site penalized in google to page 5+ from #3 on page 1.

only thing I did was adding adsense, and added about 100 links in 2 weeks period using ALN.

Before I do these, the site was on page 1 ,around 6-7th, after I do this, it's gone for every keyword.

I googled, and find may people hit by -50 penalty caused by thin content, excessive backlinks.

For me, my site can be considered as think content, as I only have 7 articles ( all unique written by people I outsourced, checked against copyscape).

What bothers me is, before I do much seo, my ranking wasn't that bad, after I did a little seo, it's gone to hell.

So seems to me, if anything triggered a penalty, all the time/money you spent on the site is wasted.

SERPs are not static!

You really should learn how search engines work, before moving forward.

BTW, that is not a penalty.

Do you think the thousands of web pages you don't own that were below you were all penalized because your the new guy in town ranking #3 for the same keyword?

[silly ideas]

[Love2Blog]

YES THIS IS A PENALTY, It is called the -50 and it is real and happens to a lot of people and it is usually related to backlink profiles, though on site stuff can be of issue as well, but no way because of thin content.

When a site does not show up on page 1 for TLD only (without .com) that is a penalty, and when all your pages are on Page 5 without any movement that is the -50 penalty, which is not a manual penalty, but seems to be caused by an automatic algo filter being set off.

hpad06,

May I suggest that you go to Webmaster World, where the members are much more knowledgeable about real penalties and how Google really works in regards to these types of issues, there is a very long and real discussion on the -50 penalty where you might get some insight.

About The -50

Success Stories of -50 Removal

I can tell you that this penalty is known to last up to 2 years until it is lifted, some get lifted sooner than others, but 2 years is not unusual. After the 2 years rankings do return to normal.

If you can clean up the links and submit reconsideration you might get your site restored, though with ALN it will be impossible to remove the links.

And you are right, building links is a tricky thing, quality over quantity, Google is fed up with link schemes and they can detect them much better these days.

Good luck to you, the best thing you can do from this is learn a lesson that will be a positive influence in your future endeavors.

[GeorgR.]

and added about 100 links in 2 weeks period using ALN.

very, very unlikely. I guess you had a manual evaluation and a downranking...or its natural serps movement.

[cinereus]

Probably true. But it's also much much easier.

As long as you use common sense and follow google terms, you won't get a penalty. Once you do something dodgy, be prepared to be found out...

Good white hat SEO is difficult!

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by Chucky

7 articles isn't thin content. I have many #1 spots with just 3 articles.

What can matter however is how 'GOOD' those articles are. How unique are they? Were they rewritten from a single source? Will Copyscape say an article is unique even if you have replaced 5 words in a 10 word sentence?

I attended this webinar by Leslie Rohde the other day and he said Panda would penalize a site if it had common snippets of text within or with another site. And we have no control over these snippets because Google picks them randomly. A lot of people are going to disagree with me, but when it comes out of the mouths of people like Leslie Rohde, I don't argue. All the more reason why all the different pages should have different titles and different meta description tags.

I'm not saying this is what happened with your site because Panda would basically send it to the last page, not a -50 penalty! BTW, have you checked the last page of results as well for different keywords? Most likely this is just the regular Google dance.

Any other things you could share from the seminar about the workings of Panda? I agree with the OP in the sense that SEO is easy, but avoiding penalties is all its about. I can get just about any keyword in the top 5. Having it stay there is a whole other story though.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

...or its natural serps movement.

People cannot accept natural SERPs, so it must be some penalty.

We know this is too far gone, as someone expects domain age
to matter for...something? Once you get in that mindset, all
bets are off.

Yukon points out my favorite. You build a website. You want
#1, right? Well according to the myth, you won't ever get there
unless some sites get penalized....after all, there's no such
thing as natural SERP movement, right? We can never accept
the fact that some sites get published, and just plain and
simply kick butt over ours.

GeorgR., love that term! "Natural SERPs Movement."

I don't know anyone personally who tries to avoid getting
penalized. I mean your mindset must be completely different
than mine if that's your way of thinking.

I concentrate on winning.

Paul

[yukon]

Google penalized one of my pages once when I did a NOINDEX on the page!

%$#* you GOOGLE!

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by paulgl

People cannot accept natural SERPs, so it must be some penalty.

We know this is too far gone, as someone expects domain age
to matter for...something? Once you get in that mindset, all
bets are off.

Yukon points out my favorite. You build a website. You want
#1, right? Well according to the myth, you won't ever get there
unless some sites get penalized....after all, there's no such
thing as natural SERP movement, right? We can never accept
the fact that some sites get published, and just plain and
simply kick butt over ours.

GeorgR., love that term! "Natural SERPs Movement."

I don't know anyone personally who tries to avoid getting
penalized. I mean your mindset must be completely different
than mine if that's your way of thinking.

I concentrate on winning.

