Unnatural Links on Forum Posts

[Droidman86]

Google responds to my reconsideration request. They give me like 2 links of the many unnatural links which are actually people mentioning our website in their conversation.

1. How can that be unnatural, legitimate people discussing about our website services?
2. Even if it's unnatural, how can I possibly remove a backlink from a forum post?

[Christy-Correll]

Jorge, thanks for your question! You've received several solid responses. Did any of them answer your question?

[MarieHaynes]

I have had it happen a few times where a truly natural link was given as an example of an unnatural one.  In each case, however, the example given was indicative of a large pattern in which there truly were unnatural links.  For example, in one case, the example given was a keyword anchored link in a blog post.  This link was not paid for or asked for in any way and really was natural.  However, the site I was working on had once belonged to a program called Blogitive that would pay bloggers to write short blog posts and link to people using keywords.  Even though the example link was natural, there were many other links similar to this one that were paid links.

In our case, we attempted to remove the natural link along with the unnatural ones.  We also looked at our backlink profile and removed other links that probably were natural but would be hard to tell and possibly could have been construed by Google as unnatural.  We did this by sorting our links by anchor text.  Who knows, we may have gotten the penalty lifted by just removing the unnatural ones and telling Google that those other keyword anchored links were natural, but we decided to err on the side of caution and be really thorough.  This site had their penalty removed and had a beautiful improvement in traffic as well as a Penguin recovery.  But, it was a hard penalty to remove because their unnatural links were hard to distinguish from their natural ones.

Regarding your second question, if you can't get the link removed, then show Google that you have tried by including a Google Doc spreadsheet that shows that you have gathered the email address of the forum, the whois address and tried using any contact form available.  Then, disavow the link on the domain level.

But don't make the mistake of just going after the two links given.  If those were the only 2 unnatural links left they would have passed you.  There are likely a number of forum posts that really were self made.

[GPainter]

Hi Jorge,

As ImWaqas so very well put it, it doesn't matter what we think Google is the boss and we just have to suck it up. You could try emailing the forum but if I'm honest you might as well just disavow the links and get on. Check your back links too remember Google doesn't like low quality links this can include blog comments, forums etc.

As Matt Cutts has mentioned don't be shy if you have had a penalty.

Good luck to you.

[BradyDCallahan]

I'd take a strong look at where those conversations are taking place. If the forum is spammy - or has been in the past - a simple mention and link of your business (even if it's being done legitimately) will raise a red flag. It also may say something bigger about your link profile as a whole. Are all your links coming from similar sources (i.e. forums)?

As far as removal, you could try and contact the person directly through the forum (if possible). It may require you signing up for that forum. You could also try and use the disavow tool as a last ditch effort. Not sure how successful that would be, however.

My ultimate suggestion? Diversify your backlink profile.

[Asjad]

1 - Buddy It does not matter What We think. Right now Its all Google and We have to admit it, If they are saying these are unnatural links then it is So lets move forward.

2- If these links are from Good Forums then I contact their support and they will have your link deleted otherwise You have to use disavow tool.

Thanks