Manual penalty & long tail

[superseopl]

Hi guys,

one of our websites has received a partial manual penalty from Google, visible in our webmaster tools panel. That website was SEO-ed poorly via external agency, using very old-fashioned, spammy solutions.

We have X keywords that are filtered (drops in rankings such as 2 -> 48), and X keywords that our website still ranks well for (stays top 3, etc).

Question: after we remove all the traces of SEO implemented by previous SEO manager (so we remove some bad stuff from the web, and disavow the rest of bad stuff through webmaster tools), we expect drops in positions for keywords that were previously filtered (because not many links, if any, remains). How will that process affect our previously not-filtered main and long tail phrases?

We wonder if there's a point in removing that manual penalty. Our website still receives solid portion of organic traffic, because Google didn't penalized all of our phrases supported by bad SEO. Any tips or suggestions as to what path should we take from here?

Mind you, this is an e-commerce website. We fear that removing the penalty will result in removing most of the existing organic traffic, and our sales will suffer tremendously.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

If you are concerned about what might happen after correcting the manual penalty, then you could always do some ground work first and build more more positive links before beginning the disavow process, but in theory, correcting the manual penalty shouldn't see your ranks drop - I have never seen that happen myself; well, not outside a bit of readjustment time.

However, what happens if Google sees fit to change the threshold of the penalty and it affects more of your site?

I certainly wouldn't leave it, but I would look at ways to correct it.

-Andy

[superseopl]

Talk about nice timing. Marie has posted about this very issue today on Moz: http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase

I recommend that read to everyone who has doubts similar to mine.