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19/03/2019 Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal - Moz https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal 1/112 Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal Advanced SEO This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reラect the views of Moz. October 14th, 2013 By: Lewis Sellers 85 252 Introduction A few months back, I wrote an article on Moz all about a penalty our web agency received for unnatural links pointing to our website. At ヨrst, this was a bit of a shock to the system, but since then, we've learned so much about Google's webmaster guidelines and we've helped lots of companies get their businesses back on track and remove manual penalties associated with their websites. What did we get hit for? Cutting a long story short, the main reason we were hit with a manual penalty was for adding followed anchor text into the bottom of clients websites that said 'Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs' (both 'web design yorkshire' and 'Pinpoint Designs' linked to our website). At the time, we were just Search... Products Blog About SEO Learning Center Free SEO Tools Log In

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  • 19/03/2019 Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal - Moz

    https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal 1/112

    Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty RemovalAdvanced SEO

    This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of

    hypnosis) and may not re�ect the views of Moz.

    October 14th, 2013By: Lewis Sellers

    85 252

    Introduction

    A few months back, I wrote an article on Moz all about a penalty our web agency received for unnatural

    links pointing to our website. At �rst, this was a bit of a shock to the system, but since then, we've

    learned so much about Google's webmaster guidelines and we've helped lots of companies get their

    businesses back on track and remove manual penalties associated with their websites.

    What did we get hit for?

    Cutting a long story short, the main reason we were hit with a manual penalty was for adding followed

    anchor text into the bottom of clients websites that said 'Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs'

    (both 'web design yorkshire' and 'Pinpoint Designs' linked to our website). At the time, we were just

    Search...

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    doing this out of habit, but we never varied anchor text, always had followed links and we were basically

    violating Google's quality guidelines.

    After a lot of work and research, we managed to remove the penalty from our website and since then

    have worked on lots of other clients websites to help them lift penalties. We've worked with clients

    who've had both unnatural link penalties along with on-site penalties for low quality content, cloaking

    issues and malware issues. We have a great success rate and are consistently trying to improve our

    processes to become even better!

    What are we doing to improve?

    Over the past few months, we've been trying out different tools to aid link recovery, speeding up our

    process of getting in touch with webmasters, �nding new ways to contact webmasters and ultimately

    just trying to streamline the process of getting spammy links removed. In this guide, I'm going to review

    a few of the different link removal tools we've tried out and also give you some ideas of how you can

    carry out link removal work manually to get your website penalty removed.

    This guide is mainly for people who've speci�cally received a penalty for unnatural links warnings. To

    �nd out if you've received a penalty for unnatural links, simply log in to Google Webmaster Tools and

    use Google's new 'Manual actionsManual actions' tab to see what type of penalty you have. If it's for 'Unnatural links' with

    a yellow warning symbol next to it, then you're on the right guide!

    My aim over the next few months is to try to write guides on different types of penalties in order to help

    people out further. We're also working on a tool ourselves called Peel, which we're building from the

    ground up in order to try and deliver exceptional analysis of links. You can sign up to our newsletter for

    tips and information about the launch of the product using the link above.

    Let's get started!

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    Step 1: collecting backlink data

    First of all, we need to pull a list of all the links pointing to your website from a few different sources. A

    Google employee on the Webmaster Central Forums has recently stated that they recommend you

    focus on the Webmaster Tool Links.

    Whether you choose to believe that though is another question, there's an interesting discussion on this

    available at the Webmaster Central Forums:

    http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/ga3vI8Y2RtA

    Matt Cutts has also responded recently saying the following:

    "It's certainly the case that we endeavour to show examples from the set of links returned by Webmaster Tools,

    and likewise we prefer to assess reconsideration requests on that basis of those links. However, if there's a really

    good example link that illustrates a problem, we do leave enough room to share that link, especially because it can

    help point the webmaster in a better direction to diagnose and �x issues."

    Whilst it may be that Google just want you to remove the majority of bad links and not necessarily every

    single one of them, I would personally recommend doing the job properly and start by collecting as

    much data as possible from various different link sources:

    Google Webmaster Tools - Login to Google Webmaster Tools and click into the website with the

    issues, go to 'Search Traf�c' > 'Links To Your Site', then click the 'more' link under the 'Who links

    the most' tab. Once in here, click the 'Download more sample links' from the top.

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    Most of the above sites will require you to have subscriptions in order to gather the data. Sites such as

    Majestic SEO will allow you to use the tool free of charge (or a limited amount) if you have the domain

    veri�ed in your Webmaster Tools account. That being said, for the sake of one or two month's

    membership, it's worth paying for the wealth of data you'll get.

    Note: Google have previously recommended you add both the www. and the non-www. version of the

    domain to Webmaster tool and gather links from both sources. It's worth search different variations of

    your domain to get as much data as possible.

    Step 2: documenting your work

    Start by creating yourself a Google Docs Spreadsheet where you can track all of your work to see

    exactly where you are at with the link removal process. This will be extremely useful when you come to

    submitting a reconsideration request with Google, as they'll be able to see exactly what you've done to

    sort out the issues with your site.

    I should also point out at this point that Google say they don't tend to trust external links from sources

    they don't trust. For that reason, I recommend only using a Google Spreadsheet when documenting

    your work as it's a Google product and trusted by them. You can also include a link to this document in

    your reconsideration request very easily and it's free!

    Open Site Explorer - Visit http://www.opensiteexplorer.org and type in your domain name (make

    sure you get this absolutely correct as having a slight variation of your domain such as missing

    out the www. can cause a different set of results). Once loaded, click the 'Advanced Reports' tab,

    select 'Links that come from: External linking page' and leave all the other settings as they are,

    then click export.

    Ahrefs - Visit http://www.ahrefs.com and enter in your domain. Click the 'CSV' tab and export

    the list of 'Backlinks/Ref pages'. Ahrefs is an absolutely brilliant tool that's helped us so many

    times with link removal campaigns. It allows you to narrow down quickly sitewide links, followed

    / nofollowed links and more.

    Majestic SEO - Visit http://www.majesticseo.com, enter your domain name and select 'Historic

    Index'. This will show all your previous links instead of just the most recent. Click on the backlinks

    tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'download data'.

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    We would usually start by creating tabs at the bottom of spreadsheet for each of our data sources. For

    example, Google Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO & Open Site Explorer. You don't have to

    separate your data into different sheets, but I personally think it shows more work being carried out

    and allows more in-depth analysis.

    The only disadvantage to doing this is that you'll have lots of repeat links - we do however have this

    covered!

    If you visit the Pinpoint Designs Blog, we've created a Google docs spreadsheet that you can use which

    helps to combine multiple sheets together and remove duplicates. This is a brilliant asset to use on your

    link removal campaign.

