How to proceed? Older ecommerce site, unnatural link warning 2013, disavow, now what?

[pajamalady]

Hello all,

I have a small, older ecommerce site. It has been around since 2002. It ranked very well until a few years ago. It currently does rank for some terms, but not many. (I am trying to say that it is not completely off the map.)

1. Our domain authority is 36.

2. Our Spam Score in Open Site Explorer is a 2/10.

3. We received a notice in GWT in May 2013 re: unnatural links. That notice has since cleared from our account. I assume that it has expired.

4. We were working with an SEO consultant when we received the notice from Google in 2013. He started working on cleaning up our link profile at that point. He submitted a disavowal file to Google with all of the domains that he was not able to get cleaned up manually. He kept working and updated the file again in June 2014. He told me that we did not have to file a reconsideration request.

5. He did find that an SEO company that I hired in the past had gotten me a lot of spammy links. We got these taken down. There are still some spammy links that seem to keep cropping up.

6. I have started going through Open Site Explorer to again contact some of these spammy sites to ask them to take our links down. Of course, the emails immediately bounce back to me. I am documenting everything.

I feel like I am in a hole and can't dig out. What am a doing wrong? Should I disavow again? Should we have filed a reconsideration request a year or two ago? At this point, is it too late to do so as the penalty no longer shows up in my GWT account?

How should I proceed?

I prefer not to post my URL, but I would be happy to PM it to anyone who can offer advice.

Thanks in advance.

Melissa

[pajamalady]

Patrick,

Sorry. I am a newbie and can't find you on the PM username list. I sent an email to the address in your profile.

Thanks again.

Melissa

[pajamalady]

Patrick,

Thanks for your response.

My GWT account currently shows "No new messages or recent critical issues"

Does this mean that the penalty has expired? Or is it still lingering from 2013? How would I know?

I will PM you my URL in a sec.

I appreciate your help.

Melissa

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

They told you you don't need to file a reconsideration request? Did they remove the penalty or not? If they didn't, yes, you need to file another reconsideration request - it's not a one and done deal.

It sounds like you are doing everything right - you should also check out these resources from Moz:
Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal (Moz)
Your Start-to-Finish Guide to Using Google's Disavow Tool (Moz)

If you want to send your website via PM, please feel free, I'd like to take a look. But these things do take time, but I can't understand why your SEO company would tell you you don't need to file another reconsideration request - Google wants to know you are doing to remedy your issues.

Make sure you get links from Google Webmaster Tools and Majestic as well, as OSE only gives you one angle of links.

Hope this helps! Good luck!