Google Manual Action (manual-Penalty)- Unnatural inbound links

[SharewarePros]

Dear friends,

I just get from Google two "Unnatural inbound links" notifications via Google Webmaster Tools, the first is for our WWW version of the site and the second is for the NON-WWW version.

My question, I should send two identical reconsideration request for WWW and NON-WWW or treat them as different sites?

Thank you

Claudio

[FedeEinhorn]

Prior to send the reconsideration request, have you fixed the issue? Have you contacted Webmasters asking to remove those links? If yes, did you submit the non-removed links using the disavow tool?

If all that is done, then one more question before sending that request, why are you serving both www and non-www? If you are, then it will create a duplicate content issue, and if you are not, then one reconsideration request from the site actually needs to rank should be fine (but it won't hurt sending the same to both if the content is actually the same and the backlinks were the same).

Keep in mind that a reconsideration request isn't just a letter, it must show your efforts in correcting the issues, copies of emails, spreadsheets of bad backlinks and their status (contacted/removed/disavowed), etc.

Hope that helps!

[SharewarePros]

Dear Federico,

You're right in all, our site is freesharewaredepot (dot) com it has the non-www redirected (301= to the www and also we use canonical, and google webmaster tools continue for years showing us both versions and even sending us both manual actions notes.

My question is "I have to send different reconsideration request treating both sites as different?"

In my opinion, I should to send the same (identical) reconsideration note for both.

Only to share our knowledge, we are in the hard task of link removal with a success of only 5%

Let me know your ideas

Claudio

[FedeEinhorn]

Claudio,

Alright then you have it right (the www/non-www thing).

First go over all your shady links and try to have them removed or no-followed. There are online tools that can research contact forms, emails, etc from those links, like Link Detox from LinkResearchTools (I think it is).

Run a full report and include all the links that are downloadable from Webmaster Tools, and those from OpenSiteExplorer. By doing that, it will analyze every possible link you have. Then filter all the shady ones, and send an email (a template of course) to each webmaster (if there's no email, try searching for a contact form). Point them where's the link that should be removed in their sites, make their job easy so they actually do it.

Once all have been contacted, wait a couple of weeks for the results, run the report again and create a disavow file with all those links that were not removed.

Wait a couple of weeks.

Get on the reconsideration request (same for both www/non-www); again send them proof of your work, share the spreadsheet you created while removing the links, the emails, some responses, show some removed links, etc.

It could take a while to get your rankings back if the reconsideration is approved, but unfortunately I've read cases where their rankings were never returned.

[SharewarePros]

Dear Federico,

I agree 100% the procedure recommended by you, and also I want to share with you:

1. Sources where we get links: Webmaster tools, SEOMoz, and link magestic, so you will get a hughe list of links, so we are working on this list, also google know that the problematic links are usually abandoned blogs (which register the domain only for one year) and in general doesn't provides any contact info, even if you contact the hosting people, in general they say "No response from the owner of this account" ....

So we try to remove the possible, and fill the disavow and comment to Google Team the job done.

At this time you was responding to my question with a 10++

Thank you

PD.: Do you speak spanish ? I'm from Argentina

[FedeEinhorn]

Asi es Uruguayo en US

Feel free to contact me (linkedin/twitter/etc.), I had similar experience and can offer some help (free, of course )

[SharewarePros]

Somos vecinos, por favor contactame a   editor (at) freesharewaredepot (dot) com y

skype fsd.network (at) live (dot) com  asi podremos intercambiar conocimientos o nuevos tips (todos los dias algo nuevo)

Un abrazo

Claudio