    Google Docs only allows importing of 50,000 characters at a time. This may sound a lot, but it's

    surprising how quickly you hit this limit. You can import data from a CSV by going to your Google Docs

    �le, then clicking 'File > Import'. You can do this for each document you export from OSE, Ahrefs,

    Majestic and Google Webmaster Tools and import them into separate sheets within the same

    document. There's still a limit, but it's higher than 50,000 and will speed up the process.

    IMPORTANT: Once you've got all your data into the spreadsheet, make sure you add the following

    columns to the end of each of the sheets (or alternatively your 'Master Sheet' if you're combining all the

    data into one sheet):

    Contact Name

    Contact Email Address

    Website Contact Form

    Twitter URL

    Facebook URL

    Google+ URL

    LinkedIn URL

    Date of 1st Contact

    Date of 2nd Contact

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    This may seem like a lot of data, but it's the best way you can document your work. That way, when

    you're carrying out research on your domains, you'll be able to start populating the spreadsheet and

    making your life easier in the long term. You'll also be able to show Google all the work you've been

    doing to get the links removed and making it very easy for them to see everything you've done.

    If you don't want to go to the effort of populating all the data above, you could combine all of the

    different forms of contact method into one cell and just populate that. The chances are, you're not going

    to need Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Email and Website Contact Form for every single URL so

    it's just down to preference. The above recommendation is the best way we've found of documenting

    data.

    Finally, add an additional sheet to your Google Docs �le called 'Contact Examples'. In here, you can

    upload images of a few examples of the emails you've sent out to the webmasters you've been working

    with. Be careful what you put in here, Google will be reading these messages so make sure you're not

    badmouthing them.

    Don't threaten Webmasters by saying Google will block their site and how they're going to get harmed

    if they don't remove your links. Instead, say that you're trying to clear things up so that you're fully

    compliant with Google's webmaster guidelines. You can apologise for the inconvenience to the

    webmaster and thank them for their help (examples further down in this article). That way, when

    Google reads them, they'll understand you're genuinely trying to sort things and hopefully be a little

    more forgiving under the circumstances.

    Tip: If you're on a Mac, you can press 'Cmd + Shift + 4'. This command allows you to take screenshots

    quickly and easily of a speci�c section of your monitor. Perfect for quickly snapping contact forms,

    emails you're sending, etc. and uploading them to the 'Contact Examples' sheet in your Google docs �le.

    Step 3: spotting low-quality links

    Date of 3rd Contact

    Link Status

    NotesSearch...

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    This is a hugely important section of link removal. It sounds simple, but you have to be extremely careful

    with what links you attempt to remove. Good links generally take a long time to build and if you ask for

    them to be removed thinking they're potentially spammy, that hard work may all be for nothing.

    Over the past year, we've learnt that the best way to identify spammy links is to manually review each

    and every one of them. If a link is good, mark it in your spreadsheet so you know not to remove it. Don't

    delete any links from the sheet, as it's all research to show Google what you've been doing. Either

    highlight the cell in a colour, or add a note in one of the columns so you know it's safe / genuine.

    So, how do we spot spammy links?

    Some links are easy to identify. For example, if you've been featured on the BBC News, Guardian or a

    high quality, authoritative website, you can be fairly sure it's a strong link that doesn't need removing.

    The de�nition of a natural link is fairly hard to summarise. I would class these as links that have

    appeared from other content you've written naturally. For example, let's say you were involved in the

    automotive industry and wrote an article all about the history or cars, different manufacturers and

    really went into great details about every aspect. This type of article is obviously going to end up very

    big, hopefully interesting and should be a brilliant read. If you've done a good job and shared the article

    in the right places, you should hopefully acquire links naturally. People will link to your guide / post

    naturally without you having to ask for it and those types of links are ok.

    Throughout this article, I'll link to other articles I've read on the internet that I believe are helpful for

    link removal. All the people I link to have created good quality content that I believe will help you in

    removing your penalties with Google. They have written an article for the sake of it, they've written it

    with an aim in mind so that it's bene�cial.

    On the same side, it's easy to spot some spam links. For example, if you're listed on a website with

    10,000 links on the same page in a list, or if you've commented on a blog with xx,xxx other comments

    just for the backlink. I realise that's a bit of an extreme situation, but hopefully my point is made. If you

    know the link has been placed on the site purely for SEO purposes, then it's most likely unnatural.

    Some links however are harder to spot, so here are my top tips for identifying lower quality links:

    Whether the URL is indexed in Google or not:

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    If not, remove the links as the site has most likely received a penalty. You can also see if a domain is

    indexed in Google by searching Google for 'site:yourdomain.com'.

    Page Authority and Domain Authority

    Don't pay too much attention to this metric. A new domain name can still be a very strong link even

    though it has low page and domain authority. A poor quality site can also still have good page authority

    and domain authority, so just be careful when looking at this.

    Site-wide Links:

    Site wide links are generally associated with websites you have an af�liation with (friendly links), or

    links you've paid for. Due to this, it's better to make sure you don't have links across every page of

    someone's sites.In this case, either nofollow the links, or remove them and only put them on one page.

    Ahrefs does a brilliant job of spotting site-wide links on websites quickly and easily.

    That being said, the same rules still apply, if the links looks spammy, remove all of them.

    Link Directories:

    Link directories are fairly easy to spot, if they contain words like 'backlinks', 'links', 'seo' etc. in the URL,

    then the chances are that they are low quality links and need removing. If it lists every category under

    the sun from Website Developers to Sunglasses, then it's most likely a directory that you need to

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    remove yourself from!

    There are some good link directories on the internet, generally, these are targeted to a particular niche,

    are manually reviewed and sometimes locally targeted. You can look at link directories and think 'Will I

    ever receive any traf�c from this site?' or 'Is this genuinely a valuable link?' if the answer is likely to be

    no, then the link should be removed. Be fairly honest with yourself on this one, if it looks like spam, then

    it most likely is.

    If you want some more tips, here are a few bullet points:

    Remove a link if:

    If the site shows 'powered by phpLD' or 'PHP Link Directory' in the footer, it's most likely going to be a

    fairly spammy directory. That's not always the case, but 9/10 times, it's most likely true.

    During a recent link removal campaign, we managed to get a webmaster to take down a set of 20 link

    directories that were pointing to our client's website. They couldn't be bothered to remove the links

    from each site individually, so instead they took every site of�ine so everyone's links disappeared!

    Forum Pro�les:

    The site is not indexed in Google, this would indicate a penalty.

    The site automatically accepts links without any manual review.

    The site has lots of spam links pointing to it (type the URL of the directory into Open Site

    Explorer and see what you can �nd!)