Paul

Paul without getting into an argument, since you and I don't see eye to eye on anything pretty much, I am really trying to understand your point. There are penalties, which Google fully admits. Now are you saying that penalties are part of "natural SERP movement" seeing as they are part of the algorithm? I guess you can see it that way but to ridicule those who don't see it that way is just really arguing semantics.

I don't feel its "natural SERP movements" when a site of mine is ranking page 1 for 100's of keywords and they all got shot to page 30 after a Panda update. I also don't think its natural SERP movement to have all those rankings come right back the next month when Panda is run because I add a video to each page and change the titles of the posts. To me thats called lifting a penalty.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by yukon

Google penalized one of my pages once when I did a NOINDEX on the page!

%$#* you GOOGLE!

If you honestly never see penalties then I envy you sir. Seriously!

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

I don't feel its "natural SERP movements" when a site of mine is ranking page 1 for 100's of keywords and they all got shot to page 30 after a Panda update. I also don't think its natural SERP movement to have all those rankings come right back the next month when Panda is run because I add a video to each page and change the titles of the posts. To me thats called lifting a penalty.

I agree, it is also NOT natural SERP movement, when ALL the pages of a site get stuck on pg 5 and stay there for several years, as is the case in the -50 penalty. And once lifted the rankings come back, I have lived this and seen it live, and it is a penalty.

A big part of SEO is learning how NOT to get penalized, which is an essential aspect of learning to rank.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by paulgl

People cannot accept natural SERPs, so it must be some penalty.

We know this is too far gone, as someone expects domain age
to matter for...something? Once you get in that mindset, all
bets are off.

Yukon points out my favorite. You build a website. You want
#1, right? Well according to the myth, you won't ever get there
unless some sites get penalized....after all, there's no such
thing as natural SERP movement, right? We can never accept
the fact that some sites get published, and just plain and
simply kick butt over ours.

GeorgR., love that term! "Natural SERPs Movement."

Paul

Not all SERP movements are penalties, no one is saying that, but there are real penalties, and this thread was started by someone who has a real penalty, when no pages move beyond or above page 5, and your TLD without .com is on Page 5, that is a -50 penalty.

Originally Posted by paulgl

I don't know anyone personally who tries to avoid getting penalized. I mean your mindset must be completely different
than mine if that's your way of thinking.

I concentrate on winning.

Sorry, but as soon as you get a penalty your mindset will change, when months of work go down the drain a part of you mindset, along with winning, will become how to make sure and not let it happen again, because avoiding the penalties is winning as well!

[yukon]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

If you honestly never see penalties then I envy you sir. Seriously!

Five years & never had penalty!

Pages fluctuate in the SERPs just like everyones pages, but never penalized.

Why would my pages be penalized?

A lot of people post on these forums and they don't understand seo, they need to point a finger because obviously they didn't do anything wrong (right? ).

No joke, since I've been posting on this forum (2010) I've had at least 5 or 6 forum members that can't get their pages ranked, ask me to take a look at their site & see what I thought might be the problem. They all had a NOINDEX in the page header.

My point is people freak out sometimes & need to point a finger at Google for no reason, when it's their own fault they can't rank a page.

If they would slow down & check the obvious things they might get someplace in the SERPS.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by yukon

Why would my pages be penalized?

Running content farms
Using link schemes against Google TOS
building manual links too fast
overusing anchor text
unnatural link profiles used to game Google
over optimizing on site SEO
selling links
buying links
Doorway pages
etc...the list can go on and on

It's great that you have enough knowledge and expertise to avoid a penalty for 5 years, but not everyone is that lucky.

SEO is a learning process, and Google changes things all the time and even those that accidentally or unknowingly put NOINDEX on their pages, we are all here to learn and get better for the success of our business, and people post their problems here to get help, that is one of the main functions of a forum and so that is why a lot of people post here that do not understand seo.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by yukon

Five years & never had penalty!

Pages fluctuate in the SERPs just like everyones pages, but never penalized.

Why would my pages be penalized?

A lot of people post on these forums and they don't understand seo, they need to point a finger because obviously they didn't do anything wrong (right? ).

No joke, since I've been posting on this forum (2010) I've had at least 5 or 6 forum members that can't get their pages ranked, ask me to take a look at their site & see what I thought might be the problem. They all had a NOINDEX in the page header.

My point is people freak out sometimes & need to point a finger at Google for no reason, when it's their own fault they can't rank a page.

If they would slow down & check the obvious things they might get someplace in the SERPS.

Thats impressive. Unfortunately my issues aren't with the simple things like no index tags. I rank just about everything top 5, even the most competitive of terms but I usually incur a massive penalty at some point. Most of the time I can figure it out but sometimes not. I assume the ones I can't have to do with my aggressive link building but who knows. I'll do the same thing on 1 site and it won't be penalized and then another site will be.

