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Hi Marie, I hear most of what you are saying and will try removing some of the worst directory links, but I don't understand what you mean when you say the infographic links could be penalized - none of those links were paid for, I submitted to a few free infographic blogs and the rest are 100% natural
Hi Jesse, thanks for the response, don't mind the harshness at all. I have all the data about URLs and the steps i took in a normal email but am not sure about how to attach it. What would be the best way and how to I do it?
My SEO website got hit with a very severe penalty about a year ago and it was totally banished from the rankings for all of the money terms like SEO, SEO company and search engine optimisation (before the penalty I ranked in the top 10-15 for all of those phrases, top 3 for SEO company). I was probably hit for being listed in shed loads of paid directories, low quality free directories, footer links in client sites, keyword forum signature links and articles with keyword rich text links.
A month or so after I got hit I started trying to clean up my link profile, I got rid of all of the client website links, I changed the link text on the majority of forum signature links and article links, I managed to get rid of about 50 directory links and the ones that I could not get taken down I disavowed - about 150.
During that time I sent 2-3 separate reconsideration requests and I got this message each time:
"Links to your site violate Google's quality guidelines"
After doing all of that work and being rejected I pretty much gave up - things just seemed to get worst, not only was I no longer ranking for the money terms, but all of my blog posts tanked as well.
I got my site redesigned and switched to Wordpress - I used 301 redirects and everything but they totally didn't work. My organic traffic went down to less than 50 hits a day - before the penalty I was getting over 300 a day.
Then on Saturday just gone, almost exactly a year after I got hit with the penalty I noticed my site ranking in position 23 on Google.co.uk in the UK for the competitive phrase SEO company from being absolutely nowhere and I do mean nowhere.
This sign has given me hope and the motivation to get rid of the penalty altogether, update all of my articles, get rid of bad advice in old blog posts and get rid of the rest of the bad links.
Thing is that I am nervous to go getting rid of more links and disavowing, what if I do more harm then good? Do you think the penalty has been removed and I should just leave the rest of the bad links or should I continue trying to clean things up?
By the way, my website is http://www.seoco.co.uk
and thanks for the good advice, I never looked at it that way
Hi people, a friend of mine runs a payday loan site with a very valuable domain name: http://bit.ly/1lyJgME
The site was penalised by Google about 18 months ago, up until then it ranked #1 for payday loan and on the 1st page for the plural, payday loans in the UK. Now the website is nowhere in the top 200 results for either of the phrases, but he has not received any notification from Google and if he checks in webmaster tools in the manual actions section there is nothing there.
He has gone through all of the links to his site several times and attempted to remove any unnatural links, those that he could not get rid of after emailing twice he disavowed - about 800, a lot were not even built by him.
He has sent 2-3 reconsideration requests to Google and every time they said that the site had not been penalised, or something to that affect.
The site does have lots of quality organic links from websites like Wired Magazine and the National Geographic, more then enough decent links to rank somewhere on Google for its keywords.
I feel that the site may have been held to a higher standard because a lot of people think that payday loan websites are unethical.
What do you think he should do? Can you spot anything on site that is wrong? He has definitely tried to remove every single unnatural link and the ones he could not he disavowed.
i have just had another reconsideration request rejected by Google. In my rejection message they have given me 3 examples of unnatural links, but two of them I have had nothing to do with.
My website is http://www.seoco.co.uk
Here are the 3 links they mentioned:
the 1st one is just a website that republished one of my articles, I never submitted there or anything. Do I need to contact every single website that republished one of my articles and get those removed? Are they not classed as natural? Also, the page is not even cached by Google, why are they telling me to get rid of links that are not even in their index?
The 2nd link is a client site and is definitely unnatural, I removed my link from the main part of the site a while ago but the blog footer was not updated, I will take care of that one.
The 3rd link is a totally natural blogroll link that I had nothing to do with. What do you think I should do about it? Should I mention to Google on my next reconsideration request that it is in fact natural, or should I just bite the bullet and get it taken down?
Also, there are a few pretty decent links out there that I am thinking about getting taken down on good sites, what do you think I should do with these two:
2. http://www.webpronews.com/10-reasons-why-i-hate-shout-outs-on-digg-2007-10