I recognize this situation is difficult and a lot of emotions are involved. I would like to be helpful which is why I have volunteered time sharing the results of my experiences...to help others such as yourself.

I sympathize with your situation. A manual penalty for manipulative links has driven some companies out of business, other companies have been forced to lay employees off, and many SEO companies lost clients. I fully understand the impact.

Please keep in mind the original Q&A was asked and answered. You added to this thread stating "This is exactly what happened to us. We have removed over 600K links so far but still not enough for google. We are out of luck now because we cannot get any more links removed! ".

If you are requesting assistance I'll do whatever I can to help, but it is upon YOU to let us know your situation and how we can help. You stated you removed 600k links. And? For my first client I removed 3.5 million links and the penalty was not lifted. It makes no difference how many links you remove per se.

You also shared you are "out of luck" because you could not remove more links. Google has repeatedly lifted penalties for sites who were not able to remove all the links. Why is this statement relevant?

I humbly suggest the problem is neither Google nor me. You have a problem with how Google is ranking your site. We can hopefully agree on that statement. Based on your replies, the information you are sharing is not relevant to removing the penalty. You can say "I removed 600k links! How is that not relevant" My first client removed 3.5 million links and the penalty remained. Google does not care how many links you remove. The penalty is in place because of the links which remain.

Next, you mentioned the remaining links are impossible to remove. Here is the information which is helpful to Google:

1. Did you send a polite e-mail requesting link removal to the domain owner?

2. Did the e-mail contain a list of all links from that domain to your site?

3. Did you send the e-mail to the e-mail address on file with the WHOIS registry?

4. Did you also send the e-mail to any e-mail address on the site (if different)?

5. Did you also use the site's Contact Form (if available)?

6. Did you save a copy of all communications sent along with the date they were sent? Are you making these communications available to Google?

7. Did you verify which links were removed? Did you follow up with webmasters request regarding link removal?

IF you began with a comprehensive list of all known links to your site (i.e. not just Google WMT links and not just Google + OSE links but a comprehensive list from many sources) and IF you properly identified all the manipulative links and then followed the above process, Google will remove the manual penalty. The only other requirement is you admit any wrongdoings and commit to honestly following Google's Guidelines going forward.

I hope you find this information helpful. If not, I will simply accept you may be beyond my ability to assist.

Good Luck.

I have carefully read all of your responses in this Q&A. You seem to feel that both Google and I are not listening because we are not responding in the manner you desire. Just because I do not agree with you does not mean I did not read or understand what you shared.

I respect their experience as well as yours but you guys are so Google-blind.

When I submit a Reconsideration Request for manipulative links to Google, the response I receive back is as follows:

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your follow up email and all of the information provided. The
documentation you provided was very helpful in processing and understanding
this case.

After re-evaluating your site’s backlinks we are able to partially revoke a
manual action.

The response goes on to explain how the inorganic links which were not removed will be devalued. Shortly after receiving the above response, the site begins ranking normally again. It is important to note that "normally" does not mean it will rank where it did before the penalty. It depends on how many links were removed which affected the particular query, the competition, etc.

So if I am "blind" by Google, well, it's simple for me. They outlined a specific process, I "blindly" follow that process, and they remove the penalty. I am happy, Google is happy, and most importantly the client is happy.

MOST site owners and SEOs do not follow the process, so most do not achieve the results. You are likely fighting Google, not following the process, so you will continue to be unhappy with the results.

"It wasn't our mistake so I'm not gonna admit it." Really? It requires a lot of humility to resolve this issue. When you say "it was not our mistake", that is not true in most cases. Usually the site owner, or an agent of the site owner (employee, web developer, "SEO", link builder, etc) caused at least some if not most of the manipulative links to be created. If you recently purchased the site then you would want to explain that to Google and provide evidence of your statement.

In my experience Google does care, they do listen, and they are actually helpful with the penalty removal process. I will admit most people will share your experience, not mine.

Anyways, I was just looking to find some success stories around the same issue but never heard or seen one. So removing links doesn't really work or does it?

I can guarantee removing links does work. In fact, I guarantee success for clients. It's a sure thing. You remove the manipulative links, follow Google's process and the penalty goes away.

You are not out of luck. In my experience Google will always remove a manual penalty IF you clearly demonstrate a solid, good faith effort on your part. At a high level these are the requirements:

• admit your mistakes and how they were made. Be completely transparent and do not attempt to hide anything.