The difficulty of penalties is many times its not 1 thing IMO. I think its multiple things adding up and tripping a filter, so it becomes a pain in the a$$ to figure out. Heres my list of things that have helped lift penalties. I would love to see other peoples insights.

- Page titles being too similar
- Content too similar across the website
- Pages all different but targeting keywords with similar qualities ( psychology degrees, online degrees, sociology degrees ect..) Each page targeting that keyword obviously and Google noticing they all are heavily targeting and SEOing "Degrees"
- Obvious SEO inner-linking (even though Google recommends this)
- Duplicate or close to duplicate content (just because copyscape says its unique doesn't mean squat)
- All pages or posts having similar word lengths
- Over optimization through anchor text
- Adjective and Adverb heavy posts, not enough "Meat"

If anyone else can share what they've seen that would be great.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Love2Blog

Not me = Running content farms

Not me = Using link schemes against Google TOS

Impossible, can't be done = building manual links too fast

Doesn't matter = overusing anchor text

Define unnatural = unnatural link profiles used to game Google

I don't keyword stuff = over optimizing on site SEO

Really? No page ranks #1 for "sell backlinks" = selling links

Really? No page ranks #1 for "buy backlinks" = buying links

Not me = Doorway pages

I have more answers = etc...the list can go on and on

It's great that you have enough knowledge and expertise to avoid a penalty for 5 years, but not everyone is that lucky.

SEO is a learning process, and Google changes things all the time and even those that accidentally or unknowingly put NOINDEX on their pages, we are all here to learn and get better for the success of our business, and people post their problems here to get help, that is one of the main functions of a forum and so that is why a lot of people post here that do not understand seo.

My point was that people complain first then decide to learn seo.

That's bass akwards when it comes to ranking a page in the SERPs.

I don't have a problem helping people on this forum, I get PMs all the time & help people for free. At least half my 5k forum post are helping individual people on this forum.

My problem is people that complain first with a new thread, then they are shown the answer to their problem which sometimes is as simple as a NOINDEX tag in their header.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Thats impressive. Unfortunately my issues aren't with the simple things like no index tags. I rank just about everything top 5, even the most competitive of terms but I usually incur a massive penalty at some point. Most of the time I can figure it out but sometimes not. I assume the ones I can't have to do with my aggressive link building but who knows. I'll do the same thing on 1 site and it won't be penalized and then another site will be.

The difficulty of penalties is many times its not 1 thing IMO. I think its multiple things adding up and tripping a filter, so it becomes a pain in the a$$ to figure out. Heres my list of things that have helped lift penalties. I would love to see other peoples insights.

- Page titles being too similar
- Content too similar across the website
- Pages all different but targeting keywords with similar qualities ( psychology degrees, online degrees, sociology degrees ect..) Each page targeting that keyword obviously and Google noticing they all are heavily targeting and SEOing "Degrees"
- Obvious SEO inner-linking (even though Google recommends this)
- Duplicate or close to duplicate content (just because copyscape says its unique doesn't mean squat)
- All pages or posts having similar word lengths
- Over optimization through anchor text
- Adjective and Adverb heavy posts, not enough "Meat"

If anyone else can share what they've seen that would be great.

- Page titles being too similar

Page titles have to be unique, not counting stop words.

- Content too similar across the website

That will put you into supplemental SERP results which isn't a penalty, it's repetitive content. Why should Google show rehashed pages from the same domain?

Use a canonical tag to show which of the pages is the page you want ranked.

- Pages all different but targeting keywords with similar qualities ( psychology degrees, online degrees, sociology degrees ect..) Each page targeting that keyword obviously and Google noticing they all are heavily targeting and SEOing "Degrees"

If that's setup correct it's not a problem & will actually help boost rankings (think silo).

- Obvious SEO inner-linking (even though Google recommends this)

Again think silo internal linking, only link when it makes sense.

- Duplicate or close to duplicate content (just because copyscape says its unique doesn't mean squat)

Again supplemental SERPs problem & use canonical tags (not a penalty).

- All pages or posts having similar word lengths

Not sure what your talking about, If they are all similar word lengths that's a duplicate page & heading towards supplemental SERPs.

- Over optimization through anchor text

Again link when it makes sense, otherwise it's just keyword stuffing . One keyword/anchor-text per page is enough (If it makes sense per page).

- Adjective and Adverb heavy posts, not enough "Meat"

Create content for human traffic & you won't have to worry about that.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Love2Blog

Running content farms
Using link schemes against Google TOS
building manual links too fast
overusing anchor text
unnatural link profiles used to game Google
over optimizing on site SEO
selling links
buying links
Doorway pages
etc...the list can go on and on

It's great that you have enough knowledge and expertise to avoid a penalty for 5 years, but not everyone is that lucky.

Most of those will not get you a penalty. They may not help, but
that's entirely different. Bunch of nonsense crapola is just that.

