Website Recovery

[GaryVictory]

We have a client who is experiencing much in the way off duplicated content and broken, spammed inbound links. While we are removing and correcting everything using google webmaster, I'm hearing stories of websites not being able to recover from algorithms/penalties applied because of this.

My client had around 250 inbound links to their website and over the space of 3 weeks mounted over 8,000 unethical links.

Any information surrounding this issue would be much apprecited.

Thanks

Gary

[MarieHaynes]

This question is one that probably can't be answered without a thorough investigation.  But, what I have seen is that sites definitely can recover form algorithmic issues or manual penalties.  However, the most important factor in whether a site will recover is if the site has a good base of good natural links when the unnatural ones are taken away.

You may be looking at multiple issues.  If the duplicated content is truly an issue then there may be issues with the Panda algorithm.  If the bad links are truly an issue then Penguin could be the culprit.  For either of these, recovery involves completely fixing the issues and then waiting till the next refresh of each algorithm.  Penguin refreshes sporadically.  It could be 1 month or 6 before the next refresh.  Panda tends to refresh monthly although Google no longer announces the refreshes.

IMO the first place to start is to determine which algorithms likely affected the site and work on that first.  If there is a drop in organic traffic coincidental with a known Penguin refresh date then the links need to be cleaned up.  You'll need to do a very thorough audit and disavow everything self made.