Unnatural Inbound Links Warning in GWT

[TomKing]

Hi all,

A bit of a long questions so apologies in advance but please bear with me...

My client has received an 'Unnatural Inbound Links' warning and it is now my task to try and resolve through a process of;

• Highlighting the unnatural links
• Requesting that the links be removed (via webmaster requests)
• Possibly using the Disavow Tool
• Submitting a Reconsideration Request

So I downloaded my clients link profile from both OSE and GWT in CSV format and compared - the amount of links returned was considerably more in GWT than it was in OSE...?

So I set about going through the links, first filtering into order so that I could see blocks of links from the same URL - I highlighted in colours;

Red - Definitely need to be removed

Orange - Suspect, need to investigate further

Yellow - Seem to be ok but may revisit

Green - Happy with the link, no further action

So to my question which relates to, is it 'black & white' - is it a case of 'good link v 'bad link' or could there be some middle ground? (am I making this process even more confusing than it actually is?)

As an example, here are some 'Orange' URL's;

http://www.24searchengines.com/ (not exact URL as it goes to the travel section which is my clients niche) - this to me looks spammy and I would normally 'paint it red' and look to remove, however, when I go to the 'contact us' page;

(http://www.24searchengines.com/texis/open/allthru?area=contactus)

and follow the link to remove from directory, it takes me here;

http://www.dmoz.org/docs/en/help/update.html

DMOZ???

My clients has a 'whole heap' of these type of links;

http://www.25searchengines.com/

http://www.26searchengines.com/

http://www.27searchengines.com/

http://www.28searchengines.com/

...and many many more!!

Here is another example;

http://foodys.eu/

http://foodys.eu/2007/01/04/the-smoke-ring-bbq-community/

...plus many more...

My client is in the 'cruise niche' and as there is a 'cruise' section on the site I'm not sure whether this constitutes a good, bad or indifferent link!

Finally, prior to me working with this client (1 month) they moved their site from a .co.uk to a .com domain and redirected all links from the .co.uk to the .com (according to GWT, over 16k have been redirected) - a lot of these 'spammy' links were to the .co.uk and have thus been redirected, should I even consider removing the redirection or will that have severe consequences?

Apologies for the long (long) post, I know I'm heading in the right direction but some assurance wouldn't go amiss!

Many thanks

Andy

<colgroup><col width="1317"></colgroup>
|   |

[TomKing]

Thanks to you all for taking the time to answer my very long question, it is very much appreciated!

I will post updates regarding my my progress!

Andy

[MarieHaynes]

Hi Andy,

Welcome to the challenging world of penalty removal!  Here are my thoughts on your questions.

First of all, don't worry about dmoz and 23searchengines and the like.  The 23searchengines sites are scraper sites and Google knows that they are not self made links.  99.9% of the time a dmoz link is ok.  The exception would be the case where a site managed to get an anchor texted link on there (usually by accessing a corrupt editor).  If your link from dmoz is anchored by your brand/url then just ignore them.

Regarding the foody's link, whether or not it's unnatural depends on the patterns your client has.  If you've got the occasional blogroll link it may be ok.  But, when you're auditing the links you'll soon see if this is a pattern.  If your site has a whack of blogroll links, especially if they are keyword anchored, then they are probably on Google's radar.  What I would do in my audit is mark this as "blogroll" and then, once I'm finished my audit I would decide whether blogroll links should be removed or not.  The exception to this would be if I know that my client has paid for blogroll links.  If that's the case then I would flag them for removal right away.

If you've got a pile of spammy links from your .co.uk site then removing the redirect is probably a good idea.

There is always middle ground when assessing links.

Good luck!

Marie

[Jonathan1979]

I saw with your link example http://foodys.eu/ that they have alot of sitewide sidebar links.  This is a big red flag.  Sitewide sidebar links are one of the easiest ways to get a penalty, as the links are unnatural, even if it is a good site (i.e. one link is great, but sitewide links bad).

Any decent sites that have these sort of links and which are giving decent traffic you should get the rel="nofollow" tag added.  Of course this is dependent on the webmaster dealing with your request.

[KarlBantleman]

Hi Andy,

I'd be totally ruthless with your link audit, even if 1% of you thinks it is spammy, disavow it. In fact, if it isn't driving traffic then disavow it, what are you going to lose. The question to ask yourself is would you be happy to show the link to Matt Cutts? If not, then get rid.

We heard from Google recently that they are not allowed to open any files that are sent to them for security reasons so, for me, going through the effort of contacting webmasters and sending Google files with emails etc is pointless. I know they say you should be we have stopped asking because it gets you nowhere and you haven't got the time to wait for replies. I'd just get some numbers and info together about what you have disavowed, why there was these links in the first place and what you have done to remedy it. Obviously, if you can get them taken down easily then do so.

Stop building links until you have the penalty lifted! Don't look at the anchor text used to justify whether it is a good or bad link, look at the relevance to your website. I even disavow 404 and no-followed links if I think they are spammy.

Good luck in the recovery!

[rikano]

Hello,

Ihave recovered more than 3 websites affected by unnatural link penalty (which is a manual penalty) and used the disavow tool for several clients of mine. Here is what i do recommend for u:

1. Be more determined/accurate with links analysis. You may classify links into 3 groups:

a/definetly spammy: links in footers, sitewides, links from low quality directories, linsk from blog/directory networks, etc...

b/maybe spammy: these are links that appear to be good, but you may have to digg mire to be sure if it's really good (these could be links exhanges, links from websites that have been spotted of seeling links, etc...)

c/good links: this are links using branded anchors, parital matches or low number of exact macth anchors. These links should be placed in relevant websites and high editorial level (not linking to every rubbish oin the web)

About the redirected links, if i were to take this project, i would analyze the redirected links and check if most of them are spammy or have little to no value, i will remove the redirect and take the time and effort to build new links to the .com domain. Creating new links is better than deleting the old ones, here is why:

1. creatinng links is easier and funnier (you feel success when u earn a new good link)

2. it takes less time to see results (disavowing and deleting links may take upt to 3-6 mnths to reflect resullts as google takes time to process these data)

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to  get back to me.

Regards

Amine Rihane

SEO Consultant