Check list for Manual penalty – Before going for reconsideration

[Shashidhar.SEO]

Hi there,

Any one please help us, in cross checking our recovery work before submitting to reconsideration request.

1. Quality Check list for a Website
2. SEO audit check list

Why am requesting means, our previous request was came with a negative result.

Thanking you in advance

[Shashidhar.SEO]

Hai Marie Haynes, thanks for the valuable suggestion, am a regular follower of mytrafficdropped.com.

Yes, these kind of keyword based anchor text links are there in our back link profile. All these links were build by a free lancer seo, We identified these & collected the report from him. We started diluting these keyword based anchor text links with Brand name, read more, visit website.. etc anchor text based links. Now it's about below 1% of total back links, (143 of 3200 unique domain links from WMT). We are trying to remove as many as possible, but the removal response was negligible and some are expecting $ to remove links.  Still these few links (below 1% of total links)will be consider as unnatural links..?.  if I used the disavow tool, how many days will it take to remove these  bad links?. Your advice is highly appreciated . It’s nice to hear you and Thanking you in advance.

[MarieHaynes]

I am going to respectfully disagree with Erwan when he says that this message  could mean nothing.  When SEOMoz got an unnatural links message it was part of a strange batch of messages that went out in July that said that Google was taking targeted action on certain links but was still trusting the site as a whole.  However, the message that you got is indeed one about unnatural links and almost definitely should cause a loss in rankings.

Google recently handed out more of these confusing messages where it's not sure whether you should take action or not.  I wrote about the difference between these messages and the one that you got here:  http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/google-sends-new-confusing-unnatural-links-messages/

But those messages are different than yours.  Yours is definitely a message of a manual penalty. Now, some manual penalties can affect just single keywords but often they can affect the entire site's ability to rank.  According to ahrefs.com, your site has followed links from over 2300 domains.  If the majority of those were self made then you can be in trouble.

With just a quick look I can see a fair number of links that Google will want to see removed:

http://meckfuture.org/clicksnm.com-13262.html

http://www.wbslink.com/Shopping/General_Merchandise/page-2.html

http://bidbid.com.ar/detail/promotional-codes-6188.htm

In order to get the penalty removed you will need to try to remove every single self made link and show your efforts to Google and then disavow the ones you can't get removed.  However, if you don't have many naturally earned links then you may have difficulty ranking once you get your penalty removed.

[Shashidhar.SEO]

Thanks once again for your time and much appreciate..  team is working on to better the user experience.

Best regards

[johnny122]

Quality is a bit subjective. Google does not really like coupons/affiliate websites. You need to inspire confidence.

1/ You should insist on your original content and promote it - your blog is not easy to find from the home page.

Put a blog link top of the page - maybe add an excerpt/a quote from the last article.

2/ About us/Contact us pages are a little empty. Would be nice to have an address, a picture of the office, of the team etc.

3/ If I look one of your competitor : http://media.couponmom.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=emhecijvt7m0kpeq4qp9nlcr64&cid=275

I find the design bad but the visitor can see there's a real person behind the website.

4/ You could add a FAQ page.

5/ Another competitor have a privacy page + a california privacy rights page.

6/ You used the social facebook plugin on your blog; maye you should also use it on your home page like http://www.couponnetwork.com did.

7/ Try to get trust signals like http://coupons.com did :

http://clicktoverify.truste.com/pvr.php?page=validate&url=www.coupons.com&sealid=102

http://www.bbb.org/sanjose/business-reviews/marketing-programs-and-services/couponscom-incorporated-in-mountain-view-ca-223835#sealclick

Groupon.com mention : https://www.trustedshops.com/shop/certificate.php?shop_id=X06E5E546FF38C7F9EFF97A9141038AE8

8/ Maybe it's time to rework on your design; coupons.com or groupon.com have a good one.

9/ I think you got penalized because of modified/hidden links.

When I click on Kernel picture by example, I get there : http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/buy-employee-desktop-live-viewer.php

This is not the visible link... The user should know he will be redirect on another website. There should be a text like "visit Kernel website to redeem your coupon".

10/ You got the general idea. It's all about trust and user experience!

[Shashidhar.SEO]

Thank you very much Erwan, such a detailed reply.