People think google hands out penalties, which is really a misnomer.
The only REAL penalty is a de-index.

When you climb out of the penalty, as many claim here to do,
then what, pray tell, penalized the other sites for you to retake
them? Exactly.

I am still laughing. Lucky? You think not getting in google's
bad sights is lucky? How can you possibly say that. You
MUST WORK AT GETTING A GOOGLE PENALTY! I myself,
choose to work on something else. Silly me.

Paul

[Love2Blog]

Impossible, can't be done =

building manual links too fast. A site that is 1 month old suddenly gets 5,000 forum profile links; 5,000 spun blog post content links from various networks, ALN, Articles Ranks, AMA, UAW; 10,000 blog comments, (all of which can be bought here from the many services offered)

That can easily trigger a penalty, one of the most common of which is the -50, I have seen it happen, though I have to say my linking efforts were much more conservative than what I have named above, though many noobs don't know, they follow the hype and get those links on steroids.

Doesn't matter = overusing anchor text

Again, those same links above all using the same exact anchor and linking only to the home page.

Define unnatural = unnatural link profiles used to game Google

Unnatural, is all that i described above, when people link out naturally they do not use the same anchor 15,000 times, right? Natural link profiles are diverse in not only target url's but anchor's as well. A new site will usually not get 20,000 perfect backlinks with perfect anchors at 2 months of age. It could happen, I guess, with something really great, but perfect anchors?

The scheme where people "sponsor" wordpress themes and get a footer link, this penalty was confirmed by Matt Cutts in Google Webmaster Forums, where a webmaster couldn't understand why his site was sent to heck, and Matt Cutts responded, wish I had the link.

These are just a few examples, but there are many more.

I have a few sites that rank 100% on their own authority and freely give links, NO manual link building was ever done, pages became popular and were linked to, and I have others that are all manual, the difference in results is tremendous, and in my experience Google is very good at detecting the difference in extreme situations.

Really? No page ranks #1 for "sell backlinks" = selling links

If you sell links and Google detects it your page rank is dropped to 0, can last for years, unless you remove all links and beg them in reconsideration.
No matter what sites they rank for sell and buy links, this is something they have made clear over and over, John Chow, PR5 to PR0, one of my sites, PR3 to PR0 for 2 years because there was one link in over 500 pages that had an anchor that was irrelevant to the entire site, this is the number one way they notice sold/bought links, irrelevance.

These are just a few examples, I think maybe that you were smart or educated enough in SEO and have not used these types of bad link strategies, but others have and have experienced real penalties.

When a site is firmly planted Page 5 for ALL pages of the site, and TLD without .com and WILL NOT MOVE for 2 years no matter what you do and hundreds of others experience the same, this is a penalty.

Webmaster World, has hundreds of pages dedicated to various Google penalties and hundreds of webmasters sharing the exact same scenarios, like the -50, -950 and such.

By the way, since I have stopped using the link schemes, and being much more careful (after learning the proper SEO techniques) I have not experienced any issues with penalties, SERP movements yes, but not penalties, the two are usually easy to decipher.

[anislagan]

I have tested for the sake of testing a 9-page brand new EMD site with stop word '-'.

I blasted all the 9 pages with blog network (UAW, ALN, Kaboom, you name it) spun articles, SEONukeX, article directories, .edu profiles as if there is no tomorrow

The site is currently ranking between 3-5 for sometime now. Strange. No penalty. Nada.

The only thing I could see on the site is that it's a highly specialized niche with a lot of resource like sounds and diagrams about the niche.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by anislagan

I have tested for the sake of testing a 9-page brand new EMD site with stop word '-'.

I blasted all the 9 pages with blog network (UAW, ALN, Kaboom, you name it) spun articles, SEONukeX, article directories, .edu profiles as if there is no tomorrow

The site is currently ranking between 3-5 for sometime now. Strange. No penalty. Nada.

The only thing I could see on the site is that it's a highly specialized niche with a lot of resource like sounds and diagrams about the niche.

Just because your test site survived so far, does not mean that these penalties don't exist.

It can also depend on the competition level of a kw as well, as not all SERPS are even.

Everyone's experiences are different, but your one test site is not nearly as much evidence as is presented at Webmaster World's penalty threads by hundreds of webmasters.

Spammy link profiles are dangerous and can trigger a penalty, all I am saying is that they exist, and obviously impossible for those who have not experienced one to fathom.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Love2Blog

Just because your test site survived so far, does not mean that these penalties don't exist.......
Spammy link profiles are dangerous and can trigger a penalty, all I am saying is that they exist, and obviously impossible for those who have not experienced one to fathom.

Of course they exist. Why argue with them? I'd trust what goes on in terms of webmasterworld any day over this SEO forum and besides that all professional SEOs know there are penalties. ROFL why would Google have a reconsideration process for penalties if they didn't exist? This board is soooooo hilarious sometimes.

