Welcome to the Q&A Forum

**I heard a while back that some people spam by buying EMDs and then use their natural traffic by redirecting it to their main site. **

Where exactly did you hear this? Can you share a link?

People often say "I heard...." There is really nothing anyone can do to respond to such statements. SEO information is spammed on tens of thousands of sites. Every site owner has an opinion. We need to understand who said it? Did Matt Cutts say it? Or was it a random webmaster?

I heard it is important to optimize the meta keywords tag. Last week I had a client share two different monthly reports from two SEO companies where their meta keywords tags were being optimized each month. Does that mean I should run out and optimize all my meta keywords tags? No. The two companies were from India and their SEO knowledge is quite flawed.

**So Google started seeing it as spam technique. **

Google's Guidelines are published. They have been revised to offer additional clarity. Furthermore, Google has a public webmaster forums and publishes many articles and videos offering further clarification.

I work with Google penalties every week. I have never seen nor heard of a site penalized for having EMDs pointing to their main site just because they were EMDs. You discounted the prior example because SEOmoz is a large domain. OK. Let's use another example. If I were to go out and buy 100 domains such as "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net"  and 98 other similar domains and redirect them all to my company site, Vitopian.com I would not expect a penalty.

Now, if you were to alter your question in such a way as each of these domains had one page websites on them, then they become doorway pages which is a violation of Google's Guidelines.

Can you share a specific example of the situation?

If SEOmoz.org owns bestseotools.com and chooses to 301 redirect the domain to the SEOmoz.org site, there is nothing spammy about it at all. In that sense, the answer to your question is no.

Your site is published under multiple domains:

http://aa-rental.com/

http://www.aa-rental.com/

Notice both of the above links brings up the same content on your site but under different URLs. That should not happen.

http://seomoz.org/q/root-domain-or-sub-domain

Notice if you try the above link for this Q&A response, the URL is changed to add the "www." subdomain. That is what should happen if you have a site presented on the www subdomain.

You need to decide how you wish to present your site, with or without the www subdomain. Once that decision has been made, it needs to be enforced with server side code. Once that issue is resolved, the particular crawl issue you mentioned should be resolved.

One of the first things I notice is the site's backlink profile is incredibly spammy. Google has issued many manual penalties for sites with similar backlink profiles. About 40% of your links show "Online Casino" as the anchor text.

Penguin is an algorithm update designed to target spammy profiles such as yours. It seems highly likely your rankings are being suppressed either manually or algorithmically due to manipulative links. Those links are a clear, black hat tactic.

Hello Hermski,

First let me share I have never had a YouTube account suspended nor worked with a client in that situation. Accordingly, my advice is more generic in nature.

Why exactly was your YouTube account suspended? I share your concern that your site may have been penalized. If Google took action against your YouTube account, they may have taken action against your website for the same reason.

I do not believe in the "trust" logic you suggested being shared from YouTube. According to your inquiry, your site suffered a "massive drop" in traffic. Assuming you did not make a change on your site such as blocking the site with the robots.txt file, the logical conclusion is your rankings are being suppressed by Google.

Without your site's address or any other information, we can only take wild guesses as to the cause. We require more information to be helpful.

Actually, your idea can work well. An example:

Are you looking for a retirement home? You wont find that here. At Fair Oaks Center, we offer a thriving community for our residents. If you are 50+ years young and would like to maintain an active life style, then.......

Keri's suggestion about testimonials is great as well.

That would be just fine.

Exactly!

Time and money is less of an issue, we just want to do what is best for the site

That is a fantastic position. SEO is a long-term proposition. This thinking should guide your entire decision making process.

Some people have mentioned in the past that sending a reconsideration request could do more harm than good

I cannot comment on what "some people" have shared. I read a lot of SEO related articles and there is a high percentage of questionable and outright incorrect information shared. I would ask you exactly who shared the advice and in what context.

Here is what Matt Cutts has shared on this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rsWc78dits

My strong opinion on the matter is as follows:

1. If no manual actions have been taken on your site, Google auto-replies. Accordingly, there is no harm in asking.

2. Matt shared in a different video (sorry, I was unable to easily locate the link) that his team does not go looking for problems as a result of a Reconsideration Request. Based on my knowledge and experience, if you have a penalty on your site and you submit a Reconsideration Request asking if you have a penalty, a member of the spam team will likely just push a button and share the canned response Google offers for penalties of that type. A Google employee would not go searching your site looking for issues.

3. For 100% of clients, I submit a Reconsideration Request upon accepting them as clients. It has never once been a cause for concern on any level.

Running a website is the act of a business. You cannot run your business in fear, and there is no reason to fear any aspect of the Google Reconsideration Request process as a white hat SEO or site operator.

Is it worth just removing links with no reconsideration request? Or is that essential?

It is essential to submit a Reconsideration Request if you are manually penalized.

One final note. There are legitimate other opinions on this topic. I have tremendous respect for Dr. Pete and agree with his approach 99.9% of the time, but I do recall him sharing a different viewpoint on this topic suggesting site owners not to submit a Reconsideration Request unless they had reason to believe they were penalized. Even if that were the case, in your instance there is strong reason to believe a manual penalty may exist on your site. Submit the Reconsideration Request and find out. Knowing is better then not knowing.

after building some good links and building good content we saw some gains in our SERPS, not to where they were, but they are definately improving for some low competition keywords.

The degree of penalization for manipulative links varies greatly from site to site. At the worst case, your site does not rank for anything except your domain name when entered with the TLD (i.e. mysite.com). It sounds like in your case you are penalized but not severely.

