What do you think of this reconsideration request?

[Eavesy]

Just about to send a reconsideration request to Google for my site: seoco.co.uk and would like your input.  I was going to include information about each URL I found and the steps I have taken but there is not room. What do you think of this:

“Hi guys, i got an unnatural links message from you back in February and since then my website rankings have fallen dramatically. I spoke to someone at SEOmoz and they said that my website probably got penalised for directory links so I have gone out and tried to get rid of all the low quality ones that I am responsible for and some that I am not.

Altogether I was able to identify about 218 low quality directory links. I attempted to contact every one of the directory owners twice over a two week period and I was able to get about 68 removed. I have used the disavow tool to devalue the rest.

Trying to get rid of all of those bad links was hard work and I have definitely learned my lesson. Rest assured I will not be submitting to anymore directories in the future.

Please can you give me another chance?

If my site still violates the guidelines please could you point out some of the bad links that are still there?”

What do you think? Can you think of anything else I should say?

Dave

[jesse-landry]

Don't love it, honestly. You need to re-work this. And put a ton more documentation into it.

I'd leave out everything about SEOmoz. They don't care where you learned what you learned. All you need to do is explain that you understand how purchasing link packages is wrong and a terrible idea and that you are interested in removing all unnatural/spam links from your profile. Then go into how you determined which were spam links and what you tried to remove.

This is where you want to attach screenshots and excel spreadsheets showing what links/who you contacted and how many times. You need to provide as much data showing you did as much work as possible. Giving a blanket number just simply isn't enough.

Now beyond this, don't big. Be authoritative. Man up. Realize that you are talking to a webspam team who does not feel sorry for you. So talk to them like you're trying to get a job with them. Be cordial, formal, polite and mature. And don't ask them to "point out some other bad links" for you. They want to know that YOU KNOW what a bad link is, ensuring that this won't happen again.  ---THIS LAST SENTENCE IS VERY IMPORTANT and should be the underlying theme of your entire email.

Sorry if I'm coming off harsh, I just want to help. There are a ton of blogs about this.. I suggest checking them out. You can search through YouMoz for helpful posts about this.

Hope this helps... good luck!

[Eavesy]

Hi Jesse, thanks for the response, don't mind the harshness at all. I have all the data about URLs and the steps i took in a normal email but am not sure about how to attach it. What would be the best way and how to I do it?

[jesse-landry]

Honestly, just list out the domains in an Excel file (or google doc) and make separate columns:

One column should read "Contacted" and another should read "Link Removed."

**note: The domain list should come from multiple sources, not just the GWT list. It is incomplete and untrustworthy. Use Open Site Explorers list and maybe even Majestic/ahref or all of the above. Remove duplicates and sort your list and it should be pretty obvious which are the spam links based on anchor text and domain URLs.

Put x's in boxes accordingly.

Then just go ahead and take all of the screenshots of email contacts you have and put them in a folder, zip it up, and attach it to the email.

That's what I would do. Like I said, the more info you can include the better. As much tracking and data as you can possibly overwhelm them with. They may not look through all of it, but it will definitely indicate to them that you have figured out the problem and worked really hard to fix it.

Please keep us posted on how this works. As you may be able to tell this is something I work on often and am very interested in the process and how it works out. I and the whole community would be incredibly pleased if you were able to keep us informed as to how it turned out.

Good luck!