Website rankings plummeted after a negative SEO attack - help!

[mattylac]

Hello Mozzers

A website of a new client (http://bit.ly/PuVNTp) use to rank very well. It was on the top page for any relevant search terms in its industry in Southern Ontario (Canada). Late last year, the client was the victim of a negative SEO attack. Thousands upon thousands of spammy backlinks were built (suspected to be bought using something like Fiverr). The links came from very questionable sites or just low quality sites.

The backlink growth window was very small (2,000 every 24 hours or so). Since that happened that site has all but disappeared from search results. It is still indexed and the owner has disavowed most of the bad backlinks but the site can't seem to bounce back.

The same happened for another site that they own (http://bit.ly/1tErxpu) except the number backlinks produced was even higher. The sites both suffer from duplicate content issues and at one point (in 2012) were de-indexed due to the very spammy work of a former SEO. They came back in early 2013 and were fine for some time.

Thoughts?

[MoosaHemani]

Matt, tell you from the experience that your concern is right but you are missing a thing that should really consider!

You are removing and disavowing all the bad links this is exactly what you should be doing (give a try on removing them because this is very important here) and then try to build so high quality links at the same time.

If you see less margin of quality resources available within your niche try to do something that get you press ad authority links from media sites. This will give you some positive points in the eye of Google and get you more chance to recover!!

[mattylac]

Doesn't take much in this particular industry to rank. The competitors who do consistently well have a small number of backlinks and lower authority levels than the sites listed above. The client does have a few good back links and a nice handful of internal links.

What concerns me is the never bouncing back part. I have advised them of this and further advised them to start fresh but their is an emotional attachment to the brands that they can't let go (understandably so). My fear is that we will put in a great deal of time and resources into something that may be destined to fail now.

Would love to hear stories of others who were in a similar circumstance.

[Berner]

Sorry to hear about your website pain.

I am on the other side of the spammy link fence. I paid for an seo in 2011 to work on a site. They used black hat seo methods such as link from places such as Fiverr, yet they used digital point forums for links.

Then Here it is 2012. and Google hates me.

2013 I am a member of Moz. The best move I have made for sure.

I have done what you have and updated a disavow txt file.

I have heard many different strategies. Some say you will never recover from a non manual penalty. Some say clean up bad backlinks then replace them with good quality natural links. Then I have had some say clean up backlinks, create new ones, and then wait till the next update.

I have started with zero citations to now I have 200 or so. I do not have a bunch of backlinks, about 230, yet I am trying to gather high quality links.

So I think if you once ranked with bad backlinks, you must replace them with good quality backlinks. Other sites are ranking, so maybe use the explorer tool to see what the competition sites are using for backlinks, and see if there are any opportunities.

Best of wishes