Unnatural Links Message - And How I Overcame It
- SEO |
I know there are probably plenty of these threads on here, but I know when I looked, it was hard to find any good explanations of how people got over the unnatural link message.
Background
I bought a new domain, put some content up, and start link building in about Nov 2011. Keep adding content (new posts, maybe 100 words each) ... but I also have category pages that contain about 500 words each. I got one category page to Page 1 in Google, then it did a dance for a while, then around Feb 2011, it came back to page 1. March 2011, I got #1 after one of my press releases rolled out.
At the time, I had 2 keywords #1, one #3, and one #10. I stopped doing link building after that ... and at the end of May, I dropped to #2 for my main keyword. I stayed #2 until the end of June when I got my unnatural link message. The day I got it, my rankings dropped between 50-70, and they fluctuated between 50-70 the whole time I was on penalty.
What I Did to Fix It
Most of the links I had on the site were pointed at one page (an inner page). I would say 70% at this inner page, 25% at the homepage, and the rest scattered throughout the rest of my pages (I have around 50 total pages on the site).
I started by removing all the blogroll links. I had 5 different sites with these blogroll links (one site has over 4000 links pointing back at my site). I also fixed my on-page SEO. Rewrote the content to lower the keyword density (it was around 2.5%, and I dropped it to 1.25%). I also rewrote the meta titles and meta descriptions on a bunch of pages. I built some social bookmark links to my main page to lower the link density of some of my main keywords. I also built social bookmark links to the rest of the pages on my site to try to even that out.
Finally, I built up my social signals. Facebook likes and Google +1s to my homepage and some inner pages. I also tweeted more often, and got retweets with links back to my site.
Reconsideration Request
I waited one month to send the reconsideration request. I told them what I did to try to resolve the problem. I told them I outsourced my SEO (which I did), and that I have been trying to fix it ever since I got the penalty. I was very honest, and I was also very willing to do whatever it took to fix the penalty.
A couple days later, my site was back ... back to page #3, but back none the less.
Any questions, shoot, I will be happy to try to answer.
Background
I bought a new domain, put some content up, and start link building in about Nov 2011. Keep adding content (new posts, maybe 100 words each) ... but I also have category pages that contain about 500 words each. I got one category page to Page 1 in Google, then it did a dance for a while, then around Feb 2011, it came back to page 1. March 2011, I got #1 after one of my press releases rolled out.
At the time, I had 2 keywords #1, one #3, and one #10. I stopped doing link building after that ... and at the end of May, I dropped to #2 for my main keyword. I stayed #2 until the end of June when I got my unnatural link message. The day I got it, my rankings dropped between 50-70, and they fluctuated between 50-70 the whole time I was on penalty.
What I Did to Fix It
Most of the links I had on the site were pointed at one page (an inner page). I would say 70% at this inner page, 25% at the homepage, and the rest scattered throughout the rest of my pages (I have around 50 total pages on the site).
I started by removing all the blogroll links. I had 5 different sites with these blogroll links (one site has over 4000 links pointing back at my site). I also fixed my on-page SEO. Rewrote the content to lower the keyword density (it was around 2.5%, and I dropped it to 1.25%). I also rewrote the meta titles and meta descriptions on a bunch of pages. I built some social bookmark links to my main page to lower the link density of some of my main keywords. I also built social bookmark links to the rest of the pages on my site to try to even that out.
Finally, I built up my social signals. Facebook likes and Google +1s to my homepage and some inner pages. I also tweeted more often, and got retweets with links back to my site.
Reconsideration Request
I waited one month to send the reconsideration request. I told them what I did to try to resolve the problem. I told them I outsourced my SEO (which I did), and that I have been trying to fix it ever since I got the penalty. I was very honest, and I was also very willing to do whatever it took to fix the penalty.
A couple days later, my site was back ... back to page #3, but back none the less.
Any questions, shoot, I will be happy to try to answer.
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Trabalhodigital -
Thanks
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TRXSamurai -
Thanks
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