    The site has categories for everything imaginable (cars, holidays, sunglasses, websites, hosting,

    dresses etc.).

    The site is obviously part of a network where there are lots of related directories with similar

    names / similar looking websites etc.

    The site contains keywords like 'best', 'links', 'seo' etc in the name.

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    These are usually very spammy. If you have the odd pro�le link on a forum that you're very active on,

    then this is generally �ne. However, if you're listed on a forum in Romania (an example only!) and have

    never posted before, get the link removed.

    If you're a member of the forum purely to get a link back to your website, then the link should be

    removed. It's a very easy to identify spam technique, so stay safe and remove them.

    Blog Comments:

    Similar to Forum Pro�les, blog comments are an easy one to spot. If you've commented every now and

    again on a blog that you generally feel has helped you, or the blog is in your industry and you've added

    value to the discussion with your comment (rather than just posting a boring comment like 'Good work

    dude'), then it's probably ok.

    That being said, if you've got a large number of blog comments with very little substance, you should

    remove all the links. If the site has hundreds and hundreds of comments and you're one of a huge list of

    spam comments, you should remove the link too.

    Social Bookmarks:

    Very similar to both the blog comments and forum pro�les, social bookmarks are ok if they're genuine.

    Remember that the penalties you have received are manual actions and when you put in a

    reconsideration request, the chances are that a Google employee with manually be looking through

    some of your links. If your social bookmarks look spammy, remove them.

    Paid Links:

    If you've been paying for links, make sure you remove them or add a rel="nofollow" attribute to the link.

    When you're writing your reconsideration request, mention the fact that you have previously

    purchased links and have now recti�ed the issue by ensuring they are all nofollow / been removed.

    Google is getting much smarter at detecting advertorial links, so don't try to trick the system.

    Blog Posts:

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    A slightly trickier one to detect straight off. Usually, you can spot the spammy blog posts generally by

    looking at the URLs. If they're dynamic URLs which end in something like 'index.php?id=99', then it's

    usually a sign of a site being launched very quickly. The best way to identify spam blog posts is to load up

    each blog. Use these tell-tale signs to spot the low quality posts:

    If the answer to any of the above questions is no, then have the links removed. Other things you can

    look at are as follows:

    Does the article make sense? - Is it English, do the sentences make sense? or is it spun, low

    quality rubbish that bene�ts nobody.

    Is the site nicely designed? - Does the website look like a genuine blog that's been looked after,

    cared for and regularly updated? Or is it using a standard template with awful layouts and

    content.

    Is the website content unique? - You can use a website such as http://www.copyscape.com to

    �nd duplicate / spun content.

    Is the article high quality? - Again, this is down to interpretation, but does the article provide any

    value to your business or is it there for the sake of being there? If it's high quality, but just linked

    in the wrong way, ask the webmaster to add a nofollow attribute assigned to it.

    Is the blog too too consistent? - Does the blog post about shoes one day, software the following day

    and medicine the following day? Also, does every post have an outgoing link to a different

    website, the same length and full of anchor text using 'money keywords'? If so, they're not

    focused and most likely either automating their posting / trying to build a site for SEO purposes.

    Avoid these sites and remove the links.

    Is there an easy way to contact the owners? - Lots of lower quality blogs will remove the contact

    form, or completely hide who is behind them. If you can't get in touch with the owner, it's likely to

    be low quality and should be removed.

    Are you using money terms and anchor text in the article? - This is ok as long as it's not

    overdone and as long as it's genuine. You have to use common sense when it comes to looking at

    blog posts. If it could be considered a spam article, remove it to stay on the safe side).

    Are there lots of keywords stuffed into the article? - If your article reads like something that's

    been written for a search engine, remove it

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    If the answers to the above are yes, then remove the articles.

    Link Networks:

    Link networks are bad news, but many 'SEO' agencies still use them. You can use some of the metrics

    gathered in the reports above to detect link networks. For example:

    Some of the tools listed further down in this article will help you to speed up the locating of link

    networks by automatically pulling in Whois Results, IP address and Analytics Details for each domain.

    You can then use their system, or software such as Excel to manually �lter through the data and spot

    offending links straight away.

    Over Optimised Anchor Text:

    If you have articles out on the internet which just contain anchor text pointing to keywords you want to

    appear on Google for, then these need removing. There has been a lot of talk online about the correct

    'Anchor text ratio' to have for brand vs commercial anchor text terms, but I don't think you should think

    of SEO in this way.

    IP Address - If the IP address is the same on multiple different domains, this is a sign that you

    could be part of a link network. You could run a quick whois search on the various domains to see

    who the owner is. We've carried out link removal campaigns on clients' websites where over 150

    domains are from the same IP address.

    Whois Searches - By running a whois search on a domain name, you can see who the registered

    owner of the domain is (in most cases). If you �nd that the same owner owns a large number of

    domains pointing to your site are from the same owner, this should send danger signals.

    Google Analytics IDs - Look at the source code of the sites and search for the Google analytics

    code. These follow the format UA-XXXXXXXX-X (where the X's are replaced with numbers). If

    you �nd the same UA- code being used on multiple sites, this shows signs of a link network.

    Site Design - Does the site look exactly the same as other sites pointing to your domain? This can

    sometimes be the same links in the footer, a 'sponsored company' or even just the same look and

    layout. If so, it's possibly built by the same person and an example of a network.

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    Instead, focus on building your brand. If it's appropriate to link to your money keywords, or keywords

    surrounding the money terms, link to it. If your trying to build your brand, you'll �nd that you're linking

    to your brand name and it's URL more regularly and you're going to have a much more natural and

    organic link pro�le.

    Tip: Use Eppie Vojt's Link Detective tool to see what your current link pro�le looks like. You'll be able to

    see very quickly which keywords you've been targeting too regularly.

    If your anchor text is only targeting money terms, remove the links. Chances are, it's probably not the

    best article / content anyway. If it is, it's probably worthy of a money term link.

    Link Exchanges:

    This is a fairly old tactic these days, but many people still do it. Don't create a page on your site called

    links and swap these with other peoples 'links' pages. This creates a huge footprint of spammy link

    building which should be avoided.

    Press Releases:

    I still believe press releases are a great way to carry out SEO, but only if they're done correctly. If your

    press release is simply put out there and contains 3-5 links back to your site with a money keyword as

    the anchor text, you're doing it all wrong.

    Press releases should be used to build your brand, shout out to the world about what your company is

    doing and only used when you have something relevant to tell people. If you've just received investment

    from a company, helped out your local community or had your best ever years pro�ts, then write a really

    good quality press release that people �nd engaging and interesting. You can then put in links to your

    website under its brand name or the website URL.

