"Unnatural links to your site" manual action by Google
-
Hi,
My site has been hit by a "Unnatural links to your site" manual action penalty and I've just received a decline on my 2nd reconsideration request, after disavowing even more links than I did in the first request. I went over all the links in WMT to my site with an SEO specialist and we both thought things have been resolved but apparently they weren't.
I'd appreciate any help on this so as to lift the penalty and get my site back to its former rankings, it has ranked well before and the timing couldn't have been worse.
Thanks,
Yael -
Yes. It will often take me 3-6 weeks to do a thorough job on a manual penalty. I can do it faster if I dedicate all my time to it, but yeah...it's time consuming.
If you don't get example links it usually means that you have a large number of unnatural links still not addressed.
-
Thanks Marie for your input and advice. I didn't get any examples from Google despite asking for them twice. As you've suggested I'll create a spreadsheet with the list of domains, contacts etc. It's tricky to understand which domain needs to be taken down and which is valid, I don't want to make mistakes and dig a deeper hole for my site if and when it comes out of penalty.
I did get a sitewide manual action so I just hope to get it resolved as quickly as possible. Obviously contacting dozens or hundreds of sites would take some time to complete.
-
I'm working now to get as much information as I can to understand and cope with the issues that caused the penalty. I'm sure I can get the best advice here on Moz. Which site link auditing services would you recommend?
-
When you failed on your first two requests, did Google give you any example links? Those usually hold the key to why you are not passing.
Also, when you get a manual action it is vitally important to make attempts to try to remove links and not just disavow them. If you have links that can't get removed, then you need to show some sort of effort. I usually include a Google doc spreadsheet with the domains and the contact info and notes on how many attempts I have made at contact. Sometimes, if I have a site where I can't get any links removed I'll make a comment as to why. But usually, there are some that can still be removed. For example, you can report spam domains to Blogger or Weebly and they'll probably remove them.
It may be a good idea to have someone else review your links as well to see if there are more that could be removed/disavowed. Sometimes it is obvious which links are unnatural, and sometimes it is not.
I'd appreciate any help on this so as to lift the penalty and get my site back to its former rankings, it has ranked well before and the timing couldn't have been worse.
If you have a sitewide manual action then yes, when your penalty is removed you should see a good return in rankings for brand terms. But, if it is a partial match then you may find that not a lot changes unfortunately. I wrote an article on Moz about this which you can read here: https://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase. Sometimes with a partial action I'll see some improvement, but sadly it is usually not dramatic. With that said, if your site has a really good base of truly naturally earned links then you have a good chance to see good improvement.
Hope that helps!
Marie
-
"Your seo specialist" may have got you into the pickle... have you also obtained independent advice and run a deep site link audit?
-
Hi Ishai,
There are a few steps I typically run through in this instance to get the issue resolved.
Firstly, rather than just submitting a disavow file, spend some time actively trying to remove as many links as you can without paying for them. Fixing a penalty isn't as simple as submitting a text file and Google wants to see that you're actively trying to fix the problem before they will lift the penalty.
It's often said they don't read the comments in your disvow file but I always add these in anyway. I mention what I've done to resolve the issue (contacted all possible low-quality sites requesting the links be removed) and even having a separate section for the particularly dodgy sites that want me to pay for removal.
Being able to demonstrate that you're legitimately trying to fix the mistake rather than waving the magic Disavow wand goes a long way to them removing your penalty.
Another tip that you may or may not be aware of - always disavow at the domain level rather than individual links. This way, if some of the dodgy directories shuffle their site structure and link to you from a different page, the links are still disavowed.
The syntax for this is simple: domain:badwebsite.com
This info is all covered in Google's Search Console Help section
EDIT: I should also mention, just pulling Link to Your Site from Search Console isn't going to give you a very comprehensive list. Consider combining this list with an export from Ahrefs or Moz's Open Site Explorer as this will give you a better idea of exactly what sites are linking to you.
