Unnatural links warning and steps to fix it
-
Hi there,
Firstly our website is - imrubbish.co.uk
Basically we were unintentionally using a rogue seo company for about 5 months who charged a lot of money and built absolute rubbish quality links.
When i saw the type of links being built i immediately stopped them as i knew they were bad news but the damage had been done.
I have since moved to a completely ethical seo company who for the past 6 months have tried with me to remove this penalty without success.
Here are the steps we have taken.
Unnatural links warning.
- Submitted a file with all the links we know are bad and resubmitted.
Not good enough
- We then used disavow tool as there were so many links we had no control of. Along with a detailed write up of what has happened and who had done it.
Not good enough
Now the problem my seo guy thinks is because there are more and more links appearing almost daily that are still left over rubbish from the old seo company.
I think there might also be other problems - maybe my anchor test distribution is spammy etc, i dont know and i am hoping someone can maybe help with a couple more pointers.
I have asked a similar question before where there was a discussion about even just leaving it and concentrating on building more ethical links with brand anchor text but that was not working so we used the disavow tool.
We have been stuck in this rut for over a year now and could really do with some extra help/guidance from anyone who has experience or knowledge of what we should do.
I saw the post yesterday about this very subject and hope someone could help drill done specifically what could be the problem in our case.
We would also look at hiring someone if they could help.
Thank you
Jon
-
Hi Jon,
You mentioned that you submitted a file with your known bad backlinks and that you also disavowed those links, but did you actually make attempts to get those links manually removed? Google wants to see that you have tried to remove as many of your unnatural links as possible. You also need to document this well in a Google Doc so that they can see your efforts.
If you have indeed tried to remove backlinks then the next most common reason for sites to fail at reconsideration is because you haven't identified enough of your links as unnatural. Sometimes what looks natural to you actually may be a link that goes against the quality guidelines.
Don't give up on this domain! I've yet to see one that couldn't be saved.
-
Hi Jon
Sorry I didn't see this earlier - tried to private message you but I don't believe I can at the moment. If you'd like, feel free to drop an email at tom [at] sowhatmedia.co.uk
Obviously replace the [at] with @. Hopefully I can help you out a bit more there.
-
Hi im rubbish,
I would generally agree with Tom on the need to be completely honest with yourself when assessing links.
It is also a good idea to make sure that you have carefully read the finer detail of Google's quality guidelines. Make sure you know what qualifies as a link scheme in Google's eyes. This page provides some specific examples that might be eye opening if you have not read them recently.
If you think that the ongoing issue is caused by the appearance of more links, then there are a couple of things you should do:
- Make sure that you disavow entire domains as Tom suggested, so that any other links in existence at that domain will also be disavowed.
- Carefully monitor and identify new links as they appear. If it seems that unnatural links are still accumulating without explanation, highlight the issue in a reconsideration request and make sure that you provide scrupulous detail for the Webspam team to follow up. Be very clear - "these links have not been initiated by us".
Since you're in the UK it might be useful to know there are a couple of Search conferences coming up in the next couple of weeks that include sessions and workshops on link removal and penalty recovery.
BrightonSEO in the South - 11 & 12 April. I believe individual conference tickets are all gone, but there are still places in the Link Removal workshop with Tim Grice (which comes with a full day conference ticket included)
ionSearch in the North (Leeds) - 18 & 19 April. The conference includes both an Expert Panel on Link Removal and workshop sessions. Tim Grice will also be speaking here, as well as Christoph Cemper (owner of the company that develops Link Detox) and myself (rmoov.com).
A final note on starting again with a new domain: This absolutely has to be purely a business decision. With the obvious amount of time, money and effort put into your site's branding to date, even stripping back the entire link profile and "rebooting" your domain is likely to be a better business proposition than having to recreate an entire brand.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi,
It was a manual penalty the site received. I dont want to give up hope on it yet, our domain is very brandable and has been established for 5 years with a good proportion of repeat business. We also have 5 or 6 very high quality almost impossible to get links.
I would like to get this manual penalty removed that has and is the number one objective. Because of the penalty we setup recyclingbins.co.uk and wheeliebins.co.uk the former is doing very well so in that sense it may be a blessing - a deep hard to fathom blessing as it meant we had to improve other areas of business.
Would you be available to talk about this? I am in a contract with seo company i have, but i would like to look at getting someone with specific expertise in this to help? I could get the existing seo company on creating good links with natural brand anchor text then.
