I am getting an error message from Google Webmaster Tools and I don't know what to do to correct the problem

[KeriMorgret]

I took a quick look at the first site. I don't know about triggering any type of warning, but are you aware that there are multiple pages with lorem ipsum text still? http://artistalaska.com/about.htm You might want to clean that up for a better user experience. Also, some pages are indexed that you probably don't want viewable, such as http://www.artistalaska.com/$_alternate1.htm.

Just those eight sites got targeted, and not the others that you also did (via http://spyonweb.com). Look and see if you can find something in common with those that the others don't have? I noticed this page http://www.whitegyr.com/using_free_link_exchange_directo.htm and while the Google notice doesn't mention linking, I'd maybe clean that up as a preventative tool.

Right now I'm on limited bandwidth and time, but if this were me I'd go through and do a site: on each of the sites and see what google has indexed and see if anything jumps out (like the default text, see if there's evidence of anything being hacked, etc). I'd go into open site explorer and look and inlinks and look to see anything fishy is there. I'd look at the source code to see if something looks off there (like a bunch of hidden text). I'd look to see if I was using unique content on the site.

[whitegyr]

Thanks Keri:

Thanks for the look and will clean up those items this AM.  And look after your other
suggestions ASAP, one question though, what is a “a site:” ?

[MarieHaynes]

I would agree that this really is an unnatural links warning even if that is not stated in the actual message.  I took a look at a couple of sites to see whether your backlink profile looked natural.

The first one I looked at was shoes-place.com.  If you look at it in OSE and select "Anchor text", you will see that your most common anchor texts are your keywords.  A natural link profile would have predominantly the URL as anchor text.  It looks like you have placed a lot of directory links using keyword anchor text.

Next, I looked at whitegyr.com. You've got a whackload of links using the anchor text "web page design" and the next popular ones are all keyword anchor texted links like "good web content", "web design prices", etc.  Your URL is not even on the first page (EDIT - I don't mean on the first page of Google, but rather, on the first page of what anchor texts your links have) when it comes to anchor text.  This is definitely not natural.

I think you have an uphill battle and I don't envy you.  

[whitegyr]

"Web Page Design" is the keyword phrase we have targeted for our online web business and when you search for that phrase on Google our site is in #6 on the first page a place we have held for years. And yes we have asked for that anchor text and have never heard of using our site's URL as anchor text. Who does that anyway?

[KeriMorgret]

People who do that are often ones who don't know about SEO or wanting to optimize anchor text and the ones who haven't been asked for specific information for a link. They're the ones who help contribute to a natural-looking link profile. If all of your links have anchor text that looks like someone coached them about what to write, it looks a bit suspicious to the engines and less like someone linked there on their own and more like they were prompted to do so.

[KeriMorgret]

The site: operator would be going to Google and typing in

site:artistalaska.com

for your search. It's telling google "My search is for everything you will show me on this one particular site"

[MarieHaynes]

Here is some reading that may help explain what changes Google is making as of late to combat unnatural linking practices:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-survive-googles-unnatural-links-warnings-avoid-overoptimisation

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-types-of-unnatural-link-building-tactics-10-quality-alternatives/44287/

[whitegyr]

So now we should look for links back to our site using the site's URL as anchor text?

[KeriMorgret]

I'd take a step back and stop building links, and start cleaning up the links that have already been built that are a bit fishy.

There's an article directory on a site with a domain about best pet insurance that links to the shoe store (http://bestpetinsurance.org/myarticledirectory/). A UK SEO directory has a link to the same shoe site, under the category of flowers (http://www.seoukdirectory.com/index.php?search=Internet).

If these links were built with your knowledge and you have access to the list of links that were built, go and remove the ones that were bought to just be links and serve no purpose to a reader. Also go through Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Center, and Open Site Explorer to look at incoming links and remove those bad links.

Look at the content in those websites. Clean out the junk and make the content good enough that someone would link there without prompting.

In short, think about if you were sitting down with someone from Google and explaining why these sites should be included in the index and have a high ranking. Make sure that everything under your control can be explained and is not embarrassing or going against their guidelines. Clean things up, then ask for a reinclusion request.

[MarieHaynes]

Great advice!