How long does a Google penalty last if you have fixed the problem??

[BelfastSEO]

Hi

I stupidly thought that it would be a good idea to set up a reciprocal links page on my website named 'links'.  I did this because my competitors were linking to these pages so I though it would be a good idea and I genuinely didn't know that you could be punished for this.  Within about 3 weeks my rank dropped about 3 pages.

I have since removed the links and the page was cached last Friday but the site still appears to have a penalty.  I assumed when Google cached the page and saw the links were not there anymore that the penalty would be lifted.

Anyone got any ideas?

ps. The competitor websites had broken their links pages into various categories relating to the website i.e. related directories etc. so this might be why they weren't penalized.

[Highland]

Google doesn't directly penalize you for bad links. Even JC Penney, who was caught in a massive link buying scheme, didn't get a direct penalty. They experienced what it sounds like you're experiencing: link devaluation. Keep in mind, however, that reciprocal links aren't worth a lot to begin with so I'm hesitant to pin all your drop on that.

Have you looked at your Linkscape profile for your site or looked at Open Site Explorer to see how your backlink profile looks?

Does your site have strong content?

[BelfastSEO]

Hi thanks for replying.

Yes the website has very strong content and the backlink profile is very good.  The site was ranking well for about 6 months in roughly the same position so this has came out of the blue on the only thing I've done differently was set up the links page.

It has also came to my attention that the sites I was linking to may be bad neighbourhoods.

On your point about devaluation - yes the site has 2 or 3 sites linking with sponsored links.  They provide a large number of links.

[Marcus_Miller]

If you have seen a sudden and stark drop in traffic, like a cliff in your analytics, then it is more likely to be penalty of sorts. Though, prior experience has taught me, these are not always for what you think they are for.

If you want to post a link I will try to give you a 10 minute review and see if we can spot anything else that may be causing problems.

Marcus

[BelfastSEO]

Cheers for that.  I can't post the link as don't want to give out my clients details.  However if you give me your email I can send it to you.

Thanks

[PeterAlexLeigh]

You can fairly easily check what sort of penalty has been applied by checking the below;

1. Does your site appear on google's first page for your domain name? If no then you may have had a penalty

2. Does your site appear if you search for an exact phrase of about 5-6 words? If no then you probably have some sites linking in which have been devalued

You say that you've added a page of links; if these are spammy links then this could have a negative effect on your rankings. If google sees that you are in effect 'voting' for spammy sites it may devalue your sites status in itself (especially if your link profile isn't top notch).

I would work on creating some more, high quality links into your site and you should see the rankings restore to normal.

Google sometimes takes a few weeks to put your site back to where it belongs after something like this happens, and so you may need to wait a bit longer for it to bounce back.

If not you can always send a re-consideration request, even if your site isn't penalised; explain you made a mistake with the low quality links and you've now removed them. and they may restore value to your site

[BelfastSEO]

Hi Shelly

Yes I'm definitely thinking about sending a re-consideration request.  I guess my main issue is why the hell don't Google tell you if you've done something wrong!

To answer you questions the site is still on Google just dropped considerably.  It has a healthy page rank of 52.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

I doubt very much that it's an actual penalty. You may find that it bounces back up if you build a couple of good links

[BelfastSEO]

The website has thousands of quality links and these are added on a weekly basis as it is in a very competitive category....Even more so in the last month since this happened.

Let's hope that it bounces back but in my opinion this feels like a penalty.

[Marcus_Miller]

If it is an algorithmic penalty, it will just bounce back, but it can't hurt to file the reconsideration request in the meanwhile. This can take a bit of time though as mentioned above.

We had a weird one recently where  the site was seemingly filtered down to like the 6th page of results for queries it was first and second for.  We found lots of other sites had stolen content from the site. We rewrote the pages in question on our site as it was easier than dealing with the content thieves, put a recon in and before we knew it,  we back, stronger than ever before.

I have seen a bunch of weird variations, filters and penalties so without a link it's tough to comment further but my email is on my profile if it helps. Can never learn enough about google penalties and the like so happy to take a look my friend.

Cheers
Marcus

[Avinashi.eConcepts]

So do you say if I got penalty by Google then they must mail me about why I got penalty. If none mail comes then it's not a penalty.