Always the reason for a drop. Nah not by a long shot but penalties exist and like i said a hundred times the problem with building links too fast is not due to the speed but the kinds of backlinks you end up getting when trying to put a lot of links up. Its not like most people here are getting content to go viral. Its that they are using spammy links.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Of course they exist. Why argue with them? I'd trust what goes on in terms of webmasterworld any day over this SEO forum and besides that all professional SEOs know there are penalties. ROFL why would Google have a reconsideration process for penalties if they didn't exist? This board is soooooo hilarious sometimes.

Always the reason for a drop. Nah not by a long shot but penalties exist and like i said a hundred times the problem with building links too fast is not due to the speed but the kinds of backlinks you end up getting when trying to put a lot of links up. Its not like most people here are getting content to go viral. Its that they are using spammy links.

You are so right, why argue? I was just thinking the same thing. I'm done.

Hmmm, yes you are right it's no so much the speed, but the types of links, as the spam crap can be built really fast, I did not think of it this way before, but both my authority sites had quick but quality natural links, and the others had quick but crap links.

[yukon]

You said manual built links. To me manual is just that, links built by hand. No human is going to build 5,000 links all by hand, they will use automated software to spam forums & blogs. Manual & automated link building are not the same. It's not humanly possible to hand build enough backlinks to set off a red flag for Google.

Unnatural, I've had sitewide links on plenty of sites & nothing dropped in the SERPs. I have to experience proof that it matters before I believe it will influence the SERPs in a negative way, haven't seen that with my own sites.

I'm into IM to earn money, I'll build my sitewide links If I want traffic flowing into another one of my sites in the same niche. It's all about targeted traffic, Google isn't the end all solution to free traffic. If it makes sense, do it!

Selling links, I see plenty of sites selling links & all ranking in Google, they still have Page Rank higher than PR0. Still need proof of any penalty, because I don't see it happening.

I don't follow people like John Chow, guys like that are more scheme than anything else. They build their following by keeping noobs hooked on dreams. Plenty of guys like that on the net, all BS artist. I'm sure whatever he did to piss G off was more to it than what he says.

BTW, Google has a reconsideration process for deindexed sites, which is the only penalty I've ever seen proven.

Originally Posted by Love2Blog

building manual links too fast. A site that is 1 month old suddenly gets 5,000 forum profile links; 5,000 spun blog post content links from various networks, ALN, Articles Ranks, AMA, UAW; 10,000 blog comments, (all of which can be bought here from the many services offered)

That can easily trigger a penalty, one of the most common of which is the -50, I have seen it happen, though I have to say my linking efforts were much more conservative than what I have named above, though many noobs don't know, they follow the hype and get those links on steroids.

Again, those same links above all using the same exact anchor and linking only to the home page.

Unnatural, is all that i described above, when people link out naturally they do not use the same anchor 15,000 times, right? Natural link profiles are diverse in not only target url's but anchor's as well. A new site will usually not get 20,000 perfect backlinks with perfect anchors at 2 months of age. It could happen, I guess, with something really great, but perfect anchors?

The scheme where people "sponsor" wordpress themes and get a footer link, this penalty was confirmed by Matt Cutts in Google Webmaster Forums, where a webmaster couldn't understand why his site was sent to heck, and Matt Cutts responded, wish I had the link.

These are just a few examples, but there are many more.

I have a few sites that rank 100% on their own authority and freely give links, NO manual link building was ever done, pages became popular and were linked to, and I have others that are all manual, the difference in results is tremendous, and in my experience Google is very good at detecting the difference in extreme situations.

If you sell links and Google detects it your page rank is dropped to 0, can last for years, unless you remove all links and beg them in reconsideration.
No matter what sites they rank for sell and buy links, this is something they have made clear over and over, John Chow, PR5 to PR0, one of my sites, PR3 to PR0 for 2 years because there was one link in over 500 pages that had an anchor that was irrelevant to the entire site, this is the number one way they notice sold/bought links, irrelevance.

These are just a few examples, I think maybe that you were smart or educated enough in SEO and have not used these types of bad link strategies, but others have and have experienced real penalties.

When a site is firmly planted Page 5 for ALL pages of the site, and TLD without .com and WILL NOT MOVE for 2 years no matter what you do and hundreds of others experience the same, this is a penalty.

Webmaster World, has hundreds of pages dedicated to various Google penalties and hundreds of webmasters sharing the exact same scenarios, like the -50, -950 and such.

By the way, since I have stopped using the link schemes, and being much more careful (after learning the proper SEO techniques) I have not experienced any issues with penalties, SERP movements yes, but not penalties, the two are usually easy to decipher.

[tiniljosephs]

If you optimize your website slowly your site won't get penalty and it'll be available long time in SERP.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by yukon

Page titles have to be unique, not counting stop words.

