A potential client who got busted !

[onlinemediadirect]

We had a call this week from a company who have been using a SEO company providing link building services.

The back links they have been generating are seriously dodgy back links !

www.jumpforfun.co.uk

Here are some examples of the back links -

http://www.utc.fr/interactions/?FORUM-DEBAT-quel-s-role-s-pour-les

http://mad.blogtv.uol.com.br/2010/03/12/homenagens-ao-grande-cartunista-glauco

http://medical.gate2finance.com/node/67

Yes a seriously dodgy back link profile ! He received the following email from google via webmaster tools -

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.jumpforfun.co.uk/,

We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

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I mentioned to the client I would speak to the community on SEO moz to the owner of the site and see what opinions other SEO's would have on solving this issue.

[Keszi]

Hey Garry,

Firstly I would start contacting these websites and kindly ask for a link removal (make sure to keep the archives of these messages in case of submitting for reconsideration).

Note, that you can handle the links that you have on your site, but you cannot those which are on other websites, owned by other companies.

If they do not respond with on the link removal, you can point out the message archives while resubmitting.

Good luck!

Istvan

[bradkrussell]

Agree with Istvan, but I would also add - start creating some quality links!

Of course, getting these dodgy links removed should be your first step, but try and get a few quality links to outweigh these spammy ones. That will also help with resubmission if it comes to that.

[Carson-Ward]

Hi there,

From the sounds of it, you have not seen a penalty yet. I've had a lot of calls and emails since my last post. My feeling is that you can either be proactive, and submit a reconsideration request before things go bad, or be reactive and see if anything happens. The latter strategy is better if there are a lot of links that you cannot clean up. In either case, don't do a reconsideration request until you've made a reasonable attempt to clean up the links.

Thanks,

Carson