Google Ranking Penalty

25 replies
  • SEO
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I have a blog I started around a year ago, since December 2010 I received a ranking penalty, It has been reviewed many times and that is the last conlusion. It now ranks extremely low (500 and over) for keywords it used to rank on the first 3 pages of the Google results. The most probable reason for this penalty is low quality/unrelated backlinks made out of poor judgment.
My question is now, if I can't get those "bad" backlinks removed, will my site ever get out of the penalty? I'm saying this because it has been almost impossible to do so. I have heard that a Google penalty could go between 3-8 months, what happens after that period? Thanks in advance for any insight.
#google #penalty #ranking
  • Profile picture of the author n_touch
    Getting those links removed is the first thing that you need to do. Then start on your content and make sure that you are adding content on a regular basis. When google gives you a penalty, its like you are starting over, but having to climb out of a hole the entire time. Once you show them that you are still relevant, and that you are not spam, you will see an increase. The time frame is different for every site, but it is safe to assume your time frame of 3-8 months is correct.

    Just of out curiosity how may unrelated low quality backlinks are you talking here. I would just go over your site some more and make sure that it could be the only reason that you are being penalized. There may be other reasons and that would increase the time frame on the penalty since you wouldn't have changed them.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      How do low quality backlinks hurt? They don't even count.

      If nonrelevant links hurt, then QUICK! Everybody remove their sig
      links FAST!

      You probably sunk due to a whole bunch of reason we cannot even
      speculate about. Probably your site just does not warrant top
      billing now.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author ivanmata
        My site is sportswagersource dot com, not sure exactly how many backlinks, but could be over 100, mostly on unrelated forums and directories. Yes many people say they don't count, I'm not so sure about it. It has only original content, no hidden text, no keyword stuffing, no malware and so on. It is however a betting related site, but I don't buy that whole myth that betting sites are frowned upon by Google just for that, I have other sites on the matter and they are doing very good. My worry is that I'm having trouble getting rid of those backlinks.
        Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author samual james
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        How do low quality backlinks hurt? They don't even count.

        If nonrelevant links hurt, then QUICK! Everybody remove their sig
        links FAST!

        You probably sunk due to a whole bunch of reason we cannot even
        speculate about. Probably your site just does not warrant top
        billing now.

        Paul
        thats true, may be you are facing some problem due to some content issue, for getting good position you have to improve your content and bookmark your post on daily basis so you can get good ranking as well as traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Beaton
    Originally Posted by ivanmata View Post

    I have a blog I started around a year ago, since December 2010 I received a ranking penalty, It has been reviewed many times and that is the last conlusion. It now ranks extremely low (500 and over) for keywords it used to rank on the first 3 pages of the Google results. The most probable reason for this penalty is low quality/unrelated backlinks made out of poor judgment.
    My question is now, if I can't get those "bad" backlinks removed, will my site ever get out of the penalty? I'm saying this because it has been almost impossible to do so. I have heard that a Google penalty could go between 3-8 months, what happens after that period? Thanks in advance for any insight.
    What do you mean "reviewed"?
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    • Profile picture of the author ivanmata
      Originally Posted by Jonathan Beaton View Post

      What do you mean "reviewed"?
      I mean that I went to Google's forum, some SEO guys and they all came down to the same conclusion. It's basically the only explanation. Unless you guys figure out something different which I would welcome very much.
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      • Profile picture of the author LangeTroels
        Originally Posted by ivanmata View Post

        I mean that I went to Google's forum, some SEO guys and they all came down to the same conclusion. It's basically the only explanation. Unless you guys figure out something different which I would welcome very much.
        I think all this talk about "bad links" punishing rankings is a bit "off"..
        I believe in "no value" of such links, but not punishment.. If you could "punish" the rankings of a website by creating 100 unrelated links - people would start doing that towards their competitors wouldn't they??
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Wallace
    If you can't get those "bad" backlinks removed, I think you can get more top quality backlinks to balance the constitution of your backlinks to make that most of your backlinks are top quality.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulrigby
    It is best to remove the bad backlinks that comes to your site. Since backlink from untrusted sites, porn sites will make SPAM your site. Naturally your site will be pushed down in all search engines. So it is better to get backlink from related and good quality domain. Google has implemented the TPR which means toolbar page rank penalty in its algorithm to check the highly optimized sites. Not only your site will lead to penalty in page rank and also in the ranking wise it affects your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author assignhelp
    Originally Posted by ivanmata View Post

