Google Penalisation - Any help would be appreciated!

[ChrisHolgate]

Hi,
We’ve recently received a Google notification of unnatural linking along with a confirmation that we're being penalised.  There were a few other sites that we owned that perhaps had too many links pointing to our main domain so we trimmed them down and submitted a reconsideration request and got the following back:

"Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality 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 comply with 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 additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"

I want to stress that we have never in the past and do not currently buy any backlinks.  The problem that we face now is that our site has been online for best part of a decade, there are thousands of people linking to us and I have absolutely no idea where to start.

We don’t use an SEO Company but in the past few months have been using SEOmoz to improve our on-page optimisation.  I know it’s a massive ask but if could a member of the SEOmoz community or a staff member quickly take a gander and let us know if anything in particular sticks out like a sore thumb it would mean a great deal to me.

Of course, if needed we’ll employ the services of an SEO company but I’m hoping one of you guys will see something immediately obvious that could really help us out!

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards

Chris

[ChrisHolgate]

All in all this has been a pretty bad news day  

Right then, time to get cracking.  Thanks for all your help today Ryan, it is really appreciated.

[RyanKent]

Unfortunately no.

The way you described is for when you are algorithmically penalized, but not for a manual penalty. For a manual penalty you need to address all the bad links.

Violating Google Guidelines is not a crime, but a legal mindset would probably best convey the situation. If you are caught stealing money, would a judge be satisfied with you returning most of it? No. The judge would require you return all of the stolen money. When you build manipulative links, Google wants them all addressed.

[ChrisHolgate]

Actually, sorry, one more question.  I appreciate all the help you're giving me and don't mean to bombard you with what if's!

I'm assuming that you're allowed a certain percentage of 'bad' links when compared with the number of 'good' links.  For example, if the webmaster of a massive website such as Amazon log in to their Google Webmaster Tools panel I'm assuming they don't have any penalty notices caused by a few crummy links that will invariably be on a FFA site somewhere when weighed against their 425,000,000 good links.

As such, will our task be to just remove as many bad links as we can and then whatever remains will hopefully be offset by the good?

[RyanKent]

**I  really don't want to have to get a new domain name so I guess we'll have to just get cracking.  **

Obtaining a new domain name is the most drastic step possible and not recommended in most cases. It would be done primarily due to a site owner's inability to resolve the penalty themselves and not being able to afford hiring someone else to do it.

Purely out of interest though, surely a competitor could just keep adding our site to FFA directories and unrelated blogs and make it impossible for us to get the penalty removed?

What you are asking about is simply not a concern if you take the proper SEO steps on your domain. Having a penalty is like having your house on fire. Your question is something like "Should I put out the fire? What is someone else comes and lights a match at my house?" It is more theoretical then a realistic issue.

[ChrisHolgate]

Oh dear, that's not what I wanted to hear!

I really don't want to have to get a new domain name so I guess we'll have to just get cracking.  Purely out of interest though, surely a competitor could just keep adding our site to FFA directories and unrelated blogs and make it impossible for us to get the penalty removed?

[RyanKent]

Chris H, the above answer was a direct response to Christopher Wood's question. Please disregard.

[RyanKent]

Hi Chris,

In brief, your efforts are good but they will not lead to a penalty removal. Once you have a manual penalty, you need to obtain a comprehensive list of every known link to your site. Even if you use all the links from Google and OSE, it is not enough. You need all the links from multiple toolsets. Next, you need to go through every link and determine which links violate Google's Guidelines. Lastly, you need to contact every site owner who is providing a manipulative link and convince them to remove it. If the link is not removed, you need to very thoroughly document all aspects of the process.

Most people who attempt the above fail to satisfy Google's requirements. There is an incredible amount of work involved.

[ChrisHolgate]

Would it be less time to get a new domain name and start over?

I'd like to think that it's not quite at that stage.  Regardless, it would be nice to know what exactly had been done so we could ensure that it just wouldn't happen again.

I lose sleep at night worrying because I posted in the World Rock Paper Scissors Associations Website's forum a comment about a bankruptcy lawyer.

Waaaaaaa?  I'm really worried now.  Ryan, when you say there is actually such an association are you talking between such a site and Refresh Cartridges?

[RyanKent]

Would it be less time to get a new domain name and start over?

That's always an option. Many site owners do not wish to take this approach due to having a domain name which matches their company name. Other site owners have owned their domain for many years and do not wish to lose the links they earned.

If you have a keyword domain name or other low value domain that has not earned many links, then changing domains may be the best approach.

I lose sleep at night worrying because I posted in the World Rock Paper Scissors Associations Website's forum a comment about a bankruptcy lawyer.

I assumed you were joking but then realized there actually is such an association. Clearly one link will not cause a penalty. I have viewed dozens of penalized sites and they all had an overwhelmingly spammy profile with 90%+ of the links being questionable.

[ChrisHolgate]

Hi Ryan,
Thank-you so much for such a helpful post.  I've removed the links from refreshcreations.co.uk, computerarticles.co.uk and vatloophole.co.uk with immediate effect.  These are all sites which I own so removing links to my 'baby' felt a little bit gutting but as the links were all sitewide it is entirely possible that Google saw them as being manipulative.  I'm assuming that once they confirm that they are no longer penalising us that I could reinstate the links with a nofollow attribute?

With regard to the link for http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Digital_Technology_for_Graphic_Design I have e-mailed them asking to be removed but I don't hold up much hope for them doing so - God knows where this link came from!  Rather naively I'm hoping that Google isn't worried about an odd link here or there on a PR0 site which I have no control over so will now request reconsideration and see what happens.

Just to confirm, am I correct in saying that article writing is still alive but that the articles should be relevant and of a good quality but only include a link to the site in the 'about the author' section?  I only ask as this was going to be our next project; writing high quality articles for various technology sites with a link back to Refresh Cartridges.

Am going to have a thorough look through your http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 post now and the comments and ensure there's nothing else we can do.

Thanks again for your help.

[HandsomeWeb]

Would it be less time to get a new domain name and start over?

I lose sleep at night worrying because I posted in the World Rock Paper Scissors Associations Website's forum a comment about a bankruptcy lawyer.

[RyanKent]

Hi Chris,

Based on your post, it seems you received a notice in your Google Webmaster Tools informing you your site was penalized for manipulative links. You then submitted a Reconsideration Request to which Google basically repeated the original message....your site is manually penalized for manipulative links.

The bad news is this type of penalty is the most difficult penalty that can be received. It takes a great deal of time and effort following specific steps to remove. To gain a bit of details regarding the penalty, please review this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012

Using OSE, I noticed the top link to your site seems manipulative:

http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Digital_Technology_for_Graphic_Design

You also have many other low quality links showing which appear manipulative in nature:

http://www.refreshcreations.co.uk/ (sitewide footer link)

http://www.computerarticles.co.uk/ (it appears the link was removed but it also seems this site is operated by your company)

http://www.vatloophole.co.uk/

**I want to stress that we have never in the past and do not currently buy any backlinks. **

You may not pay for them, but it seems many links were created by yourself or an agent (employee, developer, seo, link builder, etc) working on your behalf. These links are manipulative according to search engine guidelines and need to be removed.

A link should be an "independent vote" meaning another site owner chose to offer the link for a valid reason, such as your exceptional product or service. If you are able to create the link because you own or operate the site, or because you paid a fee, that link would be deemed manipulative. Even if you submit content to a free directory, article directory, etc. most of those links (think 99%) would be considered manipulative.