You can create new pages and rank for those new terms, but your penalization will remain a problem until you deal with it. You are asking if you can ignore the penalty. I would suggest that would be unwise. Why?

1. Most sites built links to their most important pages / keywords. For small to medium businesses, a group of a few keywords typically produces a large chunk of their traffic. For example "Los Angeles Auto Insurance" may provide 40% of the traffic to a website whereas those other pages you are building do not even provide 1% of the traffic of the core keyword.

2. It is hard enough for a non-penalized site to compete for traffic in search results. To move up a single position in ranking can make a huge difference in sales. It is likely at some point you will want to improve back to your pre-penalized ranking. The first step you need to take is removing the penalty.

3. You are presuming you will not be further penalized. In August Matt Cutts shared future Penguin changes were coming and the effects would be "jarring and jolting". I suspect the sites which are currently penalized and ignored the penalty will be further penalized.

The sole reason not to address the penalty is the cost (time / money). I would suggest you do whatever it takes to remove the penalty, then deal with the costs later. Sure, that's easy for me to say but the question is, how committed are you to this business? If you had the website up 5 years ago and intend to be in business 5 years from now, then it is an easy call. Remove the penalty and distribute the costs over time.

Without viewing your site no one can be sure but the most likely cause is related to the filters in OSE. At the top of the page there are 4 filters. The most likely issue is you are using the default OSE settings:

Show ALL links from ALL pages to THIS PAGE. In other words, when you enter www.mysite.com you are only looking at the links to the home page.

Change THIS PAGE to PAGES ON THIS ROOT DOMAIN.

You really need to look at the data on the ADVANCED REPORT tab to see the differences.

Your kind words are thoughtful and appreciated Irving. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Irving, I appreciate the support. It is OK, really. Each site owner is entitled to their own opinion. In this case, Michael clearly feels I have not listened to his needs and my response does not address his concern. Accordingly, no thumbs up is warranted.

I sincerely hope others will chime in and try to help address Michael's question. Someone else may have a different perspective.

Michael, I have read everything you shared with an open mind. I have considered everything you shared in your initial question along with the two follow up responses. After giving everything you shared consideration, your situation makes sense to me. It is logical and aligns with my understanding of how search engines work.

To be clear, there are many possibilities and various aspects which can be explored. Within the context of a Q&A forum, there is only so much that can be done. With access to your Google WMT and Analytics accounts along with further research, more information can be gathered and it is possible for other conclusions to be drawn.

We will have to agree to disagree on this topic. I am sorry I was unable to assist you. I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

Michael, initially you assumed the problem is Google, which is a mistake. Now you are assuming the problem is me, which I humbly suggest is another mistake. Neither I nor anyone else is likely going to be able to offer you any assistance unless you open up to two possibilities:

1. The Google search engine is working just fine and your site is ranking where it should.

2. The advice shared with you is accurate.

I am human and fully capable of error. After reviewing the concern you expressed I stand by the response shared above.

I looked at Google.com.tr, Google Turkey. The evidence is everywhere:

a. The first words of my response is that you rank on the 3rd page of search results. Do you find yourself on the 3rd page of results for Google.com for the term "doktor"? I found your site on the 3rd page of Google.com.tr

b. I specifically mentioned "You are competing with every doktor related site in Turkey."

c. I even mentioned checking Bing.com.tr

The sole reference to Google.com made was specifically called out as such. I shared the #1 result for the term "doctor" in Google.com with you as an example of an optimized page.

Once again, the term "doktor" in Turkey is highly competitive. Your assessment was incorrect. Your page is also not well optimized for the term "doktor".

Good luck.

You are ranking on the 3rd page of Google results for the term "doktor" which means "doctor".

There are so many issues it's hard to pick a starting point.

1. The term "doktor" is very generic. Frankly, your current rank at the top of page 3 for such a generic term is higher then expected. You are competing with every doktor related site in Turkey. Some examples: Dr. Who ( a popular tv series), medical doctor, non-medical doktors, descriptions of the degree, etc. There are over 100 million results for the term. How did you conclude there is no competition for the term?

2. Your title is not optimized for such a term as doktor. Your page title is "En Hızlı Doktor Sitesi | CevapSepeti.com" which translates to "The Fastest Doctor Sites | CevapSepeti.com". You rank on the first page of Google for "En Hızlı Doktor Sitesi" which is the keyword your title is optimized for.

3. Your header is not optimized for the term "doktor". The current tag is "DOKTOR BULMAK ARTIK ÇOK KOLAY"

If you wish to see a web page optimized for the term "Doctor", here is one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor

Based on your question and the information you shared, the problem is not Google but your understanding of how search engines work. The goal of a search engine is to provide the search results desired by users. Based on Google's results, most of the people on the planet agree Google does a better job then anyone else. If people disagreed, they are free to use another search engine.

Have you checked Bing? Bing.com.tr does not even show your site on page 3.

What is the URL of the page you are trying to rank for the term "doktor"?

** If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start?**

That would be a fresh start.

The preferred method of resolving the manipulative link issue is to run a campaign and remove the bad links. Such a campaign is time consuming and costly, but yields the best results.

If you cannot afford such a campaign, you can run away from the problem by changing domains in the manner you described. If you do such, it would be best if you can try to identify your good links and work with the publishing site to update the link to the new site.

Actually, the Rmoov tool is great for automatically pulling WHOIS data and managing the email process.

It is important to understand Rmoov is a tool for 1 part of the process. You still need to compile a comprehensive list of all your site's links, and then carefully identify those links. Rmoov is designed to automate a portion of the webmaster outreach phase, but there is still manual work to be done as well.