Reconsideration Request Letter - What must be included to be restored

[SEOEnthusiast]

How important do you feel the actual 'fluff' of a reconsideration letter is? I have created a comprehensive analysis reviewing thousands of links, removing hundreds, no-following links and disavowing many. However one thing I did not do in my letter is throw anyone under the bus and told that is what Google is looking for. Do you have any thoughts or insight into this? If it is a manual penalty then is google looking for you to blame a specific agency or company you bought links from to be truly forgiven?

[KevinBudzynski]

My tips are: be completely honest, remove the spammy-links/content, show proof of this (such as emails-use Google docs as they won't typically open any files) and you will now play "by the rules".

[Dr-Pete]

I know many SEOs who have gone through the process and preach the necessity of an honest and thorough reconsideration request. The more details you give, the more they're likely to take it seriously.

I haven't heard that it's necessary to throw anyone under the bus, but it probably is true that if you're only apologizing because you got caught, they might not be so sympathetic. If someone actually did damage without your knowledge (like an old agency), then I'd come clean about that, but don't go off ranting about how it's all their fault. If you hired them, be honest about it. I definitely wouldn't make up a story for sympathy, as that can go wrong fast. These requests, if they get through the first filter (I suspect), are reviewed by humans, and they have a much better ability to detect BS than the algorithm does.