Victim of negative SEO

[Henkiepenkie]

Hello,

I'm one of those people that got the "unnatural links" message from google.

Since i run my site from the very first day and always was a one man business i know all the ins and outs of the website.
Basicly i have  never ever used a seo company to submit my site anywhere.
Never ever i used any shady tactic to get better ranks.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc.

So. After i got notified in webmaster tools i started digging into a list (provided by webmaster tools) to find out why i got this message (meanwhile i lost 75% of my se traffic in past 3 months)

After searching for hours i found out that in the past 2 / 3 months my site has been spammed on about 150 forums (completely dead forums with nothing but spam on it)

There was no logic at all since my site got linked with the most ridiculous and unlogical word phrases.  
My site is adult related and all spam links contained word phrases like "bangladesh mobile"  or "rock girl"  or  "animal abuse" or "ringtones" etc etc.

if i ever would be so stupid to start spamming my 7 year old strong business i would at least use titles that would make sence.

anyway.
I can't do nothing about these forums, i don't own them, i can't erase them and if there are any owners, they simply don't respond.
I made a list of all the forums and send it to google but the only response they come up with is "there are still unnatural links". I hardly believe they did anything with that list i send them.

I don't know what else i can do and was hoping that somebody could advice me on what to do here besides sending google messages on a daily base.

cheers

[Henkiepenkie]

Unfortunately i share the same thought about this mess.

1. i already tried

2. gonna do some work on this and hopefully get result.

[RyanKent]

Unfortunately there is work to do to clean up this mess. You want the links to your site removed. A few approaches you can take:

1. Contact the site owners, let them know the URLs of the pages which link to your site and request for the links to be removed. I know many site owners will not respond or help, but some do. Carefully document your efforts.

2. If these sites all use the same forum software, determine if the software is licensed. If they use vBulletin (for example) you can contact VB and give them a list of the sites and request they check to see if these sites are using a licensed version of VB. It is possible someone bought 1 license and used it on many sites which would be software piracy. Hopefully VB will do the work for you of contacting the web hosts and having these sites removed.

[Henkiepenkie]

I provided you the url in a PM

The spammy forums are ALL different urls BUT with the same software.
Yes i only exchanged like 75 links myself BUT i'm pretty sure there are about 4 times more all around the web, spread by people visiting my site etc etc. Just like people post links to youtube on external sites, but nothing to worry about, this is normal..

You don't have to register to post a response on those forums btw. A real spam heaven for spammers. Created ONLY to spam.
It is clearly a bot who did this, all posts made are similar, only the title of urls are used different.

I don't think any human would spend time doing this unless it was a very desperate webmaster who tried to kick me out of results.

[RyanKent]

A few questions:

• Can you share the URL of your site? If it is an adult site, clearly mark it as such so no one receives any surprises.

• How many quality links have you earned since your site began?

• These spammy forums you mentioned, are they 150 different forums? It is a lot of effort for someone to register on 150 different sites just to spam you. I would suspect all these sites are related in some way or there is an automated way to post on them. Do they all use the same forum software? It is possible for a script to be written to auto-register on forums and post spam. I am asking because if we can figure out how this spam was generated, it may help with figuring out how to remove it.

Normally 150 spammy links are not a problem for a site, but if all you have is 75 exchanged links and these 150 spammy links with nothing else, then that can be a concern. A first step would be asking all the link exchange sites to "nofollow" their links to your site. A link is supposed to be an "independent vote" for your site. These links do not represent that and instead are a business exchange similar to advertising.

[Henkiepenkie]

from over 100 links i discovered only 2 were linking to an internal page. I removed those internal pages already but i'm afraid the direct homepage links are hurting badly.

[eyepaq]

Are those "spammy" links you've identify pointing to the home page or internal pages ?

[Henkiepenkie]

Hello Ryan,

First of all thank you for your valuable comment.
All responses i had so far on many other forums were "you must be a spammer" or "it's your own fault" based on nothing. (probably lack of intelligence from the one who responds)

Anyway,

I can say 100% that in over 6 years i'm running my site i never submitted the site to any free directory.
I have never hired anyone related to a seo company or any other link builder.
Also never submitted articles to blogs or other stuff related to submitting.

I don't own other sites offering similar content but i do trade traffic with other sites offering similar content, some of these partners (i call them partners because i do business with them since i started this website years ago) also link to me with "follow" links.  
I probably have about 75 of these links, all gathered in a time period of over 6 years.  75 links spread over 6 years should not be something to worry about in my opinion, especially when these sites are mostly quality sites too.

All these other sites i do business with have a same way of doing business. It's all about sending traffic to eachother, creating content and offering those to visitors.

All these sites i mentioned are still ranking page 1 for the keywords our niche is based on exept i'm the only one not in top 100 right now (While i was ranked in top 3, if not nr 1, for over 6 years)..

That is why i think the reason why only my site got hit are the 150 (spam)forums i mentioned before.

Thanks

[RyanKent]

Hi Rasit,

I have responded to numerous site owners who felt they were a victim of negative SEO. After research, none of them were. You could be the exception but it is not possible to make that determination without a review of your site and its backlinks. Some questions to ask:

• have you submitted your site to a bunch of "free directories". Many site owners perform this task thinking it is ok when in 99%+ of the cases these links violate Google's Guidelines.

• Have you or anyone else (developer, "seo company", link builder, etc) created links to your sites from blog comments, forums, etc. While it is possible to create these links in a quality way by sticking to moderated sites which are relevant to your niche and posting meaningful replies, a large percentage of sites post this type of content in a spammy manner which creates manipulative links.

• Have you submitted articles to various generic sites or article directories? The same ideas as comment spam apply.

• Do you own other sites offering similar content which then point follow'd links back to your main site?

The above are a few of the primary methods used to create manipulative links. I find many site owners participate in the above techniques not realizing they are damaging their own site with these activities and causing their own penalties.

The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc.

This is definitely a concern and could be considered manipulative linking depending on how it was implemented. It would more likely be manipulative if these links are site wide.

Google penalties are a complex SEO issue. There is not a few simple steps which can be offered in a Q&A reply that would be meaningful. The first step is identifying the link penalty and then resolving it. It is not 100% clear whether you simply received a warning or whether your site was actually penalized. Based on the drop in traffic you mentioned it does seem likely your site was penalized.

My advice would be to work with a SEO consultant to remove the link penalty. As when hiring any professional (accountant, attorney, mechanic, etc) be sure to learn about the SEO's experience handling your issue and do not simply hire anyone you find. Another caution is be careful of any "Independent SEO Review" sites. Many industry professionals have repeatedly discussed how any SEO can be rated #1 with these type of companies.