Thank you
Jon
-
There was a great article by Pinpoint Designs on this exact topic.
I'm having the same issue as you with a bad domain trying to turn it into a good one. I have a client who seems to have gotten hit by Penguin and then a unnatural link penalty (manual) we did get the removal notice of the manual penalty but our rankings have not recovered yet. Jon's advice is great but I would also take a look at the article above posted on SEOmoz.
-
Yes Tom, I am also agreed with you to suggest taking new domain and it must be very beneficial to start market freshly.
-
Hi Jon
This is such a shame, as it looks a great website with a cool domain name. It always makes me angry when an SEO agency prays on the naivety of a webmaster, as your previous company did.
What I'd ask first is what sources have you used to identify your bad backlinks? In an ideal world, you should be using multiple. In the past, I've had success with removing penalties but only when using a combination of Google webmasters report, Open site explorer, MajesticSEO (historical index) and LinkDetox. I'd highly recommend majestic's historical index as it is the most complete crawl out there as far as I know, while LinkDetox can help you diagnose a number of links and see if they're toxic or suspicious.
The next question I'd have is how is your current SEO guy classifying the bad links? I've found that it is important to be as vigilant as possible with your classification - probably more so than you think you need to be. This means if you see any link with targeted anchor text, either partial or exact, get rid of it. Blogrolls/site-wide links: Gone. If at any point you can look at a link and think: "That looks like I asked for it to be there/it was placed there" consider it for removal.
Have you been explicit in your reconsideration request? Of course, this is only relevant if you get a message back confirming manual action has been taken. If you don't and no manual action has been taken, the penalty is not present and doesn't require a reconsideration.
You need to give a detailed account to Google of what steps you have taken to have the links removed. How you found the link (by source), where you found the contact details (on site, contact form, who.is data), when you contacted them, when you followed up etc. Anything you can't get removed after multiple requests should only then be disavowed, in Google's eyes. The Disavow tool is great but Google really wants you to be as thorough as you can and make every effort to have the links removed before you disavow.
In addition, don't be afraid to use the domain:example.com function liberally. You'll disavow any link on the entire domain with this, which can be a big help.
In some circumstances, I actually recommend starting with a fresh domain - it can actually be less work starting with a fresh, clean link profile and earning some high quality links this way. I'd consider this if I were you, but I can completely understand the attachment to your domain.
Hope this helps in some way and feel free to ask me anything else you may be wondering.
All the best!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Effect of Outbound Links
Greetings MOZ community: What is best practices when it comes to creating outbound links to other websites? Will adding such links improve the MOZ domain authority of my site? How many outbound links should be added to each page? For example I run a commercial real estate web site in New York. About 20 pages are written about neighborhoods. If several outbound links are added to each neighborhood page, and these links point to pages that provide further information about that neighborhood, will my neighborhood pages where the links originates from see improved ranking (or ranking potential)? Are these outbound links a critical SEO factor? Thanks everyone!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
How hard would it be to take a well-linked site, completely change the subject matter & still retain link authority?
So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain. The old content goes away entirely. The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international. Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Google Manual Penalty - Unnatural Links
Hi, We are in the process of trying to remove a partial manual penalty for unnatural links. I would like to do a complete link audit of our site, where can I get complete data on sites linking to my website? Webmaster tools only appears to show the top 1000 domains. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Link Building with a Scholarship
One of my clients is using a scholarship to build links. We have a nofollow PR campaign getting ready to start and are doing some social marketing for the scholarship page on the site. We are also trying to get backlinks from highschools and colleges that link to scholarship opportunities. So far this has been a slow process. Does anybody have any advice for speeding any of this up? Has somebody ever done a campaign like this before? Is there some kind of database with financial aid contact info for a lot of schools? I contact a lot of schools and always tend to get put on the backburner.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Google Manual Action (manual-Penalty)- Unnatural inbound links
Dear friends, I just get from Google two "Unnatural inbound links" notifications via Google Webmaster Tools, the first is for our WWW version of the site and the second is for the NON-WWW version. My question, I should send two identical reconsideration request for WWW and NON-WWW or treat them as different sites? Thank you Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
Does 302 pass link juice?
Hi! We have our content under two subdomains, one for the English language and one for Spanish. Depending on the language of the browser, there's a 302 redirecting to one of this subdomains. However, our main domain (which has no content) is receiving a lot of links - people rather link to mydomain.com than to en.mydomain.com. Does the 302 passing any link juice? If so, to which subdomain? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bodaclick0