One last question, We made & maintaining website, by obeying Google quality  guidelines: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769.

Ours is a coupon website & we are updating every thing like, content, coupons & coupon content manually. Still Google saying "We’ve reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines". As a coupons website we are doing our best to follow Google guidelines. Can you please help us, in this regard. Any suggestion from you side, where we are missing on this parameter.

Thanking you in advance for you time.

Best Regards.

[johnny122]

1/ Unnatural inbound links message does not lead necessarily to a loss of rank and a loss of traffic. Even SEOmoz.org got the same message and lost nothing (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-unnatural-links-warnings). I had the same experience for a flash game website.

2/ If you actually lost ranks/traffic, you have to show your good will and give something to Google. I suggest you to use Open Site Explorer and to look for low authority linking domains.

Example : last URL = www.cheapautoexpo.com/tag/coupons/

You have 4 links on the same page - deals365.us did the same. A click = a pop-up. This looks like a bad neighbourhood.

You won't lose much by removing this kind of links. Keep a track of all the links you removed. In this case :

http://www.cheapautoexpo.com/Lifestyle/verified-online-promo-codes-for-discounts-on-apparels-shopping/

http://www.cheapautoexpo.com/News/get-discounts-on-concert-tickets-through-with-ticket-spot-coupon-codes/

http://www.cheapautoexpo.com/Education/revolution-prep-promo-codes-coupons-to-learn-sat-act-at-affordable-price-online-/

http://www.cheapautoexpo.com/Lifestyle/get-expedia-promo-codes-coupons-to-have-cheap-tickets-for-travel-and-hotels-/

It will show Google you did a serious work.

3/ If you can't remove the links manually, ask the webmaster to do it. In most cases he won't answer if this is a spammy website.

Then consider using the disallow tool : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

4/ I would recommend you to do the same for all the low directories... and the link suggested by Google : http://www.allworldlinks.com/k/317277/online-free-coupons.html

5/ Pinpoint Designs had the same issue and wrote and article about : http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience

In the reconsideration request, they mentionned :

• Who we were and what we do
• Why we believed we had been hit
• What we had done to rectify the issue (a link to the Google Docs file was attached)
• How we knew it wouldn't happen again
• An apology
• My name / contact details

They also tried to improve the quality of their website (do you have good content on your website or just coupons ?) and to get better links; they started a blog and wrote guest articles.

6/ To get better links, I suggest you to use open site explorer on competitors to see their most authoritative links. Most of time, you can also get the same link if this is a directory or a blog taking guest posts.

7/ Last but not least, Google spam team is human. Your reconsideration request depends of the employee who will deal with it... You can never be sure of the result.

Good luck ~~.

[Shashidhar.SEO]

Hi Erwan,

Here is the message, what we got, Please have a look. Can any one please explain the seriousness or intensity of penalty?.

We’ve reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#3. These guidelines outline illicit practices which may lead Google to take action on a site in order to keep webspam out of search results. In addition to this email, you may also receive a notification in Webmaster Tools regarding the outcome of your reconsideration request.

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. Here is an article describing these techniques:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356.

To illustrate how these articles could apply to you, here are examples of pages that contain inorganic links to your site:

{Online Free Coupons} -- http://www.allworldlinks.com/k/277/online-free-coupons.html

To find more links to your site, you can download a list in Webmaster Tools by doing the following:
1. Click on your site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
2. Click on 'Traffic' and then 'Links to Your Site.'
3. Under 'Who links the most,' click 'More.'
4. At the top of the page, click on 'Download more sample links.'

Please correct or remove all content that is outside our quality guidelines. You might consider reaching out to the webmasters of the sites with the inorganic links on them. For advice on how to go about contacting them, read http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=9109.

Once you have updated your site, reply to this email noting the specific changes you made. Only after there has been a significant decrease in unnatural linking will we consider reviewing your reconsideration request again. If there are still links that you could not remove, we will look for an explanation of why you were unable to do so.

If you’d like more specific advice for your site, consider posting in our Webmaster Help Forum, where a community of webmasters may be able to help you. You can post to the Forum by visiting the following link: http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters.

Sincerely,

The Google Search Quality Team

[johnny122]

What manual penalty message did you get in GWT ? Low quality/spam content or unnatural inbound links ?