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(sorry for the long question - I thought it would be useful to give the background!) I am really struggling a Google's reconsideration request for my site, and although we thought we had removed almost all the 'bad' backlinks I am still getting no-where... We are really wanting to focus on building our brand, and establishing our site as an authority but this penalty is really holding us back. The latest response from Google: There are still many inorganic links pointing to your site. At this point, we believe we’ve evaluated these links appropriately, and no further action from us is required. In order for your site to have a successful reconsideration request, we will need to see a substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links, and this effort should result in a significant decrease in the number of bad links that we see. We do not recommend that you submit another reconsideration request until you have been able to make a good amount of progress. Once you’ve been able to get the links removed, please reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort. My Website: http://bit.ly/KXg8y1 History: This is a new domain - approx 6 months old Old domain received a Google links warning We decided to start a new website, launch a new brand and start from the beginning We 301 re-directed the old domain so we didnt lose customers We then got a Google links warning for the new site We assumed this was related to links from the old site and so removed the 301 redirect on the 20th August Our old sites links still show in Google webmaster tools Reconsideration History 1st re-consideration request: Explained the 301 redirect had been removed, assured we would now be focussing on high quality content/brand building and after 2 weeks received a standard message to say that still had inorganic links 2nd Request: Went through the new sites links (using open site explorer, AHREFs, SEO Majestic and GWM) and removed those we identified as low quality (mostly directories built by an SEO company we had started working with). We complied a spreadsheet with all the links in it (including 301 redirect links) and explained which had been removed, webmaster contact details etc. We also uploaded our template email and screenshots showing contact with webmasters. 3rd, 4th and 5th Request: We went through the new site links and were able to remove a few more links which were thin or could be seen as inorganic, and the end result is that apart from 6 links we have removed all those we have identified as inorganic. Links The old site had some pretty poor links We have done no paid linking, no blog networks, no spammy web 2.0 sites on this site. We've added good quality content to our blog, focussed on social media, published an infographic, and are committed to long-term brand building The links mostly come from guest blog posting. An SEO company (who told us they were 100% content based) built some directory links - but 99% of these have been removed There are some links from Scraper/related news sites (ones that have related blog posts or scrape images etc) Press releases which were picked up and re-published (some of these include anchor text) My Question/s: Do you think Google is still seeing the links from the previous 301 redirect in Google webmasters and including these still? Are these scraper/related post sites causing the issue? (organic links - but some dubious sites) Are sites re-publishing our press releases causing the issue? (organic links - but includes some anchor text I really appreciate your time on this one, I have tried really hard to identify and remove links, but am now struggling! Many Thanks