That will put you into supplemental SERP results which isn't a penalty, it's repetitive content. Why should Google show rehashed pages from the same domain?

Use a canonical tag to show which of the pages is the page you want ranked

If that's setup correct it's not a problem & will actually help boost rankings (think silo).

Again think silo internal linking, only link when it makes sense.

Again supplemental SERPs problem & use canonical tags (not a penalty).

Not sure what your talking about, If they are all similar word lengths that's a duplicate page & heading towards supplemental SERPs.

Again link when it makes sense, otherwise it's just keyword stuffing . One keyword/anchor-text per page is enough (If it makes sense per page).

Create content for human traffic & you won't have to worry about that.

Well i'll give you a real world example. 2 weeks ago I was ranked #4 for cheap car insurance quotes and cheap auto insurance quotes and had been on page #1 for 4 months. The site had 30 articles targeting other keywords like "Maryland auto insurance", "California auto insurance" ect... Panda is run on the 19th of Nov. After that all 30 pages were off the charts and my 2 major rankings for cheap auto insurance quotes and cheap car insurance quotes are now ranked in the 40's. Natural?.... I don't think so. Supplemental SERP results?... I don't think so.

All articles were written at the highest quality. If you are looking for Maryland auto insurance or cheap auto insurance quotes you have everything you need right there. The site is useful and helpful to everyone. I was penalized because it didn't deserve to be there naturally. The rankings were inflated through link building and Google realized this. Hence a penalty!... I understand this...I don't sit and cry...I want to beat this... Thats the game my friends.

If the answer is manual link building and waiting 3 months to rank for "womens hair dryers" then i'd rather take 100 sites to the brink and have 20 fall off.

[Cam Langdon]

I love the "noobs hooked on dreams". I often wonder if I am one when I start feeling warm and gooey with the spiels of the super salesmen

[1stpage]

Adding to this...

I hope you didn't send all of those links to the index page, did you?

In addition to variation of anchor text, deep links to internal pages are natural and important. Also related to that is the relationship between link velocity and site growth - add new content as you add new links and link to all pages with a variety of different anchors (provided they are relevant to that page of course).

Post Panda, this seems to be much more effective than overusing your target term in the anchor text.

One more tip - 500 words of content is not enough anymore, think 1500+

[Adsman68]

I have sites which have been given a Google -40/-50 Penalty. Only trouble is they are backlinked by the ALN network and you cant remove the links. I know that the penalty will naturally expire but could take 3 months upto 2 years in extreme cases. Im just going to wait it out and put up other sites.

[neil_patmore]

People think google hands out penalties, which is really a misnomer.
The only REAL penalty is a de-index.

Incorrect.

Since my thread a while back about the site wide links scenario I submitted 4 reinclusion requests for one of those sites after tackling what I thought was on page issues.

As a result I have been in an email conversation with Google over the past 2 months.

Within the emails G not only told me that yes I have a manual penalty, but they have also referred me to a number of backlinks within my site's backlinks profile (not the sitewides, they were long gone) and they've told me that I have to make a substantial effort to have the links removed before the penalty will be lifted.

This is FACT. I have it in black and white within my gmail account, straight from the horses mouth. G does manually penalise sites and it does penalise sites for backlinks.

It's not how fast or wether the links are high or low quality, it's UNATURAL looking links.

It's not humanly possible to hand build enough backlinks to set off a red flag for Google.

Incorrect. If you've been flagged for a manual review, 100 backlinks can cause a penalty if they look unatural and make up the majority of your backlink profile.

What really confuses me is that whenever these penalty debates pop up, it's always those who say they have never had a penalty that claim to be the experts about Google penalties ?? Doesn't that seem a little strange?

[Adsman68]

Ive been told you cannot remove links from the ALN Network ?? So what position does that leave me in ? Build better links and hope Google notices ?

[yukon]

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

Incorrect. If you've been flagged for a manual review, 100 backlinks can cause a penalty if they look unatural and make up the majority of your backlink profile.

What really confuses me is that whenever these penalty debates pop up, it's always those who say they have never had a penalty that claim to be the experts about Google penalties ?? Doesn't that seem a little strange?

100 backlinks with all the same anchor-text is nothing!

Again, it is 100% impossible to build backlinks by hand & get penalized for anything, I don't care what anyone says, it's just impossible. You would have to be some kind of super human. Do you have super powers that we should know about?

Build 100 links & you'll be lucky If those links even make a blip on an any Google radar or any 3rd party backlink watching tools the same week the links are built.

What I think is strange is people doing the same thing over & over & getting the same results.

Maybe people should pay more attention to others that don't get penalized/deindexed instead of people that claim they keep getting penalized?

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by paulgl

People think google hands out penalties, which is really a misnomer. The only REAL penalty is a de-index.

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

Incorrect.