• Commit to following all Google Guidelines going forward.

• Gather a comprehensive list of all known links to your site. Simply using Google's list from WMT is not enough. Neither is using WMT + OSE or any one tool. Use several tools together. What has consistently worked for me is WMT, OSE, AHREFs, Raven and SEMrush combined. Many site owners and SEO's fail here by not compiling a comprehensive list.

• Every link/domain on the list needs to be evaluated. All manipulative links need to be identified. You need to be certain all remaining links fully comply with Google's Guidelines. Many site owners and SEOs fail here due to wanting to save links.

• Every domain which provides a manipulative link needs to be contacted. All aspects of the contact need to be thoroughly documented. A copy of the actual e-mail sent, the date it was sent, the response, etc. must be maintained. Letters should be sent via three methods: the WHOIS e-mail address (including the private addresses), the e-mail address on the site, the contact form on the site. Not all methods will be available on all sites, but the overwhelming majority of sites will have at least one if not all methods available.

A document needs to be created (a spreadsheet works great) listing all the URLs, links to the letters sent, the responses, etc. If you can demonstrate to Google you sincerely performed every reasonable task to have the links removed, they will "partially" lift the manual penalty. In my experience that means the penalty will be removed but any manipulative links you were unable to remove would be devalued.

You should always be able to have a manual penalty lifted, but it requires an exceptional amount of effort.

@Ginger, you are correct in that most penalties will address the specific pages which were the target of manipulative links. It sounds like you have put forth an incredible amount of effort. I hope you might pursue having the penalty lifted.

If that is the case and the same product is listed in more then 1 category and sub-category then will that product have 2 unique urls and as a result be treated as 2 different product pages by google?   And then since it is the same product in two places on the site won't google treat those 2 pages as having duplicate content?

Correct. You should decide which category is the most popular and then use the canonical tag so all other versions of the page point to the main page.

SO is it best to not have the category and sub-category names in the URL of a product page?

Using the canonical tag is one option. Using the same product page for both categories is another option.

And lastly, is there a preferred character limit for a URL to be less than in size?

Technically speaking URLs can be over 2000 characters. Practically speaking, the shorter the better for user readability and other factors. Dr Pete covers this topic well: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo

Google does not require you to give in to blackmail. With that said, I completely agree with your approach. Paying $10 to remove all the spammy links from a domain with numerous links is an easy fix, and can help with Penguin and future updates as well. This opinion may not be popular, but in the business world we need to value our time as well.

For the sites which attempt to charge larger fees, I would recommend replying with the following...."We are attempting to remove links from a large number of domains. We are unable to afford the thousands of dollars it would require to pay site owners to remove links. We would request that you please voluntarily remove the link as a courtesy. You may also wish to consider that providing a followed link to a penalized site may cause your site to be penalized. Instead of removing the link perhaps you would be willing to change it to a "nofollow" link."

Best of luck!

During my initial case of working on this type of penalty in 2011, the first couple contacts were through Reconsideration Requests. After that the contacts were e-mail exchanges. They e-mailed me directly.

There seems to be a bandwagon of "Google is bad / evil / [insert adjective]". In my experience if you are sincere and put forth the proper effort, they will do what they can to help. In the overwhelming majority of cases I find people are not sincere. They are not sorry they cheated the system, they are sorry they got caught. They are not putting forth the proper effort, they are putting forth the minimum effort. When this happens, the relationship becomes adversarial.

Is the eCommerce site Shopify SEO friendly?

It depends on how you define "SEO friendly". Have they taken some steps to improve SEO? Yes. Would I ever build a business site on that platform? No.

The nice benefits are you can get your site up and going quickly and they offer excellent hosting.

Aside from the financial expense of needing to pay monthly for the service, there are far too many limitations from any hosted solution. There are tons of SEO optimizations which are desirable but cannot be made due to you having no control over the software nor the hosting environment. Sure you can change title tags and some other changes, but that is not close to enough.

I would recommend WordPress + the eCommerce plugin or Joomla + VirtueMart over Shopify. I mention these two specifically because they offer a nice balance between a cart and a site. If you only need a cart, there are several cart solutions available.

If you do go with Shopify, be sure to get your SEOmoz discount: http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks