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Building too many directory links could definitely get you penalised, even if you build them up gradually. If the links are organic like from a decent linkbait or infographic then you will probably be OK, in fact you will probably see a nice boost in your rankings after about 3-4 weeks in my experience.
OK guys, that's good enough for me, will not be disavowing. Thankyou to all of you for your help.
Hi Robert, thanks for the response, the link was not paid for and it does look like a good site to me, it has a Good PageRank and lots of Facebook followers.
Anyone disagree?
I am trying to clean up my link profile to get rid of a partial penalty and am not sure to do with one of the links to my site http://www.seoco.co.uk
The link is 100% organic and has come from a foreign language site that published an infographic that I did:
The thing is that in the link to my homepage they have used the anchor text SEO as opposed to my company name.
I have already sent them an email and asked them to change the anchor text but they haven't responded so I am guessing they probably wouldn't respond to a removal request either.
Should I disavow it?
I didn't do too much research, I just looked at the moz profile and the elance.com page.
I take it you are from New Jersey. I love Kevin Smith man, he is one of my favourite film directors.
I received a message from a Moz user called Faktorbiz before who claims to have taken care of over 40 penalties, I have checked out his prices and I might be able to afford him. I am a little concerned that he is from a non-English speaking country though, can anybody vouch for this guy?
Hi Egol, I would like to hire someone who knows what they are doing, but people like Marie Haynes are too busy and I don't think I could afford her anyway.
I agree that Jane and Andy were quite generous in their responses, I got far less generous replies from the people at Google webmaster forums - they did not believe me when I said I had nothing to do with those two links, but I can assure you that I am telling the truth. They basically said that all of the links that I mentioned were pure spam and had to go.
Do you know anyone who you could recommend to help me out who is very affordable?
Once I get a few more opinions I will come up with an action plan that will hopefully get this nightmare of a Google penalty lifted.
I know you are an old school SEO who has been at it for years and I appreciate your response, thanks.
Both the answers I have are great and I appreciate them, but I am looking to get as many opinions as possible on the questions I have asked. Please feel free to chime in and give me your two cents
Hi Jane, thanks for the response, what do you think I should do about the 2 articles I mentioned at the bottom of my question? Should I leave them as they are? Try to get the anchor text changed or get them nofollowed or removed?
i have just had another reconsideration request rejected by Google. In my rejection message they have given me 3 examples of unnatural links, but two of them I have had nothing to do with.
My website is http://www.seoco.co.uk
Here are the 3 links they mentioned:
the 1st one is just a website that republished one of my articles, I never submitted there or anything. Do I need to contact every single website that republished one of my articles and get those removed? Are they not classed as natural? Also, the page is not even cached by Google, why are they telling me to get rid of links that are not even in their index?
The 2nd link is a client site and is definitely unnatural, I removed my link from the main part of the site a while ago but the blog footer was not updated, I will take care of that one.
The 3rd link is a totally natural blogroll link that I had nothing to do with. What do you think I should do about it? Should I mention to Google on my next reconsideration request that it is in fact natural, or should I just bite the bullet and get it taken down?
Also, there are a few pretty decent links out there that I am thinking about getting taken down on good sites, what do you think I should do with these two:
2. http://www.webpronews.com/10-reasons-why-i-hate-shout-outs-on-digg-2007-10
Hi guys, thanks for the responses.
We have used the Screamingfrog tool and spotted a bunch of 403 pages so we are looking into that.
Images were all used with permission.
I have mentioned the telephone number and address thing to the guy.
I have checked about the national geographic link and there was definitely no bribe involved.
Hi people, a friend of mine runs a payday loan site with a very valuable domain name: http://bit.ly/1lyJgME
The site was penalised by Google about 18 months ago, up until then it ranked #1 for payday loan and on the 1st page for the plural, payday loans in the UK. Now the website is nowhere in the top 200 results for either of the phrases, but he has not received any notification from Google and if he checks in webmaster tools in the manual actions section there is nothing there.
He has gone through all of the links to his site several times and attempted to remove any unnatural links, those that he could not get rid of after emailing twice he disavowed - about 800, a lot were not even built by him.
He has sent 2-3 reconsideration requests to Google and every time they said that the site had not been penalised, or something to that affect.
The site does have lots of quality organic links from websites like Wired Magazine and the National Geographic, more then enough decent links to rank somewhere on Google for its keywords.
I feel that the site may have been held to a higher standard because a lot of people think that payday loan websites are unethical.
What do you think he should do? Can you spot anything on site that is wrong? He has definitely tried to remove every single unnatural link and the ones he could not he disavowed.
I have another question, because I have over 1000 domains linking to my site in webmaster tools I cannot see all of the domains linking to my site, how do you recommend I get around this? I have already gone through all of the links in Open Site Explorer.
Thanks Marie, I think I am going to take your advice and keep going with cleaning up bad links.
Most of the organic links use my company name "The SEO Company", my domain name "Seoco", my name "David Eaves", or the name of the article/blog post, but there are a few that simply say "SEO company".
I have just checked in WMT and in the partial matches section it says:
"Some manual actions may apply to specific pages, sections or links
Reason
Unnatural links to your site - impact links"
If what you are saying about self made links is true then aren't you breaking the guidelines by having a link to your real estate website in your moz profile? The links I have in forums are signature links and have been earned through participation just like your links on your moz profile - I have not spammed or anything to get them.
My website has hundreds of totally organic links from websites like Techcrunch, Mashable, this site, search engine land and loads more thanks to blog posts and a popular infographic I did, I have far more organic links then almost any other UK SEO company.
Thanks for your response.
Hi Bill, with the 150 directory links that I disavowed I sent each of them two separate link removal requests before I disavowed and I marked all of it down in a google doc and sent it to google in the reconsideration requests. The only thing I didn't do was actually send Google a copy of the emails I sent. Are you saying that I need to send Google a copy of the emails I send to each directory owner/website owner?
Thanks for your response by the way.
My SEO website got hit with a very severe penalty about a year ago and it was totally banished from the rankings for all of the money terms like SEO, SEO company and search engine optimisation (before the penalty I ranked in the top 10-15 for all of those phrases, top 3 for SEO company). I was probably hit for being listed in shed loads of paid directories, low quality free directories, footer links in client sites, keyword forum signature links and articles with keyword rich text links.
A month or so after I got hit I started trying to clean up my link profile, I got rid of all of the client website links, I changed the link text on the majority of forum signature links and article links, I managed to get rid of about 50 directory links and the ones that I could not get taken down I disavowed - about 150.
During that time I sent 2-3 separate reconsideration requests and I got this message each time:
"Links to your site violate Google's quality guidelines"
After doing all of that work and being rejected I pretty much gave up - things just seemed to get worst, not only was I no longer ranking for the money terms, but all of my blog posts tanked as well.
I got my site redesigned and switched to Wordpress - I used 301 redirects and everything but they totally didn't work. My organic traffic went down to less than 50 hits a day - before the penalty I was getting over 300 a day.
Then on Saturday just gone, almost exactly a year after I got hit with the penalty I noticed my site ranking in position 23 on Google.co.uk in the UK for the competitive phrase SEO company from being absolutely nowhere and I do mean nowhere.
This sign has given me hope and the motivation to get rid of the penalty altogether, update all of my articles, get rid of bad advice in old blog posts and get rid of the rest of the bad links.
Thing is that I am nervous to go getting rid of more links and disavowing, what if I do more harm then good? Do you think the penalty has been removed and I should just leave the rest of the bad links or should I continue trying to clean things up?
By the way, my website is http://www.seoco.co.uk