Un-natural Link Building Email From Google -- What now?

by RustyF
16 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I got the dreaded unnatural link building detected G email.

How concerned should I be? I am very concerned but maybe I'm un-na

Dear site owner or webmaster of [name removed]
We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.



Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.



We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.



If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.



Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
I've not bought any backlinks, well I did sign up for Alexa hoping to get some juice (bad idea, useless idea?) that's the closet I've come and they are not selling that. I think its a no_Follow but I've been trying to get more no_follow. I've got too many freaking do follow links

Things I think I've been doing wrong. I think the relevant content might be a problem now.

1. To high of a percentage of do_follow. (I compared with competition in SEO Moz)
2. Been using {I removed name} for Article Marketing. Seems it is time to cut back down on that.
3. Joined a new network last month. I'm not going to mentions names yet. Some things there that bother me.
4. Started using digi traffic last month. Could be using it wrong or too much?

Someone will probably say you have a whole bunch of problems. lol Well, it has been working and I've been doing quite well from $30 a month to over $1000 in a year in gross receipts. Not getting rich but headed there.

If it was working, I didn't want to stop. But they site I got that email on would destroy pretty much everything.

The email was in my webmaster tools and was dated the 9th. I still have site links. The only thing I have noticed is a pair of keywords appeared to have got the smack down. There was a natural disaster, I got a number 2 ranking for the keyword and saw my traffic jump from 2500 VISORS per day to over 12000 in one day.

Those article look like they feel -30, I noticed it about a week ago.

I cancelled my SEO Moz, just too expensive for a guy making a little more than $1000 a month but I think I should re-subscribe. At least I can better monitor the trends. Dang it, I've spent too much money this month.

Right now, I wonder if I shouldn't stop spending.

Should I bail form any article networks if I'm in them or just stop using unrelated content to link from. Do you have any idea how much I hate spinning and writing 500 to 800 word articles. Oh man. ....

I think this is more gotcha from Panda. But it LOOKS like I might have got a mild slap. I hope so.Or will I have to wait a little longer before I feel the full wrath?

Sorry so long, hoping to get more information out of the experts.
#building #email #google #google email #link #unnatural
  • Profile picture of the author RustyF
    I know what is wrong. My new network has broken my spintax but just barely. I was using extremely highly spun articles. Those articles are broken in with one or two brackets showing in the last paragraph of about 15 article shared a three hundred times or so in total for all articles.

    This probably happened over 2 to 3 weeks.

    I think the network will be able to delete the articles as they control the network.

    I don't know yet for sure if I missed something or if the network did. If the network did and they don't make it boldly public then I will. I'm sure they will warn people. They don't want that junk on their network either. As I don't want it to happen to anyone else.

    I think though, unless you use my the same article source on the same network, you'll be fine.


    Wow, I've been up for over 36 hours and I'm about to drop. Hope this makes sense.
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  • Profile picture of the author RustyF
    Why would a mod put this under the Adsense/ppc forum? no one nobody answered it. you really don't think this has to do with marking money online?
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  • Profile picture of the author MaverickUK
    It's a lot to do with SEO, hence why it was moved here. Not Only that but I can 100% assure you the help you get here will be much more specialised as opposed to the part of the forum you mention.

    I think you've found something with the post you mention above about leaving a footprint with your spun articles. You should definitely always spin to a very high percentage, which you did, however the best advice I can offer is to NEVER spin articles for SEO purposes. Cases like this can lead to footprints and therefore a notice from Google.

    Get 'em deleted ASAP. Ensure that you're only using keyword around 60% of the time, maybe a little more if you're using multiple keywords and keep building backlinks at a relatively steady pace.

    Once they're all deleted, you could submit a reconsideration request but you'd have to hope that they don't see that the entire sites links are built unnaturally, otherwise they'd reject the request.

    I submitted a request a while back and got a reply that there was no manual spam action taken against the site, however the very next day rankings were back to normal and yes, my link building was 'unnatural'

    Good luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author King444
      Very bad since your competitors can blast links from bad neighborhoods or send 1000 of anchored links to get you out of business!

      For that reason, I can't understand how Google can request from any webmaster to remove "possibly artificial or unnatural links" :confused:
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      • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
        You should be very concerned. A few people have had success with the reconsideration but they had predominately natural links and managed to demonstrate that they had removed all of the bought links.

