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Hi Andrew -

If this question has been answer/the issue has been fixed, could you please mark it as Closed?

Thanks!

Hey John -

Are these links pointing to your homepage, or to other pages on your site? This makes a big difference in knowing what to do with them.

Also, might there be other factors at play here, such as over-optimization onsite? I'd love to take a look at your site. If you don't want to share the URL here, feel free to PM it to me.

David -

Thank you for explaining more clearly, it's really appreciated!

If all major keywords have dropped 5-10 spots, it seems that your traffic must be down quite a bit, not to mention brand exposure.

I would submit a reinclusion request. I would be totally transparent, tell them what you have done to try to get the links removed, but also tell them that you did not build these links. Show them what links you are responsible for.

Unfortunately there is no way to know how long it will take for your client to recover. It's possible that they will be sandboxed for a while. What I would recommend doing is moving forward to building really good links for them, trying to get good press coverage, and try to get in contact with someone on the spam team to review your case.

John

Hi Lynda -

I hope I can help out here

One. Yes. If you have the same page titles on either pages or section pages, this can hurt SEO because you are targeting the same keywords on the same pages. I recommend reviewing this - http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development and this - http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Two. I am not familiar with  iMIS15, but if this is just a parameter at the end of the URL, that should be ok.

Three. Seems like these are parameters appended onto the URL. A canonical tag will deal with these issues, but it would be better to get the system to stop generating these. You can block them in Google Webmaster Tools, using the Search Parameters section, but this is just a temporary fix. You need to deal with the base of the issue, the fact that the extra parameters are being generated and causing dup content.

Hey David -

It all depends on how long it takes for the reinclusion request to process, if your rankings have indeed tanked. If you didn't build the links, be sure to talk about this prominently in your reinclusion request. Other than that, honestly, make a stink and get on Google's radar. If it's a case of negative SEO, then we need to make Google aware of it.

David -

What's your definition of a "good website"? If traffic has dropped 75%, Google has lost faith in your site and something has gone horribly wrong, thus your site is no longer considered "good" in their eyes. If you've done any unnatural linkbuilding (any comment spam or bought links), you need to get as many of these removed, or at least let Google know about it so that you can get back in the index.

There is no way, beyond being notified in GWT of unnatural links being detected and seeing a drop in traffic/rankings, to know for certain that a manual penalty has been applied. Usually you will receive a notice in GWT when this happens, though. Otherwise it's algorithmic.