    If you are adding money terms in, I'd recommend adding a nofollow attribute in order to stay on the safe

    side as you can bet this is where Google will be targeting very soon. If you've got press releases out

    there which are blatantly spam with no real value, have them removed.

    Malware:

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    A simple one. If the site contains malware, have your link removed. Alternatively, if it's a site that you

    know is hugely reputable, contact the owner and have them �x the problem as soon as possible.

    The above section hopefully gives you an idea of how to spot some poor quality links. It's not a de�nitive

    guide, but it should give you an idea of some of the more common sections we come across when

    carrying out work for clients.

    The biggest tip I would be able to provide is use common sense. Deep down, you'll know if a link is

    worth having or not. Sometimes likes are good, but they may need a nofollow attribute adding to them.

    So just work through the list systematically and put yourself in Google's shoes.

    All you need to do is go through each link manually and make a note of whether it needs to be removed

    or not. If you consider it a safe link, mark it so you know not to remove the link. You could do this either

    by a colour marker, or just by adding a piece of text next to each link. If you've got a lot of colours going

    on, make sure to make a sheet at the bottom called 'Key' so that the Google employees can see what

    work you've carried out.

    Tools for making your life easier...

    There are a lot of tools available online that say they'll help to identify spammy links in bulk. Some of

    these tools are brilliant for speeding up analysis, but I wouldn't rely on them 100%. I've put some

    comments below on systems we've used in the past and my thoughts on using them.

    Websites / Tools available for full link removal:

    Link Research Tools / Link Detox

    This is probably one of the better tools we've used over the past year. The detox tool assigns a risk score

    to each of your backlinks which it pulls from 22 different link sources. In addition to this, it will pull in

    lots of statistics about the links and will try to retrieve an email address / contact name for the owner of

    the offending website. Personally, I've found the contact �nder to be brilliant and some of the additional

    metrics (such as IP address of the website and domain registrant) have helped hugely in discovering link

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    networks. They still have a lot of work to do as far as the link scores are concerned. Sometimes, the

    'Very Low Risk' links are obviously spammy and should be removed, so if you use this tool, you need to

    be very careful and double-check the links that you're removing. Overall, a very good system though.

    Link Risk

    I've never actually used Link Risk, but I've heard some good things about it. The team behind Link Risk

    are certainly very talented and know their stuff, so I can't really comment on the results seen with it.

    Linkquidator

    A new tool on the block - Linkquidator offer a 30 day free trial with a limited number of backlinks. I have

    signed up to look at the tool but haven't had chance to give it a full test drive.

    Remove'em

    I've used Remove'em on a couple of campaigns we've done for clients as a tool to help us identify bad

    links. Personally, I found the interface very clunky in terms of outreach to webmasters and a very slow

    process. As for uncovering bad links, it did a fairly good job of this but didn't show me the safe links so it

    is hard to see how many it may have missed. I found the outreach to webmasters very slow with this

    system and would opt to use mail instead for speed.

    Rmoov

    Rmoov have personally tried not to identify which links are classed as spammy. Personally, the idea

    behind this system is brilliant, instead, it just helps to speed up the process of contacting webmasters by

    pulling contact information for each domain, allowing you to create and send emails then following up

    each of the emails with reminders. It will check the status of your links periodically and record each step

    of the process in a Google Doc.

    Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable has done a brilliant write-up on link tools identifying

    toxic links. It really highlights that manual review is still necessary when using tools such as the above

    and you should never rely on them 100%.

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    Our agency Pinpoint Designs is currently working on a link removal system called Peel App which we're

    hoping will launch in 2014. Whilst we still push that manual research is required, we'll be trying to make

    our system identify spam links in bulk as we do feel there are still algorithms we can use to detect this

    better than some of the tools already on the market. If you're interested in hearing more about our tool,

    you can sign up for our prelaunch newsletter at on the Peel App website.

    Step 4: �nding webmaster contact details

    This is obviously one of the most important parts of your link removal process. First of all, you're going

    to need to collect contact details for each of the webmasters. Lets look at the data we wanted to collect

    again:

    Contact Name, Email Address, Website Contact Form, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

    Some methods of contact details are easy to spot. For example, if we use the example low quality

    website miriblack.com, we can see that they have a contact form. Simply copy and paste this URL into

    your spreadsheet and that's one method of outreach sorted. Easy! Others are a little more time

    consuming.

    There are a variety of ways to �nd out the contact name of the owner of the blog. You could do this by

    carrying out a whois search on the websites domain name. This will sometimes show the registrant of

    the domain along with other information. This doesn't always work, but sometimes the information can

    be useful.

    Using the example as 'Miriblack' again, look at the whois response from below. We searched the domain

    name, but we could only �nd out the Registrants name 'Matthew Hesser'. From here, we now have a

    name to search for other contact methods.

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    First of all, if we go back to Google, we can type in different search terms to try and retrieve different

    methods of contact for a 'Matthew Hesser'. A few examples are below:

    Matthew Hesser Miriblack

    Matthew Hesser Miri Black

    Matthew Hesser LinkedIn

    Matthew Hesser Facebook

    Matthew Hesser Google+

    We can also try to use the domain name to �nd is someone is associated with it:

    Miriblack.com LinkedIn

    Miriblack.com Google+

    and so on...

    It just so happens that on this particular search, I came across Matthew Hesser as the president of

    'Majon International'. For anyone who has done Link Removal campaigns in the past, Majon have a

    network of websites and charge $25 for link removal from all of them. In all honesty, I usually just pay it,

    as it's easier than arguing with the webmaster to remove the link and they're always very quick.

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    That being said, you aren't always going to know that a company is associated with this particular site,

    so you need to look out for people who are associated with 'seo companies', 'marketing and advertising'

    etc., as this can be a big giveaway.

    Another thing to keep an eye out for is a section of the above whois search, which explains you can go to

    Godaddy for full whois information. By doing this, we can get the following information:

    So now, we have an email address for the contact, their full postal address, their name etc. Their email

    address is obviously targeted towards link removal, so this one's a fairly easy case. Sometimes though,

    you can use the email address and search Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for the users. You can then

    outreach to the user from there explaining the situation and requesting to have your links removed.

    You can now start to populate your spreadsheet with the data you've found and then contact each of

    the webmasters to request links to be removed. This particular webmaster usually sends an automated

    response back saying you have to pay a fee for the links to be removed from all of their networks. As

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    long as they're not charging extortionate rates, I personally would recommend you pay it and carry on.

    Otherwise, you'll waste a lot more time arguing and most likely get nowhere.

