Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Well I originally wasn't going to comment anymore, but...

• Karl: "Reconsideration request and the disavow tool DO work and we have used them on 2 clients with proof. It can take anything from 4-12 months for you to actually see the positive results, they do work" **--  Correlation does not equal causation. Waiting 4-12 months and then thinking that was the cause is pure guesswork. **

• Dr. Pete: I enjoyed your write-up first of all, and you seem to be giving some more realistic advice on what can happen. One thing is standing out in your comment:  "Disavow can work, but Google needs to see a clear removal effort and it almost always has to be paired with reconsideration"
  -- Recondsideration Requests = A reconsideration for manual penalties = No change for algorithmic penalties

So of course it's possible that the disavow tool does work, but it seems to be so rare that any time it does there is a specific thread started somewhere about it.

• Dr. Pete: Creative 301's DO work, as I have numerous sites built on just that. You are correct in saying that they do not work like 2 years ago. There needs to be "padded" links to help counteract the bad ones, and maximize trust in my opinion. At best, you will actually see a long lasting site without the penalty, not necessarily a temporary uptick (although still possible of course). I have done it multiple times, it's not theory.

Everything that I have mentioned thus far this is under the assumption that 2.0 is similar in nature as 1.0 and is just an extension on that.

Lastly, it should be obvious at this point that I like Grey Hat for some projects. I try not to just accept the same information that is fed to the herd without testing it myself to see if it's true. Through testing I have found what works and what does not for my needs, and have also discovered that a lot of what they tell is in fact just another way to try and deter what works. I have big rankings to back up everything that I say.

Google Best Practices = Propaganda to keep people poor.

The entire point of the spam team is to keep you from manipulating the rankings. They do this by any means necessary, including misleading propaganda.

Disavow tool = A tool for the Spam Team to gather information on platforms.

Disagreeing here,

Following that advice will most likely not do anything except keep you in the dog house.

Let's go over it:

1. The disavow tool is complete rubbish and barely does anything (IF anything)

2. If your crappy SEO company is like most of the other crappy ones, they were simply building bulk links on platforms that can be posted to for free. No one who owns any of these sites is going to care, is even going to read a request, or even be able to. A lot of these sites get x,xxx+ links/posts added them daily. Your chances are slim to none, especially if there are a lot.

   Asking your links to be removed will only ever work on smaller blogs where the links were posted and/or someone cares. Most of these links you would probably want to keep anyway.

3. Don't bother with a resubmission request. Again they are rubbish unless you have a squeaky clean link profile. More importantly though, as Brad pointed out, penguin is an algorithm update, NOT a manual penalty. Reconsideration requests will only work will manual penalties. IMO reconsideration requests will only get Google spam team employees eyes on your website for them to actually see your spam. The chances of them coming to the site otherwise are one in a million.

4. Can't argue with the comment of adding good content.

How To Actually Recover

1. Hopefully you were being smart and not doing the linkbuilding to your home page.

2. There are all kinds of creative 301-redirects that can be done to possibly shake the penalty without losing all your link juice. You have to create proper buffer links on the new pages.

3. In general new pages that you create will not have the penalty. Penguin is a page by page penalty, not a site-wide. So if you start with new things you should be fine. It sounds like your link building company was crap anyway so it shouldn't be hard to replicate the results of your old campaign.

4. If you want some hands on advice, I can make you a case study in recovery if your site fits the right criteria. Message me your details if interested.

Cheers