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Yeah, I've just had to grind it out. My content isn't anything amazing, but it's relevant and publishable. It's hard to really say anything earth-shattering in my field, and my goal hasn't necessarily been to publish articles that become the absolute authority on any given topic. My goal has been more to get articles published with the most reputable sites possible that will give me a dofollow link. I figure the more reputable backlinks I get, the higher my site will show up on Google, and the more the phone will ring. There's definitely been a direct correlation. When my site starting showing up in the top 3 local results and on page 1 of organic results (about 2 days ago), I started getting significantly more calls from potential new clients. Another thing that really helped with local results was asking clients for Google reviews. My placing in local results climbed immediately when I started having clients leave Google reviews.

I've done a total overhaul of my homepage before. Sounds a bit like yours--not a dramatic departure from the original. I did it all at once and didn't notice any significant negative consequences. In fact, I think the changes helped the site get better results more quickly than if I had slowly implemented the revisions.

You are most welcome. I'm glad to hear your road to site recovery is coming along. I'm also glad to confirm that, to all of my knowledge, your understanding of the "*" operator and Disallow /?spam string is correct. One more thing: Fetch as Google and Request Indexing Apologies, I neglected to mention this step in my answer. It should be included. This is the best tool I'm aware of to ask Google, "hey, crawl me please." Do this after you upload your shiny new robots.txt. In GSC, under Crawl, select Fetch as Google. Then, select Fetch and Render. When status is partial or complete, click Request Indexing. There is no guarantee here, and my experience is Google does what it wants. Even so, I've seen results in less than 2 hours (full disclosure: the longest I've waited has been 3 days). Penalty Free I agree. They cannot possibly be penalizing your site. At least, not purposefully. You have taken all recommended actions and then some to resolve site issues. Even if you do have a few bad back links floating around out there from some blackhat t3 site PBN, Penguin 4.0 should discredit that bad link juice. Your site doesn't even have the offending pages. It's just a matter of time before Google's index lines back up with your live site. Good Work Sir, Wipe the Index Clean, CopyChrisSEO and the Vizergy Team

Hi, The penalty was automated. I have never gotten any manual penalties for the site. Thanks for taking a look at my site. I have disavowed anything noted at toxic on the semrush scale above 50. I did this over three occasions in the last 6 months. If there is still anything showing up in site explorer its probably already been disavowed. I will take a look again. And, yes, you are right. I have to double down on link building. I probably need to outpace my competitors but they are getting links from legit news outlets nowadays. The market is decent actually, the big headlines say otherwise but there are buyers at every price point for luxury real estate. The problem is getting them from the site as opposed to word of mouth. This is why I am here