    There are always tools available to help make our lives easier:

    Domain Contact Information:

    http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ - This tool is brilliant (and free!). It allows you to enter in the URL of the

    site with the penalty and pull a large number of different contact methods for each website. You can

    then populate your Google Docs spreadsheet with the information and use it for outreaching to the

    webmasters.

    Contact Finder by Citation Labs - Garrett French has built a tool where you can input a list of URLs for

    which you'd like to collate email addresses, contact forms and 'contact us' pages. From here, you can

    export a CSV which could be useful when coming to �nding additional forms of contact method.

    Contact Finder by Link Research Tools - Another tool from Cemper that helps to �nd different forms of

    contact method including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, Google+ and more. This is a paid tool, but

    will really help save time and legwork, especially if you've got a lot of data!

    All the tools above will help you save time. Unfortunately, as they're automated tools, they're not

    necessarily going to �nd all of the relevant pages, but they'll do a brilliant job of �nding a large chunk of

    them. Manual work always helps to cover missing gaps, so bear that in mind when going through the link

    removal process.

    Step 5: reaching out to webmasters

    Outreach is a very important part of the link removal campaign. Your aim here is to get as many of those

    bad links removed to your website as possible. Everyone works slightly differently, so by this point, you

    should either have a large document showing all of your spam / safe links along with lots of different

    contact methods, or you will just have a list of your spam / safe links and will carry out the contact

    methods as you go along. This is really down to preference.

    There are a few tips I would recommend when sending emails to webmasters:

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    Don't send multiple emails for each link you need removing - This is a big mistake that we've

    been guilty of in the past. Make sure you sort your data so you can easily spot all of the links

    coming from the one domain. Otherwise, if a webmaster opens their inbox and �nds that you're

    asking for links to be removed from 10 pages from 10 different emails, they're likely to close the

    email and bin it. Try to collate a list of all the URLs you want removing in one neat place and send

    them an email. If there's a lot of links, put them in a Google Docs �le and send them a link to the

    �le to take a look at.

    Don't spam the webmaster - Don't contact the webmaster via every method all at once. First try

    email and wait a week, if that doesn't work, send a follow up email. If you don't hear from them

    after a few days, try another method of contact (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.). Don't

    always send the exact same message, make it personal each time. Log everything in your

    spreadsheet.

    Be polite - The webmasters are doing you a favour. Whether it's you or your previous SEO

    company that's submitted the links to their website in the �rst place, it's not really their problem.

    Be polite, don't accuse them or threaten them and try to be as helpful as possible. Some link

    removal templates on the internet suggest telling the blog owner that if they don't remove the

    link, you'll add it to the disavow report which will also decrease their rankings. This is almost a

    threat and I would de�nitely recommend avoiding this. Don't make out that it's the webmasters

    fault your on there, it's probably not.

    Try to �nd the webmasters name - Don't start the email as just 'hello'. Try to get the webmasters

    �rst name and send an email that's a bit more personal. You are much more likely to get a

    response if you address the contact directly.

    Try to email from the domain that you're trying to remove - This one sounds simple, but if you

    are an agency like us, you sometimes would outreach from the agencies email address. Instead,

    try to use an email address on the domain that you're trying to get removed. We've seen a much

    better response rate when doing this.

    Keep it short and sweet - The shorter it is, the less time a webmaster has to spend on it and the

    more likely they are to help you. Thinking about things logically, they're probably going to have

    had a few of these requests, so don't make them spend a lot of time reading, especially on the �rst

    email.

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    There are a few posts online about people who've received emails from companies requesting link

    removal. Learn from their mistakes and do your research beforehand. An example can be found on Matt

    Bors blog here - http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2013/08/02/link-removal-request/

    Our link removal templates change fairly regularly depending on the number of responses we appear to

    be getting. Generally, I'd recommend something along the lines of:

    Hi %name,

    We have recently received a noti�cation from Google stating that our website has unnatural links pointing towards

    it. This has really damaged our rankings on Google and as a result, we're trying to clear things up. Our website url is

    %website_url.

    We noticed the following links are pointing to our website from your site:

    %list_of_links_here

    I appreciate this is inconvenient and isn't a re�ection on your website at all, but if you're able to remove the links,

    we would really appreciate it and would be very grateful.

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    %Your_name

    %Your_company_name

    The email should be personalized to your exact requirements. It may be that an SEO company carried

    out the work, if so, you could name and shame the company. You should also personalize the outreach

    email depending on the type of link it is you're trying to remove. For example, if you've spammed

    someone's website and you're asking for a blog comment to be removed, they're probably not going to

    be the most forgiving so you need to beg a little harder. If it's an article you've written, but it's just the

    link that you want removing from the article, explain that.

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    To help save time each time you send an email, you can setup canned responses in Gmail. This will help

    you to create link removal templates very quickly and just �ll in the missing gaps. A guide on this can be

    found here.

    If it was you spamming their site, you could apologise for the inconvenience and explain it was naivety.

    Chances are, you're going to have to test the water a little bit with your outreach email and see what

    works best. Own up and try to be personal, put yourself in the webmasters position and think about

    how likely you would be to help someone out in the same position.

    Be honest, be polite and keep it short.

    Each time you contact a webmaster, make a note on your spreadsheet of the date and the method of

    contact. It's also good to create an additional sheet at the bottom of your Google Docs �le with

    'Example emails' in. Remember that a Google employee will be reading these, so when you're writing

    the outreach, don't make out that Google are the devil, or that it's everyone's fault but your own. You

    don't need to do this for every single email, but keeping a small selection of emails written in contact

    forms, messages sent through email, Tweets, Facebook messages etc. will certainly help �ght your

    battle when it comes to the reconsideration request.

    I would recommend contacting a webmaster a minimum of three times. That being said, if you have

    every form of contact method for a webmaster, make sure you use all the different types and try your

    absolute best. The harder you try, the more likely you are to have the link removed.

    Hopefully by this point, you're starting to see how you're building a picture up for Google to look

    through and see that you're trying very hard to remove the links. Unfortunately, you're never going to

    get a link penalty removed unless you put in the effort, so the above is all required. Take your time, by

    thorough and work through the list systematically.

    Tip: It's always worth checking http://deletebacklinks.com/ to see if they can remove any of your

    backlinks in bulk. With one client, we managed to remove 92 backlinks for just over $50 via the delete

    backlinks service.

    Step 6: the disavow tool

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    In my previous article, I stated that people really shouldn't use the disavow tool unless absolutely

    necessary. Whilst my views on that are still very similar, I think that using the disavow tool before a

    reconsideration request should be used if you're unable to remove all the offending links.

    Note: Do not use the disavow tool as a way to skip any of the above work, that will not work. Google

    wants to know that you've been working very hard to rectify your mistakes and for you to prove to

    them that you won't be carrying out poor quality work again.

    By the time you get to the stage of using the disavow tool, you've hopefully got a very healthy

    spreadsheet full of information about links which have been removed, all the methods you've contacted

    webmasters by and a list of all the links you've been unable to remove.

    Sort your data so that you can see exactly which links you've been unable to remove - Try to sort this in

    order of domain.

    Most of the time, you're probably going to want to disavow a full domain, instead of just a URL. That

    being said, you will sometimes only want to disavow one link from a domain, so just keep an eye out as

    to which route you're going to take.

    For this example, I'm going to assume that we're only disavowing full domains.

    Look through your �le and �gure out which domains need disavowing, then open notepad and copy and

    paste the main URL into a �le with the pre�x 'domain:'. For example:

    domain: yourdomain.com

    Some tips for disavow �les:

    Don't include the http://www. prior to a domain

    Don't include anything after the domain extension. Eg: .com, .co.uk (unless you're only disavowing

    a speci�c URL).

    Put each domain on a new line and add comments to the �le so Google knows why you're

    disavowing them. Pre�x all comments with a # symbol.

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    By the time you're �nished, your disavow �le should look something like this:

    Just make sure to comment your disavow �le well, so Google can see exactly what you're doing. This

    should match your Google Docs Spreadsheet so Google can see that you're not trying to pull the wool

    over their eyes!

    Google have written a very comprehensive guide on how to use the Disavow Tool. You should visit their

    page for more information on disavowing speci�c URLs.

    Once you're done, save the �le and head over to the disavow tool page. Submit the �le and you'll be

    good to go.

    Note: Google make a point of saying that you should make "every effort to clean up unnatural links

    pointing to your site. Simply disavowing them isn't enough" - Don't try to trick the system.

    Step 7: submitting the reconsideration request

    The reconsideration process is your �nal part to removing a penalty (hopefully!). In the request, you're

    basically telling Google the following:

    What you've done wrong in the past and that you've stopped doing it

    What you've done to �x the problems (include a link to your Google Docs �le)

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    It's important to be speci�c in your reconsideration requests. This means owning up to anything that

    you've personally done wrong (whether it be paid links, comment spam on blogs, forum pro�les etc.). If

    you previously employed the services of an 'SEO company' that built the poor quality links, tell Google

    the name of the company and explain that whilst you accept you employed them in the �rst place,

    you've learnt a lot about Google's webmaster guidelines and are fully committed to ensuring your

    website stays within them.

    In the past, we have tried mentioning a client's Adwords budget as a way to try to show Google that

    they're a genuine business. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Don't mention irrelevant information that

    Google isn't interested in. They want to know that you've removed the spam, you know where you went

    wrong and you won't do it again.

    We always mention if a client has good reviews online (especially from a 3rd party source such as

    TrustPilot), but I don't believe this makes any real difference. It's just a nice touch to show that you're

    not trying to upset anyone.

    Matt Cutts has explained what should be included in a proper reconsideration request -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8MfPe1NbsoA

    Only submit a reconsideration request once you're happy that you've taken all the appropriate action to

    �x the issues associated with your website. Google have provided some good notes on their website

    blog, so this is worth reading through.

    With all the above points in place, here is an example reconsideration request. Remember to tailor this

    to your own needs, every client is completely different and it needs to be personal to your

    circumstances.

    Dear Google Webspam Team,

    How you know it won't happen again (steps you've put in place, training etc.)

    A little bit about the company (optional - see if it feels necessary)

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    On the %date_of_penalty, we received a penalty from Google for unnatural links pointing to our website,

    %website_url.

    Firstly, we would really like to apologise for the inconvenience we have caused and thank you in advance for

    reading our reconsideration request. In the past, we have carried out some techniques on our website which we

    now realise are outside your Google Webmaster Guidelines. This includes purchasing links which pass page rank,

    blog comments and forum spam (**example**).

    After reading your webmaster guidelines, we realise we were completely in the wrong. To rectify the issue, we have

    checked all the backlinks pointing to our website using Google Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer and

    Majestic SEO and contacted as many of the webmasters as possible in order to have these links removed.

    All of the work we have carried out can be found in the Google Spreadsheet below:

    %link_to_google_docs_spreadsheet

    In the above spreadsheet, you will see a list of all the links pointing to our site, the webmasters we have contacted

    and the links we have successfully removed. There are multiple sheets included in the above spreadsheet, which

    show screenshots of emails we have sent to webmasters, contact forms etc. Any links which we haven't been able

    to remove have been added to a disavow �le which we have submitted to Google.

    I am very sorry for the work we have previously carried out. We now realise that we were completely in the wrong

    and we will ensure this will never happen again. I'm con�dent that our website is now in line with Google's

    webmaster guidelines and we will ensure that this is always the case.

    We look forward to hearing from you and once again, sorry for the inconvenience.

    %Your_full_name

    %Your_company_name

    Another brilliant example of a reconsideration request written by Dev Basu can be found on the

    Powered By Search website.

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    Important Note:

    Make sure the spreadsheet link you attach allows everyone with a link to view it. The worst thing you

    could do is attach a spreadsheet that Google don't have permission to see. To do this, go to your Google

    document, click 'share' (top right) and then change the 'who has access' to 'anyone with a link'. Simply

    copy that link into your reconsideration request.

    Step 8: sit back and wait

    At this point, there's nothing you can do except for wait and cross your �ngers. Reconsideration

    requests generally only take a few days, but in some cases can take weeks to get responses.

    Fingers crossed you'll open your email one sunny morning and end up with a message in your

    webmaster tools that's similar to the following:

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    Good luck and if you have any questions at all, post them below and I'll try my best to answer them!

    Remember, if you want a head start on your link removal template, you can download a template by

    visiting our website here.

    [editor's note: please see new, related post "25 Common Questions on Google Penalty Recovery" by

    this same author.]

    About PinpointDesigns — Lewis Sellers is the founder of Yorkshire based digital agency Pinpoint Designs. The agency

    specialises in designing and developing Magento eCommerce websites along with SEO and Penalty Removal

    campaigns for clients worldwide. You can follow Pinpoint Designs on Twitter and LinkedIn for more information.

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    Tom Rayner5 years ago

    Lewis, this a fantastic post.

    I remember your �rst post on Moz that documented your penalty removal on a site of yours and now you've

    coupled it with this guide. Guide + Case Study = Happy days.

    You've covered this, but it's worth reiterating - showing evidence of your progress, documenting your work and

    showing genuine effort and progression are, in my mind, 7/10ths of the law with a reconsideration request.