    I have a blog I started around a year ago, since December 2010 I received a ranking penalty, It has been reviewed many times and that is the last conlusion. It now ranks extremely low (500 and over) for keywords it used to rank on the first 3 pages of the Google results. The most probable reason for this penalty is low quality/unrelated backlinks made out of poor judgment.
    My question is now, if I can't get those "bad" backlinks removed, will my site ever get out of the penalty? I'm saying this because it has been almost impossible to do so. I have heard that a Google penalty could go between 3-8 months, what happens after that period? Thanks in advance for any insight.
    Please tell me your blog url name then i can suggest you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Ignite
    Ya this is really up to google but overtime if you remove all those links and start producing some good content and quality links your rankings should go up again..i got a client who used an seo company and we got them back again after abt 6 month..this was after google caffeine so maybe this has to do something with it as well..good luck..
    Signature

    Digital Marketing Consultant since 1998. Contact me for a free consultation.
    https://www.marketingignite.com

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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi ivanmata,

      You have not been penalized, you simply have not earned the higher rankings you desire. I checked your website and found that you are ranking on page one for many different long tail keywords that your page's seem to be targeting.

      The main problem I see is that your keyword targeting is focused on super high competitive terms and zero traffic terms. You are not going to receive traffic on either of those extremes. At least not until you have out promoted the competition on those super competitive keywords.

      Your higher rankings early on were likey due to the short term boost of QDF. Now that temporary boost has worn off, you need to go out and do some solid promotion. Do some meritorious link building, advertise a little, build some real value in your content. Start targeting long tail keywords, with traffic, that use your primary keywords as a root. Once you start building up traffic on those long tails it will help boost the short head keywords.
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      • According to :

        SEOMoves | Google Penalty Checker Tool

        you do not have a penalty.
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      • Profile picture of the author ivanmata
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        Hi ivanmata,


        The main problem I see is that your keyword targeting is focused on super high competitive terms and zero traffic terms. You are not going to receive traffic on either of those extremes. At least not until you have out promoted the competition on those super competitive keywords.

        .
        What do you mean by traffic terms? Thanks
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Originally Posted by ivanmata View Post

          What do you mean by traffic terms? Thanks
          I think you are talking about "zero traffic terms" that I referred to in my post. If you check some of the terms your pages seem to be targeting you will find that many of those terms have zero search volume, or in some cases they have a lot of search volume and lots of completion. Your are ranking okay for some of the zero volume search terms but have a ways to go before seeing much traffic from the more competitive terms.

          I recommend you do some keyword research and try to find some long tail keywords that have a fair amount of search volume but relatively weak competition level in the SERP. You can achieve a 1st page ranking more esily on those keywords, due to the weaker competition, and start getting traffic right away. As you buildup more and more of those low competition keyword rankings you can go for higher volume keywords with stronger competition.

          The strategy is to build up a small amount of authority and incrementally add to that authority until you final have enough authority to tackle the stronger competitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author jack jastin
    I would like to suggest do some more forum postings.
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  • Profile picture of the author IcedSEO-CEO
    Banned
    Originally Posted by ivanmata View Post

    I have a blog I started around a year ago, since December 2010 I received a ranking penalty, It has been reviewed many times and that is the last conlusion. It now ranks extremely low (500 and over) for keywords it used to rank on the first 3 pages of the Google results. The most probable reason for this penalty is low quality/unrelated backlinks made out of poor judgment.
    My question is now, if I can't get those "bad" backlinks removed, will my site ever get out of the penalty? I'm saying this because it has been almost impossible to do so. I have heard that a Google penalty could go between 3-8 months, what happens after that period? Thanks in advance for any insight.
    I've had a couple of Google penalty myself but removing your already existing backlinks doesn't help the case except if you are getting your backlinks from porn sites, gambling sites and these blackhat sites but if not, removing your backlinks is only giving Google a reason to say that your site is not valuable.

