Unnatural Link Notification - Third Go Round, specific questions
-
Hi all, I'm posting what is sure to be a common question, but I can't seem to find much information by searching Q&A over the last month so thought I'd throw this out there. There's a lot of 'what do I do??' questions about 'unnatural link notification', but most of them are from first timers. We're pretty far along in the process and it feels like we're going nowhere, so I was hoping to pick the brains of anyone else who's 'been there'.
We have a client that we inherited with an unnatural link profile; they were warned shortly after we took them on (around March was the first warning). We compiled an apologetic letter, specifically identified a previous agency who >was< doing bad things, mentioned things would be different from now on, and provided a list of links we were working on to remove based on WMT and OSE and some other sources. This was submitted in early June.
Traffic on the main keyword plummeted; ranking went from top 5 to about mid-page 4.
We got hit with that same rash of Unnatural Link warnings on July 23 that everyone else did and after looking around I decided not to respond to those.
We got a response to the reinclusion request submitted in June above, saying the site was still violating guidelines. This time I went all out, and provided a Google docs spreadsheet of the over 1,500 links we had removed, listed the other links that had no contact info (not even in WHOIS), listed the links we had emailed/contact formed but got no response, everything.
So they responded to that recently, simply saying 'site still violates guidelines' with no other details, and I'm not sure what else I can do. The campaign above was quite an investment of resources and time, but I'm not sure how to most efficiently continue.
I promised specific questions, so here they are:
-
Are the link removal services (rmoov, removeem, linkdelete, et al) worth investigating? To remove the 1,500 links I mentioned above I had a full time (low paid) person working for a week.
-
Does Google even reconsider after long engagements like this? Most of what I've read has said that inclusion gets cleared up on the first/second request, and we're at bat for the third now. Due to the lack of feedback I don't know if their opinion is "nope, you just missed some" or "you are so blackhat you shouldn't even bother asking anymore".
-
One of the main link holders is this shady guy who runs literally thousands of directories the client appears in thanks to previous SEO agency, and wants $5 per link he removes. Should I mention this to Google, do they even care? Or is it solely our responsibility?
Thanks in advance for any advice;
-
-
That's a really tough spot to be in, Valery - I can sense the frustration!
As far as your last question is concerned, Matt Cutts, in the blog post clarifying the new link warnings, specifically states that you should inform them if a network is charging to remove links:
In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves.
Have you tried asking for this same kind of help in the Google Webmaster Forum? Wouldn't hurt to double your possibilities - I've heard of some folks getting direct responses there.
It's possible that there was more than just dirty links going on that added to the penalty - assume you've looked for and cleaned up all the other Black Hat techniques that might have been in use?
Sorry, no experience with the link removal services so no help there. The folks at Link Research Tools have just recently released a nearly free Link Detox tool to look at link quality - might be worth running to see if it flags anything substantial you missed.
I'm sure your patience has just about run out, but I'd stick with it a little longer, especially if the site is otherwise high-value.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes...
Paul
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Advise / Help on Bad Link Removals
Hey everyone.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheITOteam
Im new to the community and new to backlinks - hence the question to the community today.
I would like help understanding options and work load around back links and removing them.
I have a client with over 8000 back links as a few years ago he paid someone about £10 to boost his rankings by adding thousands of backlinks.
We fear this is having a bad effect on their site and rankings organically as 90% of these back links have a spam score of over 50% and also no follows. My questions to the community (if you could be so kind to share) are:
1. Whats the best way to decide if a Backlink is worth keeping or removing
2. Is there a tool to decide this or assist with this somewhere on the internet? Ive had advise stating if its not hurting the page we should keep it. However, again...
How do I know what damage each Backlink is causing to the domain? I appriciate anyones time to offer some advice to a novice looking to clear these1 -
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
Link Building / Link Removal
Hey, I'm in the process of learning SEO, or attempting to, for my company and am chipping away at the process ever so slowly! How can I tell if a site that links to my company's site, www.1099pro.com, has a negative effect on my page/domain authority? Also, if a page doesn't show up in the search rankings at all for it's keywords when it really should (i.e it has the exact keywords and page/domain authority far surpasses even the top results) how can I tell if Google has removed the page from its listing and why? Thanks SEO Gurus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Stew2220 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Vetting Link Opportunties that are Penguin Safe
I am looking to go after sites that are, and will never be, affected by Penguin/Panda updates. Is there a tool or a general rule of thumb on how to avoid such sites? Is there a method anyone is currently using to get good natural links post Penguin 2.0?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
White hat link technique to banned domain
The question is: I have branddomain A (manually penalization by google, one year ago and after 4 consideration requests and more than 3/4 of links removed, stills banned) authority 42 And and new branddomain B (with fresh content created after penalization in the case of no recovery as it happen) authority 26 There are no links from A to B, both are now with same traffic but i want people that find me on domain A (partial penalized) to come to my new web brand. Both domains have same name, different extensión. So the question: Can i link with photo domain A to domain B, if i place nofollow and no ancor text on those linked photos. I want to have my traffic unified and i dont want to go against google guidelines
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Opinions sought on outbound Links page.
Hello Forum, I'm about the remove my outbound Links page at: http://www.pictureframe.com.au/---obs--picture-frames-links.html I think that Google could be assessing this page as a link scheme, ie: I-link-you-if-you-link me. I haven't received any messages from Google about this but I think the page may be devaluing my site. What do you guys~gals think? Thank you for any and all feedback Paul the Picture Framer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Picframer0 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0