Frustratingly, Search Console only seems to show a selection of referring domains.
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
-
Pure spam Manual Action by Google
Hello Everyone, We have a website http://www.webstarttoday.com. Recently, we have received manual action from Google says "Pages on this site appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or repeated or egregious violations of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines." . Google has given an example http://smoothblog.webstarttoday.com/. The nature of the business of http://www.webstarttoday.com is to creating sub-domains (website builder). Anyone can register and create sub-domains. My questions are: What are the best practices in case if someone is creating sub-domain for webstarttoday.com? How can I revoke my website from this penalty? What should i do with other hundreds of sub-domains those are already created by third party like http://smoothblog.webstarttoday.com? . Why these type of issues don't come with WordPress or weebly. ? Regards, Ruchi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
Do I need to actively disavow links to my site?
I check the "Links to my site" section in Google WMT on a regular basis. In the past couple of months I've been seeing more and more weird links, from pretty spammy domains and even a few from weird Iranian domains. It's Needless to say but I have never bought a link or been involved in any link schemes or the like. Like probably everyone in the Internet, I'm in a competitive vertical, and my competitors probably aren't so scrupulous. The question is, do I actively need to disavow suspicious links? Should I contact the domains and ask to remove them? I have usually just ignored these links, and not wasted time in doing anything with them (since weird automated links are always around) but the proliferation in the last couple months has started to worry me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Don341 -
Do I eventually 301 a page on our site that "expires," to a page that's related, but never expires, just to utilize the inbound link juice?
Our company gets inbound links from news websites that write stories about upcoming sporting events. The links we get are pointing to our event / ticket inventory pages on our commerce site. Once the event has passed, that event page is basically a dead page that shows no ticket inventory, and has no content. Also, each “event” page on our site has a unique url, since it’s an event that will eventually expire, as the game gets played, or the event has passed. Example of a url that a news site would link to: mysite.com/tickets/soldier-field/t7493325/nfc-divisional-home-game-chicago bears-vs-tbd-tickets.aspx Would there be any negative ramifications if I set up a 301 from the dead event page to another page on our site, one that is still somewhat related to the product in question, a landing page with content related to the team that just played, or venue they play in all season. Example, I would 301 to: mysite.com/venue/soldier-field tickets.aspx (This would be a live page that never expires.) I don’t know if that’s manipulating things a bit too much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ticket_King1 -
Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?
I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB1 -
Is this the "Google Dance"?
We just did a site redesign, and removed the noindex, etc. about 10 days ago. Over the last 24 hours, I've gotten some of my top keywords on the first page, but now they are gone, a few hours later. I assume this is typical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0 -
Multiple sites - ownership & link structure
Hi All I am in the process of creating a number of sites within the garden products sector; each site will have unique, original content and there will be no cross over. So for example I will have one on lawn mowers, one on greenhouses, another on garden furniture etc. My original thinking was to create a single limited company that would own each of the domains, therefore all the registrant details will be identical. Is this a sensible thing to do? (I want to be totally white hat) And what, if any, are the linking opportunities between each of the sites? (16 in total). Not to increase ranking, more from an authoritative perspective. And finally, how should I link between each site? Should I no follow the links? Should I use keyword contextual links? Any advice ideas would be appreciated 🙂 Please note: It has been suggested that I just create one BIG site. I've decided against this as I want to use the keyword for each website in the domain name as I believe this still has value. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry0 -
Link Request Email on Site`s Link Pages
Hello I have assembled a list of web-sites that have "Links" section that has a list of persons` favorite tools. Those pages have a link to my competitor. I know my tool is just as good if not better and want to request a link. I`m thinking of sending an email asking for a link and offering a small amount of money for it. Questions: A) How much should I offer? Should I offer anything at all B) Is there an email style that someone can suggest that has been tested and proven to work for this type of situtation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellopotap0