Are these links bad for my results?

[2Hillz]

In the past we have requested links on multiple directories. Since we have seen a mayor drop (60% in traffic) in results around the pinquin update 24-26th of April. Our results have been slowly getting lower and lower in Google.

Is it possible to tell if these links are in fact doing my site harm? Before the 26th of April it was easy to see that the results where benefiting from the submission to those directories.

We did not have any messages in webmaster tools and reconsideration says "no manual spam action taken". What would be the best strategy to turn this around and go up again?

A selection of the requested links can be found below.

<colgroup><col width="266"></colgroup>
| www.thesquat.org |
| www.directmylink.com |
| www.thegreatdirectory.org |
| www.submission4u.com |
| www.urlmoz.com |
| www.basoti.org |
| www.iwebdirectory.co.uk |
| www.freeinternetwebdirectory.com |
| addsite-submitfree.com |
| opendirectorys.com |
| www.xennobb.com |
| mdwerks.com |
| www.directoryfire.com |
| www.rssbuffet.com |

To give a good view on the problem: The requested links anchors are mostly not in the native language of the directories.

Thanks!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

No problem

Let me know if you need any further questions answering.

Andy

[2Hillz]

Thanks for your help Andy! i will look into it.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Google+ can help with identifying who you are as an organisation and owner of content on your site. Might not help with this particular problem, but worth doing all the same.

If you are 100% sure that it is Penguin, then I would start with manually contacting some of the sites where you have questionable links and ask for them to be removed. If this doesn't work, or if links wont be removed, then it might be that you should look at using the Disavow tool and just get rid of anything that might be causing you problems.

After you do that, if can take a number of weeks for Google to get round to spidering all those sites to see you are no longer there.

Another blog post of mine on the Disavow tool with video from Matt Cutts and links to help pages on Google as well.

Andy

[2Hillz]

No, unfortunately we are still unable to point out what exactly the problem is. We think it must have been penguin because of the date and the amount of keywords it affected.

No we dont have Google+ yet. Does it makes a lot of difference in this case?

We did try to improve all the different aspects of the site. We added a better canonical structure, reduced the amount of keywords and links on a page and rewrote a lot of text to make it more user friendly instead of google friendly.

Unfortunately we did not noticed a turnover in results and getting somehow desperate on what to try next. If we look at our direct competitors (who do better in results) i can not see why they are not affected.

Thanks for the link to your article. I will surely go and read it.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Unless you get a warning from Google in WMT, don't worry about trying to Disavow them - just don't try and create any more

If you are after a little inspiration on what to do, I wrote a bit of a link-building 101 that could give you some ideas?

Do you have Google+ setup and Authorship on your site? have you identified what it is that caused you to get hit? Panda / Penguin / Page Quality, etc.

Andy

[2Hillz]

Thanks for your reply Andy! I know the listed directories are not doing any good for my results.

The question still remains if it would be worth the trouble to let them all removed. In our niche we now have contacted blogs and more sensible directories to get us listed and we see that as a continuous process. I have to mention that before the update in April we did experienced a climbing line wish is all gone now.

We are now 6 months away from pinquin and still we having low results. That is the reason why i'm searching for other possible solutions.

Thanks again!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Just looking at the names of some of those directories, I can tell you they are worthless - The Great Directory? i Web Directory?

I would be searching for sites that will benefit from what you have to offer and contact them - steer clear of directories of this kind. However, find a directory that is dedicated to your niche, and that is acceptable.

Andy