    To give you an example: I was given a site by a fed up webmaster who wanted a manual penalty removed, just to

    see if I could do anything about it. I looked at the backlink pro�le and it was like Oxford Street on a Saturday

    Afternoon - absolute carnage (and full of paid links, zing!). Every link I saw was a bad one.

    So I went to test. I'll get all of the domains linking to the site, using OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic, LinkDetox (great tool

    by the way) and GWT - seriously, every link you could think of - and created a disavow �le disavowing all of

    them. Every single link struck off the record.

    I uploaded the �le and sent the reconsideration request on the webmaster's behalf. This would surely work,

    right?

    Nope. Request rejected.

    I took the easy route and just blanket disavowed and got nowhere. Google clearly want to see effort, process

    and progress in your link removal process.

    And another bit of advice when outreaching to webmasters - humour goes a long way.

    Lewis has quite rightly cited examples of when sites/webmasters have been a bit peeved at removal requests on

    their site. If you must approach these people, show humility and humour. Recognise that SEOs can be "the scum

    of the earth" and that you're here for "website repentence". Be open and honest with them - don't just say "hey,

    this site and your link looks bad, could you remove it?", instead say something like "Hi there - I'm contacting you

    with regards to this link. We're really happy you've included it, but the powers that be at Google think not.

    Could you possibly remove this link? This isn't a re�ection of what we think your site is like, nor do we ignore the

    fact that the responsibility lies with us. But you'd be doing us a huge favour by removing the link" Or something

    like that anyway.

    Once again Lewis, this is great stuff - proper methods, examples and reasoning and something, along with your

    case study, that could be used as the �rst port of call for someone looking at removing a penalty on their site.

    5 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Tom,

    Thanks for your comments, really appreciate it.

    You've made some brilliant points there that people should de�nitely read up on. We're always looking at new

    ways of

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    We've just had another manual penalty revoked for a client this morning. It was a very tricky one to do and we

    actually started the campaign from scratch as we weren't getting anywhere with the reinclusion requests.

    When we did the second lot, I used the spreadsheet example above and documented the work very heavily with

    screenshots of emails, contact forms and responses (literally hundreds of them). This did the trick.

    Like you say, you can disavow / remove all the links you want, but if you don't document your work properly, you

    may �nd the reinclusion is rejected.

    Thanks once again,

    Lewis

    3 0

    Amir125 years ago

    Well that's perfect and completely detailed article. I am showing you one more tool which help you to �nd your

    site broken links and i think its also counted by Google which is xenu link sleuthxenu link sleuth, this tool is best for many points,here is the complete article about it.

    xenu link sleuthxenu link sleuth (get it just hit in google)

    http://moz.com/blog/xenu-link-sleuth-more-than-just-a-broken-links-�nder

    It helps you a lot in �nding broken links

    1 0

    Krzysztof Furtak5 years ago

    That's a model example of Google Penalty removal (manual action) Lewis! I'm doing the same and it works!

    but...

    I have "google penalty removal" service and I ask my clients to give all necessary informations. After success

    (penalty removed) they sometimes want me to do seo services for them and say "Hey, we help You! Weve just

    bought 20k backlinks/xrummer/blasts etc!"...and Google penalizes again. Damn!:)

    My point is to "teach" Your clients what to and not to do with their websites too. Not only "remove google

    penalty".

    Data in Whois is sometimes hidden. Ahrefs/Majestic etc bots blocked... In this case You have to decide if that

    link is good or bad, spammy or not. I don't have any problem with it but it's hard and there's no tool to do 100%

    work for You.

    PenaltyHammer edited 5 years ago

    4 0

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    Brijesh Rupareliya5 years ago

    Agreed Furtak!

    My belief on this is. Put those links only by which you feel that "this link can send a genuine visitor to my

    website". These links are only fruitful for getting authority for website and also for rankings ;)

    3 0

    Krzysztof Furtak5 years ago

    But remember if website has "thousands" of outgoing links, Your website will get 1/"thousands" of

    TR/DA/PA/PR (PR haha). Of course if there's no nofollow/ban/penalty:)

    Traf�c or TR - that's the question. Both is hard to get...

    1 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Yeah, you're completely correct. It's important clients are educated so they know that they should only be using

    good linking methods moving forwards. I've never actually had any clients ask for Xrumer services etc, but like

    you say, it's important for clients to know which links are good and which are bad.

    2 0

    Krzysztof Furtak5 years ago

    He didn't ask, he did it (xrummer)... and bang! Penalty!

    1 0

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    HiveDigitalInc5 years ago

    Hey Lewis

    First off, excellent post. You have covered just about everything regarding the link removal process. I would

    recommend you take a closer look at Link Risk when you have a chance, because it is quite good.

    I would like to respond brie�y to your comments on Remove'em, though, which my company Virante created.

    Remove'em right now is the only tool on the market that grabs your link data from 3 different link sources,

    quali�es the links, grabs the contact information (both pages and emails), sort by contacted, has email, or has

    contact form, allows you to send emails directly from the app, tracks the links for whether they have been

    removed, stores the number of times contacted, allows you to �ag links as disavowed and build a disavow list,

    and export all of your campaign work into a simple CSV �le to upload to Google Webmaster Tools. It is simply

    the only all-in-one solution right now. And perhaps most importantly, it is a single up-front price. So even if your

    removal campaign drags on for months (which most do), you have only invested the initial amount.

    I won't pretend at all that the interface isn't a bit "clunky". It is hard to strike a balance between so many

    features and a fast work�ow. We are happy to say that we have helped webmasters remove over 2 million bad

    links from the web and it is still growing.

    Thanks again for your great writeup!

    3 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Russ,

    Thanks for the feedback - Glad you liked the post!

    I will take a look at Link Risk in the near future. I used it on a couple of recent projects just on the free version

    and it didn't identify quite a large number of the spam links, but that could just be down to user error. I must

    admit, I was rushing when using it so I need to sit down and try it properly to give it a fair test drive!

    We have used Remove'em with success for one of our clients. The main issue I had with the system was that I

    found it very slow. I guess all systems have pro's and con's, but the speed issue really bugged me (personal

    thing!). Overtime, we've resorted to using excel and external tools to aid the work. That being said, you've done

    a brilliant job building a tool that's helped to remove over two million links and growing so hats off to you! Can't

    argue with the results you've achieved.

    Hopefully I don't come across as having a dig at your system. My personal opinion is that If you could make the

    system a bit more �uid, It would be a huge improvement from a user perspective. You were actually the �rst

    tool we tried over a year ago so things may have improved since then!

    Cheers,

    Lewis

    1 0

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    HiveDigitalInc5 years ago

    No, you didn't. Speed is de�nitely an issue. We are currently talking about a big redesign but that is a ways off.

    Thanks for the feedback!