Since my thread a while back about the site wide links scenario I submitted 4 reinclusion requests for one of those sites after tackling what I thought was on page issues.

As a result I have been in an email conversation with Google over the past 2 months.

Within the emails G not only told me that yes I have a manual penalty, but they have also referred me to a number of backlinks within my site's backlinks profile (not the sitewides, they were long gone) and they've told me that I have to make a substantial effort to have the links removed before the penalty will be lifted.

This is FACT. I have it in black and white within my gmail account, straight from the horses mouth. G does manually penalise sites and it does penalise sites for backlinks.

It's not how fast or weather the links are high or low quality, it's UNATURAL looking links.

Of course it's incorrect, it's a waste of time to argue with those that do not know, how can they?

As you said, it's always those who say they have never had a penalty that claim to be the experts about Google penalties?? Doesn't that seem a little strange?

It sure does.

The point here is for those who are reading this and want to learn is the fact that these penalties are real, they happen and link building needs to be considered carefully each and every time!

Blog networks, profile links, crappy spam links, 10,000 automated blog comments, all of this is dangerous.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by Adsman68

I have sites which have been given a Google -40/-50 Penalty. Only trouble is they are backlinked by the ALN network and you cant remove the links. I know that the penalty will naturally expire but could take 3 months upto 2 years in extreme cases. Im just going to wait it out and put up other sites.

Originally Posted by Adsman68

Ive been told you cannot remove links from the ALN Network ?? So what position does that leave me in ? Build better links and hope Google notices ?

There is no way to get rid of them unless you can contact each website owner and ask them to remove them. It really just depends how many you have, some site owners respond and do it.

When I had my -50 it took 2 years, 4 sites came out of the penalty at around the same time, and now all rankings have returned, it's like a punishment really. Other webmasters in the penalty thread at Webmaster World report shorter penalty times, but the max I have seen is 2 years.

I did not do anything during those 2 years, except for adding content I left the sites alone.

I think building more links at this point may not do anything or make things worse, if you do get links make sure they are quality and no more blog networks, but as you said might be best to just leave them alone.

For your new sites try to use a different hosting account, sharing the same IP with penalized sites can be an issue.

The best thing it to learn from this and do things better with the new sites, I have.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

Since my thread a while back about the site wide links scenario I submitted 4 reinclusion requests for one of those sites after tackling what I thought was on page issues.

As a result I have been in an email conversation with Google over the past 2 months.

Within the emails G not only told me that yes I have a manual penalty, but they have also referred me to a number of backlinks within my site's backlinks profile (not the sitewides, they were long gone) and they've told me that I have to make a substantial effort to have the links removed before the penalty will be lifted.

This is FACT. I have it in black and white within my gmail account, straight from the horses mouth. G does manually penalise sites and it does penalise sites for backlinks.

It's not how fast or wether the links are high or low quality, it's UNATURAL looking links.

I am interested what is your penalty? -50?

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by yukon

100 backlinks with all the same anchor-text is nothing!

Again, it is 100% impossible to build backlinks by hand & get penalized for anything, I don't care what anyone says, it's just impossible. You would have to be some kind of super human. Do you have super powers that we should know about?

Build 100 links & you'll be lucky If those links even make a blip on an any Google radar or any 3rd party backlink watching tools the same week the links are built.

What I think is strange is people doing the same thing over & over & getting the same results.

Maybe people should pay more attention to others that don't get penalized/deindexed instead of people that claim they keep getting penalized?

We are all still at the whim of Google. To me preaching manual link building these days is like preaching the virtue's of VHS tapes. Its just outdated. Even major companies SEO departments automate their SEO campaigns. Yes if you have 1 website about your lifes passion then sure. But if you are looking to make serious money online, you need to rank many keywords quickly. I'd rather just build a new website then sit and send out 100 emails for guest blog posts and hope that 5 bite.

One thing ive learned in my years of making money online. There is no need to "play by the rules", I made money on Myspace, I made money on Yahoo, I made money through Ask, I made money through Twitter, now I make money through Google. They all come and go, so to cow tow to these companies and their completely vague rules and expect longevity is an equally flawed business plan. Id rather throw a ton of $hi% against the wall and hope most of it sticks. At least this way I have some control strictly through odds.

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

We are all still at the whim of Google. To me preaching manual link building these days is like preaching the virtue's of VHS tapes. Its just outdated. Even major companies SEO departments automate their SEO campaigns. Yes if you have 1 website about your lifes passion then sure. But if you are looking to make serious money online, you need to rank many keywords quickly. I'd rather just build a new website then sit and send out 100 emails for guest blog posts and hope that 5 bite.

One thing ive learned in my years of making money online. There is no need to "play by the rules", I made money on Myspace, I made money on Yahoo, I made money through Ask, I made money through Twitter, now I make money through Google. They all come and go, so to cow tow to these companies and their completely vague rules and expect longevity is an equally flawed business plan. Id rather throw a ton of % against the wall and hope most of it sticks. At least this way I have some control strictly through odds.

