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Google Penalty Recovery

by thomaspaylor
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Guys & Girls

We have a website which used to get around the 1000 unqiue visitors a day. The website is a PR4 and is several years old. We ranked 1-5 on the first page for most of our search terms, and have done for around 18 months with stable rankings.

We hired a SEO company overseas (Philippines) to do some SEO work for us, this consisted of web 2.0, blog comments, article links, blog networks (before they went bump) and these links were built in several layers. We started to see some movement for our main search terms from position 3-4 to positions 1-2 and we were happy.

Then we got this in webmaster tools......Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links. We were given an immediate penalty and all of our rankings suffered. Most suffered a penalty of between 5-30 places. Our main keyword has been sent back around 10 pages.

We have submitted a re-consideration request, but they keep sending back automated responses after 4-5 weeks saying:

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.


We have outlined all work which was done and the fact we placed trust in an external agency, we contacted them to remove all links which they had built for us, but they say its not possible.

What is the best way to recover our rankings from here. It causing us major issues and financial loss.

Have you guys been able to recover your rankings after similar penalties?

Your help is much appreciated.
#google #penalty #recovery
  • Profile picture of the author arifur
    Give it some time.
    Go to google webmaster tool and check what really went down there.
    Contact google ask what happened.
    Fire those people you hired, and tell them to remove you links from those link farm sites.
    Hire some professional help (not some crazy guy from Philippines, lolz)

    Well give it some time may be google will forgive you. But first remove those unnatural links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew Davis
    Hi Thomas,
    Since you cannot remove the "bad backlinks" to your website, you could try diluting them.

    Hire someone who uses a more "White-hat" SEO approach, and have slowly build high-quality backlinks to your site.

    This will eventually override the bad links, and your rankings should return.

    There isn't really much else you can do. Just this, and wait for the problem to be resolved.

    Best of luck to you!
    -Andrew
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    Owner of: TrinSite, iOrbix, DesignCoverPhoto, KeywordCompetition ...and other Businesses


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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Originally Posted by thomaspaylor View Post

    ..we contacted them to remove all links which they had built for us, but they say its not possible.
    Yes it is.

    You'll have to track down where the bad links are and request their removal. Either do it yourself or outsource it.

    By the way, I dont think its such a great idea to be promoting SEO in your signature link if you yourself are struggling with seo.
    Signature

    BS free SEO services, training and advice - SEO Point

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  • Profile picture of the author sanjay207
    thanks for shearing this information............
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  • Profile picture of the author pangolin123
    You need to build more backlinks to dilute the anchor text. Go to your webmaster tools, download the list of the keywords google determine while crawling your sites and build more backlinks with those keywords as the anchor texts. Also, use generic anchor texts like click here, visit this, yoursitename.com, etc.

    Also, prepare to see this penalty last for 3 months. I know few of my friends who have received this penalty early february and some of them have recovered to their original rankings after taking these steps of diluting the anchor texts and uploading more quality articles to their sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author HenryABranch
      Originally Posted by pangolin123 View Post

      You need to build more backlinks to dilute the anchor text. Go to your webmaster tools, download the list of the keywords google determine while crawling your sites and build more backlinks with those keywords as the anchor texts. Also, use generic anchor texts like click here, visit this, yoursitename.com, etc.

      Also, prepare to see this penalty last for 3 months. I know few of my friends who have received this penalty early february and some of them have recovered to their original rankings after taking these steps of diluting the anchor texts and uploading more quality articles to their sites.
      BINGO ! ....continue building links and DILUTE DILUTE your anchor text...then wait it out... There is a DELAY PENALTY...
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      • Profile picture of the author ahefner33
        Well from my understanding and what I was told to do if I am not able to remove the links or can't control the removal of the links was to at minimum show that you tried to get them removed and to show evidence they told you there was nothing they can do. Again this is just from my own emails back and forth with someone at G. You could possibly provide the email to G that states your links harming you can't be removed. Only other thing is allow more time
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        Adam Hefner

        http://foodgawker.com/ - Warning - Don't go to if you are hawngry

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  • Profile picture of the author The Mysterious Marketer
    Originally Posted by thomaspaylor View Post

    Hi Guys & Girls

    We have a website which used to get around the 1000 unqiue visitors a day. The website is a PR4 and is several years old. We ranked 1-5 on the first page for most of our search terms, and have done for around 18 months with stable rankings.

    We hired a SEO company overseas (Philippines) to do some SEO work for us, this consisted of web 2.0, blog comments, article links, blog networks (before they went bump) and these links were built in several layers. We started to see some movement for our main search terms from position 3-4 to positions 1-2 and we were happy.

    Then we got this in webmaster tools......Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links. We were given an immediate penalty and all of our rankings suffered. Most suffered a penalty of between 5-30 places. Our main keyword has been sent back around 10 pages.

    We have submitted a re-consideration request, but they keep sending back automated responses after 4-5 weeks saying:

    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.


    We have outlined all work which was done and the fact we placed trust in an external agency, we contacted them to remove all links which they had built for us, but they say its not possible.

    What is the best way to recover our rankings from here. It causing us major issues and financial loss.

    Have you guys been able to recover your rankings after similar penalties?

    Your help is much appreciated.
    Well, there are several possibilities. It could be the links being built for you were built on spammy and low-quality sites and those sites were deindexed or penalized by Google. Thus causing you sudden loss in rankings.

    In such case, you only need to start building backlinks from high quality sites instead.

    You don't really need to remove those links theoretically because Google has already deindexed them or discounted them. So they don't count any more.

    It could also be that the team you hired was using the same anchor text again and again in their backlinking, resulting in a massive penalty for you, like so many have experienced.

    If it is so, then you just need to build backlinks with several variations in anchor text to dilute the over-optimization of anchor text with the backlinks that were built for you.

    You can do this by building more backlinks using anchor text with:

    01. Variations in your main keyword.

    02. Synonyms

    03. Generic Terms (Here's a list of Generic Anchor Text)

    04. Your domain or URL (e.g., www.WF.com)


    Cheers,
    Allen Walker
    The Mysterious Marketer
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    @xxxx[{::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::> IM COUPONS <::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::}]xxxx@
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    • Profile picture of the author lindasofia
      It is very difficult to recover from Google penalty. And there is only one way to do this that you have to ensure Google that is was not your mistake and some competitor has done this.
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