    1 0

    Marie Haynes5 years ago

    Excellent article Lewis.

    I'm not a huge user of tools for my penalty removal work but thank you for pointing out the services that will

    gather contact info. I'm checking those out right now.

    I just wanted to point out that when you mention that we should "add comments to the �le so Google knows

    why you’re disavowing them," this is probably not necessary. In this webmaster central video John Mueller

    explains that the comments are not seen or used by the webspam team: http://youtu.be/Ydj10_u9wVs (19:36).

    Still, it's good to put in some comments that could be helpful to your SEO team should they want to modify the

    disavow �le in the future.

    Are you �nding that it is getting harder to lift penalties these days? I am �nding that as Google gives us more

    tools to help us �nd the unnatural links they are demanding more. Prior to the disavow tool, we were able to

    remove penalties quite easily on the �rst or second try. When the disavow tool came out, Google seemed to get

    more strict on demanding that we identify (almost) every unnatural link in WMT. And now that they are giving

    us example links should we fail it seems like they want every single unnatural link gone including those that can't

    be found on backlink checkers. I have some sites where we have combined the links from WMT, ahrefs, majestic

    and OSE and the example links that we get back are ones that are not in our list. We've built a tool to help us �nd

    links that are in the index that are not in the backlink checkers and that is helping. Just wondering if you are

    �nding the same thing.

    Thanks again for the great article.

    3 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Marie,

    Thanks for the feedback - It's appreciated! :)

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    Yeah, the comments in the disavow are probably a little overkill, but for the sake of a few seconds entering in a

    line of text to explain why you've disavowed it, I always think it's worth it. That being said, If John Mueller has

    said they aren't used by the webspam team, they probably aren't necessary!

    We had a penalty lifted for a client this morning and I have to say we've really struggled with it. We've done a lot

    of manual penalty lifting for clients now and have always seen good results within the �rst or second

    reconsideration request. With this client, we have received numerous failed attempts, so we scrapped all of our

    original work and started again. Once we'd completed the work a second time round (using the spreadsheet

    that I've given as an example above), we ran the reconsideration request and the penalty was revoked this

    morning. I have to say, it's probably the best achievement of penalty removal so far (In terms of feeling!).

    So, to answer your question, yes! I think it's getting harder to get the penalties removed. As you rightly say,

    Google are providing more tools and outlining more links. They no longer want us to just look at the links in

    GWT, but also other tools to identify spammy links. We've had to be really squeaky clean with this client!

    Many thanks,

    Lewis

    1 0

    Steve Morgan5 years ago

    Good to know! I usually reiterate any comments I've made in the disavow �le in the reconsideration request as

    well, but given that I thought both were read, I could very easily have omitted an important piece of info in the

    reconsideration request thinking it'd get noticed in the disavow �le, when that wouldn't have been the case.

    Thanks Marie!

    2 0

    Sha Menz5 years ago

    Hi Lewis,

    Wow! Fantastic post. It's easy to see from the hard work and effort you've put into this exactly why you're good

    at link removal work and dealing with manual actions.

    Thanks so much for including rmoov, and for saying such nice things about us :)

    We've been having fun adding new features to rmoov lately, so if you stop by again I'm sure you will notice some

    improvements that will make life much easier (especially for those with a lot of form submissions to handle).

    Perhaps the most important message in your whole post is "Do the Work". It seems time saved with shortcuts

    generally ends up being outweighed many times over by additional time spent reworking campaigns and

    resubmitting reconsideration requests.

    Thanks again,

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    Sha

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Sha,

    Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it.

    I'll take another look at rmoov again soon, it'll be great to see how you've continued development. Some of the

    tools out there are a great way of saving time, helping to collate information and working through it, but we

    haven't come across anything perfect yet (though I guess things are always changing so that's hard to achieve!).

    Keep up the good work on Rmoov! :)

    Lewis

    1 0

    thedesign�ex5 years ago

    Nice post Lewis

    The easiest way to determine if your site has been penalized is to map each date of the update to your organic

    search traffic #source

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Thank you :)

    Yeah, good tip for others there!

    1 0

    thedesign�ex

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    5 years ago

    your welcome :)

    1 0

    Tom King5 years ago

    Great read Lewis, I'm currently working 'in house' and since I started here I've been focusing on getting the

    'manual penalty' removed. I haven't used any tools as such apart from GWT, OSE & Majestic to �nd as many of

    the inbound links as possible.

    I must say that it is beginning to drive me insane, I am 'colour coding' the links (Red, Amber, Green) with RED

    links being the ones I know are culpable for the penalty, AMBER are links I may have to revisit if my �rst

    Reconsideration Request is rejected and GREEN are ones I'm happy with!

    I'm hoping that by the end of October I will have contacted all of the webmasters that I need to (2 or 3 times if

    necessary), have created a Disavow �le and submitted a RR to Google!

    Wish me luck! :-)

    Cheers!

    Andy

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Andy,

    I would de�nitely recommend Ahrefs if you're not already using it. It's probably the best backlink �nder we've

    used and it allows you to see a visual graph of how your links are dropping overtime (which de�nitely spurs you

    on a bit!). It really is a brilliant tool for the money.

    Colour coding your links is a very good idea. We setup �lters on our spreadsheets to show if links have been

    removed or not. If the link has been successfully removed, the cell is highlighted in Green and if it's been

    disavowed, it's in a very pale red/pink colour. It just gives a visual indication of how you're getting along with

    things. Again, it's also one of those things that shows how you're progressing and as you start getting towards

    the end of a campaign, you get a feel of how good your pro�le is looking.

    It sounds like you're on the right track, so best of luck and let us know how you get on!

    Many thanks,

    Lewis

    2 0

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    Arvind Kumar Attri5 years ago

    Hey Lewis,

    This information was highly useful, thanks a lot!. Ultimate information about Google penalty removal. Please

    continue your helpful posts and i appreciate your post.

    Thanks for your post and waiting for next post

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Thanks! - Glad you found it useful!.

    1 0

    David Henzel5 years ago

    Wow.. epic post! Very thorough. I learnt alot :)

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Thanks :)

    1 0

    annielayer5 years ago

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    Hey, just letting you know this article is COMPLETELY plagiarized with no attribution

    on http://www.idnetworkz.com/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal/

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years ago

    Hi Annie, Thank you for pointing this out, the article has now been removed. :) Thanks for letting me know!

    Lewis.

    1 0

    Steve Mogi5 years ago

    Excellent article!

    You did amazing job Levis!

    I had clients who were looking to get rid of these penalty situations, though most of the work done by me was

    based on backlinks research and type of websites, though the way you have explained everything is superb!

    Thanks for this great article and effort!

    2 0

    Lewis Sellers5 years a