That actually makes a lot of sense, many times I am sitting at my PC worried about G, instead of working and putting up sites, and then they change again, and again.

In reality when a few of my sites were on page 5 I was still making good money, more than without any sites at all for sure.

This should be a sticky!

[neil_patmore]

I am interested what is your penalty? -50?

Site is dancing between pages 5 and 7 so I guess it could be a -50 penalty.

[neil_patmore]

100 backlinks with all the same anchor-text is nothing!

Again, it is 100% impossible to build backlinks by hand & get penalized for anything, I don't care what anyone says, it's just impossible.

Build 100 links & you'll be lucky If those links even make a blip on an any Google radar or any 3rd party backlink watching tools the same week the links are built.

What I think is strange is people doing the same thing over & over & getting the same results.

You have a partial point Yukon, triggering a filter or being flagged for a manual review SOLEY due to backlink building will require a substantial amount of link building and probably more than is achievable without automated software.

But you miss my point and you overlook one essential fact - excessive link building is not the only thing that will flag a site for a manual review. Google are reviewing sites for a number of reasons these days and one of them is simply because you are on page 1 for a given keyword (selection process unknown).

Now, if you are reviewed and you have an unatural link profile, you risk a penalty. This is regardless of the total amount of backlinks you have and how quickly you have built them.

I also think you need to start giving the Google reviewers the credit they deserve, unatural doesn't simply mean same anchor text, they are a bit more clued up than that.

Maybe people should pay more attention to others that don't get penalized/deindexed instead of people that claim they keep getting penalized?

I agree, people should pay more attention to the SEO strategies of others that don't get penalized. But I'd be more inclined to believe those that have experienced penalties when debating the reasons for a penalty.

I talk from penalty experience, confirmed by the big G themselves, you base your assumptions on the fact you have never been penalised!?

I've never been bitten by a shark but I sure as hell know they bite ...

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

Site is dancing between pages 5 and 7 so I guess it could be a -50 penalty.

Yeah, that's the -50

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by neil_patmore

But you miss my point and you overlook one essential fact - excessive link building is not the only thing that will flag a site for a manual review. Google are reviewing sites for a number of reasons these days and one of them is simply because you are on page 1 for a given keyword (selection process unknown).

I also think you need to start giving the Google reviewers the credit they deserve, unatural doesn't simply mean same anchor text, they are a bit more clued up than that.

I agree, people should pay more attention to the SEO strategies of others that don't get penalized. But I'd be more inclined to believe those that have experienced penalties when debating the reasons for a penalty.

I talk from penalty experience, confirmed by the big G themselves, you base your assumptions on the fact you have never been penalised!?

I've never been bitten by a shark but I sure as hell know they bite ...

So true, once you hit page 1 they really pay close attention, especially for the more competitive terms, all my penalties were triggered when I hit page 1, so while I guessed these were auto algo, they were more likely manual.

And you can bet they look way beyond anchor text, they look at link profiles in depth to see what is natural freely given vs unnatural and manipulated. Really, anyone with even 6 months of IM experience can look at a link profile and see schemes.

There is a report that leaked out online, I have a copy, it's Google proprietary and it is the Guidelines For Google Search Raters, this is instructions for people that do nothing but look through SERPS and rate sites, looking for low quality, high quality, spam, all kinds of ratings for key terms. Their instructions are very detailed as to what to look for.

It is useless to discuss this with those that have never experienced penalties, actually they probably have and don't even know it, considering how many thin affiliate sites exist, that G hates, it's so common. It is so ignorant to believe that these penalties don't exist, Google is very good at looking out for Google and the QC team is working hard.

[jimgk]

would i be wrong to say that hiring just about any warrior for hire will result in an unnatural link profile?

[Love2Blog]

Originally Posted by jimkelly

would i be wrong to say that hiring just about any warrior for hire will result in an unnatural link profile?

LOL, no you would not be

[tylerjaysen]

Well this is a tough one to pinpoint the exact problem as to why your pages were bumped back in the SERPS. Yeah most people are clueless when it comes to white hat SEO (which is what you should strive to create) and all the other stuff you hear about from so-called gurus. The adding the 100 links in 2 weeks wouldn't necessarily get you penalized by google....unless there is some shady thing happening...like 75 links added in 1 day..hhm?

But yeah I agree with some of the posts...in that the SERPS are not static and will change based on what keywords you're trying to rank for.

It would be beneficial to you to head over to google and read all their forums on SEO and what they like and don't like. But essentially google is trying to rid itself of bs websites with crap content and bogus black hat stuff. If you just build your sites with original content over time and get links over time....plan on 2 months initially....and then check your stats via analytics and see what traffic is happening on your site...you should never get penalized.