    Remember that backlinks are considered votes, so if you are under Google penalty and you are removing your backlinks, I think it will only seem that others are no longer voting you because you are bad which will only increase your penalty.

    Here is the solution that I've used.

    Realize that as far as you didn't get backlinks from blacklisted sites that all other Google penalties come as a result of onpage mistakes which include publishing adult content on your site, duplicate contents, use of spambots to increase search engine spider activity on your website.

    So, here is what to do...

    First, check for and rectify all duplicate contents.

    If you are using wordpress, make sure you recheck all the plugins you installed to be sure they are not the cause (trust me, I know this).

    Delete any adult related content on your site and publish relevant contents based on your keyword.

    Restructure your site title and description (very important).

    Make youtube videos and publish them on your site, link to the video on youtube and also have the video on youtube link to you site.

    Create like few extra pages.

    Then start backlinking mainly from web 2.0 properties and in less than 2 - 3 weeks, you will be out.

    i have done this on 3 of my sites that got the big G's penalty and it worked perfectly and the sites are even ranking on first page now.

    So, try it and hope it helps
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  • Profile picture of the author rain21
    bad back links doesn't hurt sites, if it is , every one will do that to their competitors, so your problem is mostly with your site content I think. Write good original content more often and you will be fine after some time.
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    • Profile picture of the author IcedSEO-CEO
      Banned
      Originally Posted by rain21 View Post

      bad back links doesn't hurt sites, if it is , every one will do that to their competitors, so your problem is mostly with your site content I think. Write good original content more often and you will be fine after some time.
      Yea, tell that to the guy who got hundreds of backlinks from an adult site and had his site banned on Google. I spent over $400 on elance to hire someone that removed the links and built new backlinks for the site.
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by IcedSEO-CEO View Post

        Yea, tell that to the guy who got hundreds of backlinks from an adult site and had his site banned on Google. I spent over $400 on elance to hire someone that removed the links and built new backlinks for the site.
        Hi IcedSEO-CEO,

        I'd love to tell that to the guy, if only he really exists. If a guy's website was banned it wasn't for backlinks. Backlinks is not something that is totally under control of a webmaster and that is the reason that Google never bans a website for their backlinks.
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        • Profile picture of the author IcedSEO-CEO
          Banned
          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          Hi IcedSEO-CEO,

          I'd love to tell that to the guy, if only he really exists. If a guy's website was banned it wasn't for backlinks. Backlinks is not something that is totally under control of a webmaster and that is the reason that Google never bans a website for their backlinks.
          well... you should try or make it a bet, give me one of your waste sites and I promise to make it disappear. only with backlinks and nothing else. try doing the research on it tonight
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          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Originally Posted by IcedSEO-CEO View Post

            well... you should try or make it a bet, give me one of your waste sites and I promise to make it disappear. only with backlinks and nothing else. try doing the research on it tonight
            I've already done the research, I've had numerous websites, my own and those of my clients that have been attacked this way. Never saw any ranking drop and the only downside is that it looks bad on your reputation.
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          • Profile picture of the author Tom Goodwin
            Originally Posted by IcedSEO-CEO View Post

            well... you should try or make it a bet, give me one of your waste sites and I promise to make it disappear. only with backlinks and nothing else. try doing the research on it tonight
            define "disappear".

            Like Don, I do this all the time on my own sites as well as like to have fun with other people's sites from time to time, and this just doesn't happen. No doubt some time a site will bounce around drastically, but they always come back stronger. Yes, we are talking about Xrumer 7, Link Farm Evolution, and the like.

            As Don said, if adult links really did that, I would just send the links to my competitors' sites and I would be number 1 by default. Google just doesn't work that way.
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            • Profile picture of the author Chris Sorrell
              I have tried all sorts of so called 'dangerous' linking methods to my sites and NOT one of them has suffered in any way. Sure, the 'google dance' took place but the sites just came back stronger in the end. I've done +30,000 link blasts in a day and been fine so you will never get punished for the links pointing back to your site.

              However, poor content, unrealistic expectations and no real assessment of your competition will all lead to frustration and poor rankings in the long run.
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