        I've yet to see a definite case of someone just riding this out with rankings restored. The email says "please submit your site for reconsideration" which makes me believe this is not something you just ignore as some people are suggesting.

        Three of my sites received this message about a month ago and not one of them has regained rankings after receiving the message in GWMT.

        These messages started surfacing only a few months ago so it's quite early know the exact extent of the damage.
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  • Profile picture of the author SeoKnightsInc
    Strange! I had never seen such a email form Google. Well its good that they inform you so that you can take right steps.
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    • Profile picture of the author juanlawry1
      Originally Posted by pbbiet View Post

      Strange! I had never seen such a email form Google. Well its good that they inform you so that you can take right steps.
      I have also not got these type of mails.
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  • Profile picture of the author jsmith2482
    I've received this on one of my sites, without every buying links or anything. Just got hit one day. Site throttled down for about 2 weeks but then hit an all time high.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkbuildr
    if you're doing a lot of blog comment, article marketing, social bookmarking, wiki links etc then expect to eventually get this message.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    The Spun content is likely what got you. Or more accurately, it's the network that allowed spun content that did you in.

    If you got the message and you're still ranked, it means their data centers haven't fully updated yet. It's like the opposite of what they tell you when they lift a penalty. (See below).

    Your keywords will eventually fall off the radar, and you'll notice weird things like pages ranking 50+ for the wrong keywords until its all completely gone.

    You got three options:

    1. Wait - 6 months to a year - until penalty expires.

    2. 301 redirect the site to a new domain along with a "Change of Address". In the instances I've done this, there was immediate recovery, but it's important to continue link building but this time, of course, try more cleaner methods.

    3. File a reconsideration request telling Google what you did and what you have done or are doing to fix the issue. That includes removing links that you created unnaturally. You don't need to remove all, they just need to see are making an effort.

    Other explanations that work pretty well:

    - "I hired XYZ SEO company and I did not realise they were creating links like this. I've instructed them to delete those links and i have removed many of them myself"

    - "I have no idea how those links were created, but I suspect it may have been done by a competing site with the intention of harming my site"

    Again, I've done this and it works. But It might take as much 3 - 4 requests before you get a favorable respond. They take on average about 1 - 2 weeks to answer each request. Just keep in mind that a human will read it. (they auto-reply when there's no penalties).

    Here's an example of a positive response.

    *************
    We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://xxxxxxxxxx.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

    Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site.

    Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue.

    Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results.

    Sincerely,

    Google Search Quality Team
    ******************
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  • Profile picture of the author Greg Beddor
    @rustyf

    "3. Joined a new network last month. I'm not going to mentions names yet. Some things there that bother me."

    If you haven't already opted out of that network... now would be a good time.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkvana
    These emails are almost always the result of over optimization in backlinks.

    However, I have seen some promising studies that indicate that building a strong social presence can bring a site back from a penalty. I'd invest in building profiles on Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc.

    Good luck and let us know how it goes.
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    • Profile picture of the author cooler1
      Originally Posted by linkvana View Post

      These emails are almost always the result of over optimization in backlinks.

      However, I have seen some promising studies that indicate that building a strong social presence can bring a site back from a penalty. I'd invest in building profiles on Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc.

      Good luck and let us know how it goes.
      By over optimization do you mean not varying the anchor text enough? How many variations of anchor text is recommended.
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  • Profile picture of the author Janet Walker
    Linkvana is right - Matt Cutts as came out and said (Google to Target Overly SEOd Sites Google SEO News and Discussion forum at WebmasterWorld) that the algo is detecting over optimization which I think is like 100,000 bookmarks to a site that only gets 200 uvs a day, the site is 2 months old, the math does not add up. No ones knows for sure but know that change is happening all of the time and you have change with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author AnnaSEO
    Just submit a reconsideration blaming some other competitor for backlinking your sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author moneymoguls
    I too just received the dreaded email from Google about unnatural links. I have only been using BMR for the past 8 months or so and link velocity is pretty low. I do vary my anchor text but maybe not enough. I have been linking internal pages along with the root domain. I do not use any spam type links or spun content and my blog has useful posts on it. My keyword rankings are gone but the blog is still indexed. I submitted a reconsideration request and see what happens.

    I wonder what would happen if you only use the URL for all linking??? If my blogs all get whacked from Google, I'm going to start all over and try URL links only and lots of good content. I don't want to worry about this Google unnatural link crap anymore.
    Signature

    Money Moguls

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