Large-Scale Penguin Cleanup - How to prioritize?

[tomypro]

We are conducting a large-scale Penguin cleanup / link cleaning exercise across 50+ properties that have been on the market mostly all for 10+ years. There is a lot of link data to sift through and we are wondering how we should prioritize the effort.

So far we have been collecting backlink data for all properties from AHref, GWT, SeoMajestic and OSE and consolidated the data using home-grown tools.

As a next step we are obviously going through the link cleaning process. We are interested in getting feedback on how we are planning to prioritize the link removal work. Put in other words we want to vet if the community agrees with what we consider are the most harmful type of links for penguin.

• Priority 1: Clean up site-wide links with money-words; if possible keep a single-page link
• Priority 2: Clean up or rename all money keyword links for money keywords in the top 10 anchor link name distribution
• Priority 3: Clean up no-brand sitewide links; if possible keep a single-page link
• Priority 4: Clean up low-quality links (other niche or no link juice)
• Priority 5: Clean up multiple links from same IP C class

Does this sound like a sound approach? Would you prioritize this list differently?

Thank you for any feedback /T

[KeriMorgret]

Have you read the post at http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal? Matt Cutts even called it out on Twitter as a good post. That's where I'd first look for ideas.

[GregB123]

When you say "clean up" do you mean removing the links or disavowing them?

You will never be able to get them all removed, so in the end you will need to a Disavow anyways. If your time frame is short, you may want to make Priority One be doing a Disavow for each of the 50+ sites you are working with. Then you can proceed with attempting to get the links removed. I have not heard that there is any downside to having a link removed that already appears on your disavow file...

As for the order of the Priorities, you may want to shuffle them a bit depending on the different situations on the different websites. I suggest you read this Moz Blog article called It's Penguin-Hunting Season: How to Be the Predator and Not the Prey

...and then test a few of your sub-pages that used to rank well at the program used in this article which is called the Penguin Analysis Tool.  I say sub-page because it needs a single keyword phrase you want rank that particular page for so it do the anchor text analysis. And that works better on focused sub-pages than on general homepages. $10 per website will let you fully evaluate two typical pages on each and see which facet of the link profile is most valuable to attack first.

[RyanKent]

Your data sources are correct (AHREFs, Bing, Ose & Majestic) but I recommend including Bing as well. The data is free and you will find at least some links not shown in other sources.

The link prioritization you shared is absolutely incorrect.

"Priority 1: Clean up site-wide links with money-words; if possible keep a single-page link"

While it is true site-wide links are commonly manipulative, removing the site wide link and keeping a single one does not necessarily make it less manipulative. You have only removed one of the elements which are often used to identify manipulative links.

"Priority 2: Clean up or rename all money keyword links for money keywords in the top 10 anchor link name distribution"

A manipulative link is still manipulative regardless of the anchor text used. Based in April 2012, Google used anchor text as a means to identify manipulative links. That was over 18 months ago and Google's link identification process has evolved substantially since that time.

"Priority 3: Clean up no-brand sitewide links; if possible keep a single-page link"

Same response as #1 & 2

"Priority 4: Clean up low-quality links (other niche or no link juice)"

See below

"Priority 5: Clean up multiple links from same IP C class"

The IP address should not be given any consideration whatsoever. You are using a concept that had validity years ago and is completely outdated.

bonegear.net  IP address 66.7.211.83

vitopian.com  IP address 64.37.49.163

There are no commonalities between the above two IP addresses, be it C block or otherwise, yet they are both hosted on the same server.

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You have identified the issue affecting your site (Step 1) and collected a solid list of your backlinks using multiple sources (Step 2). The backlink report is an excellent step which places you well above most site owners and SEOs in your situation.

Step 3 - Identify links from every linking domain.

a. Have an experienced, knowledgeable human visit each and every linking domain. Yes, that is a lot of work but it is what's necessary if you are going to accurately identify all of the manipulative links. Prior to beginning this step, be absolutely sure the person can accurately identify manipulative links with AT LEAST 95% accuracy, although 100% is strongly desired.

b. Document the effort. I have had 3 clients who approached me with a Penguin issue, we confirmed there was not any manual action in place at the time we began the clean up process, but before we finished the sites incurred a manual penalty. Solid documentation of the clean up effort is required by Google in case the Penguin issue morphs into a manual penalty. Also, it just makes sense. You mentioned 50+ web properties so clearly others will be performing these tasks.

c. Audit the effort. A wise former boss once stated "You must inspect what you expect". Unless you carefully audit the work, the process will fail. Evaluators will mis-identify links. You will lose some quality links and manipulative links will be missed as well.

d. While you are on the site, capture manipulative site's e-mail address and contact forum URL (if any). This information is helpful to contact site owners to request link removal.

Step 4 - Conduct a Webmaster Outreach Campaign. Each manipulative domain needs to be contacted in a comprehensive manner. In my experience, most SEOs and site owners do not put in the required level of effort.

a. Send a professional request to the site's WHOIS e-mail address.

b. After 3 business days if no response is received, send the same letter to the site's e-mail address found on the website.

c. After another 3 business days, if no response is received submit the e-mail via the site's contact form. Take a screenshot of the submission on the site (not required for Penguin as no documentation is, but it is helpful for the process).

All of the manipulative link penalties (Penguin and manual) I have worked with have been cleaned up manually. With that said, we use Rmoov to manage the Webmaster Outreach process. It sends and maintains a copy of every e-mail sent. It even has a place to add the Contact Form URL. A big time saver.

If a site owner responds and removes the link, that's great. CHECK IT! If there are only a few links, manually confirm link removal. If there are many URLs, use Screaming Frog or another tool to confirm link removal.

If a site owner refuses or requests money, you can often achieve link removal by having further respectful conversations.

If a site owner does not respond, you can use "extra measures". Call the phone number listed in WHOIS. Send a physical letter to the WHOIS address. Reach out to them on social media sites. Is it a .com domain with missing WHOIS information? You can report them on INTERNIC. Is it a spammy wordpress.com or blogspot site? You can report that as well.

When Matt Cutts introduced the Disavow Tool, he clearly said "...at the point where you have written to as many people as you can, multiple times, you have really tried hard to get in touch and you have only been able to get a fraction of those links down and there is still a small fraction of those links left, that's where you can use our Disavow Tool".

The above process satisfies that requirement. In my experience, not much less than the above process meets that need. The overwhelming majority of those tackling these penalties try to perform the minimal amount of work possible, which is why forums are flooded with complaints about numerous attempts to remove manipulative link penalties and failing.

Upon completion of the above, THEN upload a Disavow list of the links you could not remove after every reasonable human effort. In my experience you should have removed at least 20% of the linking DOMAINS (with rare exceptions).

It can take up to 60 days thereafter, but if you truly cleaned up the links in a quality manner, then the Penguin issues should be fully resolved.

The top factors in determining whether you succeed or fail are:

1. Your determination to follow the above process thoroughly

2. The experience, training and focus of your team

You can resolve the issue in one round of effort and have the Penguin issue resolved within a few months....or you can be one of those site owners who thinks it is impossible and be struggling with the same issue a year later. If you are not 100% committed, RUN AWAY. By that I mean change domain names and start over.

Good Luck.

TLDR - Don't try to fool Google. Anchor text and site wide links are part of the MECHANISM used to identify manipulative links. Don't confuse the mechanism with the message. Google's clear message: EARN links, don't "build" links. Polishing up the old manipulative links is a complete waste of your time. AT BEST, you will enjoy limited success for a period of time until Google catches up. Many site owners and SEOs have already been there, and it is a painful process.