Please help me find unnatural links

[Eavesy]

My URL is: http://bit.ly/hBJAG4

Just been hit with an unnatural imbound links penalty and don't know what to do. I haven't done any link building work for the last 3 years other then creating an infographic at Christmas that was incredibly popular: http://bit.ly/14lao4G

I have 0 paid links and I have never spammed a blog or forum.

The only thing I can think of is back in 2006/2007 I was directory crazy - I got listed in all of the (what I thought at the time) were good quality paid directories - could this have come back to haunt me?

Why do you think I have just been penalized now when these directory links have been there for years?

Should I start getting rid of the directory links? - they did cost me a lot of cash.

Can any of you spot any other links that could be seen as unnatural?

Thanks to anyone who can help in advance

[jws8118]

Did you pull your link profile from webmaster tools, opensiteexplorer, majestic, or ahrefs?  I would start with pulling your profile from as many of these as you can.  Are you sure a competitor didn't hit you with some negative SEO?

[MarieHaynes]

If you got a manual warning like this it's often because a competitor has filed a spam report on you.  At that point, it doesn't matter when links were acquired...What Google wants to see is that you get rid of (or make attempts to get rid of) the vast majority of the links that were not naturally earned.

In working with sites with unnatural links penalties I have seen a couple that were penalized (I believe) because of widespread directory links.  I see on your ahrefs profile that you've got 90 backlinks using the anchor text "search engine optimization".  That type of pattern doesn't happen naturally.

What's going to be difficult is deciding whether all of your links have to be addressed or whether you can save some.  You could take the tactic of addressing one type of link at a time and reconsidering.  But my guess is that the infographic links as well as the directory links are going to have to go.  I see that you have some guest blogs too...these are debatable.  If you've got lots of them and they are using anchor text Google may want to see them gone as well before they lift the penalty.

[Eavesy]

Hi Marie, I hear most of what you are saying and will try removing some of the worst directory links, but I don't understand what you mean when you say the infographic links could be penalized - none of those links were paid for, I submitted to a few free infographic blogs and the rest are 100% natural

[MarieHaynes]

"Unnatural" does not always have to mean "paid".  The problem that I see is not with the infographic, but with the embed code.  You are asking people to embed the infographic and include your desired anchor text.  Now, the debatable thing here is that the anchor text is your brand...but it could also be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate the search engine results for "SEO Company".

Unnatural links warnings are all about breaking the quality guidelines.  Under link schemes there are a few things that could apply to infographics.  They say "Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme."

Matt Cutts put out a webmaster video a few months ago about infographics and the gist of it was that they are ok, but you should not be trying to do it with the intention of manipulating search results.  If people choose to imbed your infographic and decide to link to you then that's great.  But, when you start dictating what anchor text then it gets iffy.

I'd likely start off with the directory listings first though and you can always go after the infographic links as a last resort.

BTW...if you pass your reconsideration without removing your infographic links, can you let me know?  It will help me in knowing how to advise others in this situation.

[Eavesy]

NP

[Eavesy]

and thanks for the good advice, I never looked at it that way