Google Reconsideration Request - Most Efficient Process
-
Hi,
I'm working on a Google reconsideration request for a site with a longstanding penalty.
Here's what I did:
Round 1
- Downloaded a CSV of all the domains and all the pages linking to the site. Went through the lot manually and sorted them into three types: Disavow Domain, Disavow Page, Keep
- All low-quality domains were disavowed, all pages from places like blogspot with low-quality links on certain blogs were disavowed. Submitted disavow file, then sent a detailed reconsideration request including a link to the disavow file.
Reconsideration request was not successful. Google gave two examples of links I should remove, bizarrely the examples they gave were already disavowed, which seemd a bit odd. So I took this to mean Google Webmaster Tools and disavow files were in themselves not enough. The links I kept were largely from PRWeb syndication which seems legit.
Round 2
Here's what I'm doing now. Any ideas for how the below process can be improved to get the maximum chance of a successful request, please let me know.- Get all linking pages from Webmaster Tools as before and also MajesticSEO's Historic Index. This gave me around three times more domains to remove. The additionnal domains from Majestic that weren't in Webmaster tools I just put them all in the disavow file.
- Conduct a manual link removal email campaign. I've got around 2500 domains to go through, so how can I best do this. My process at the moment is:
- Use software to get email addresses from whois records
- send them an email
- make a spreadsheet of responses
- include link to spreadsheet in Google Docs as well as link to new disavow file
Should I research each site manually to get email addresses? It does seem rather a waste of an offshorer's time, from what I've seen some people use offshorers and others have used software tools successfully. The other thing is sending the emails, how can I do this? Any smtp email campaign site won't let me use their service because the emails are not opt-in, they classify it as spam. Does anyone know a solution to send 2500 emails legitimately from a webmail account for example? I'm having to send bulk emails to get rid of spam links.
Finally most of the offending links have keyword anchor text from spun articles, I've deleted all the sites except EzineArticles. Would you delete this too, it's an awful site but client is hung up on it. ExineArticle links may have some value, on the other hand it's more of the same keyword-rich anchor text articles. Keep or disavow the individual pages?
Finally, anything else I've missed? Anything to add? Thanks for all your help
-
I personally do everything manually. I think that the link removal tools can work great for some sites, but your best chance at identifying the bad links and keeping the good ones is to look at them manually. 2500 domains is a lot, but not impossible. I'm currently working on an account of about that size and it will take me about 10-14 days to go through as many. Once you get going you will recognize patterns and it will go faster.
I used to get emails on my own but I have just hired someone to do this for me. I find that the automated tools miss a lot of them. I was considering hiring from o-desk or mechanical turk, but in my situation, because my business is expanding and most of what I do is penalty removal, it's worth my while to hire and train someone to do this for me.
btw...if you've got 2500 domains, you won't have 2500 emails. Many will be offline or nofollowed or perhaps even natural.
Ezine Articles links definitely need to be removed if they are followed links. Often times those links are nofollowed, but if you have a high enough account level there then they are followed and need to go.
A few other points:
-Yes you're right. It's not enough to just disavow. Google's going to want to see evidence that you've tried hard to remove links.
-Lately I have only be using links from WMT and not other sources like Majestic and ahrefs. That may cut down on the number of domains you have to deal with. So far it is working for me.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Whats up with the last google update.
I have numerous clients who were at the top of page in the top 3 spots. They all dropped to page 3 or 4 or 2 and now they are number 1 in maps or in the top 3. Content is great on all these sites. backlinks are high quality and we do not build high quantity, we always focus on quality. the sites have authorship information. trust . we have excellent content written by professionals in the industry for each of the websites. The sites load super fast. they are very mobile friendly. we have CDN installed. content is organized per topic. all of our citations are setup properly and no duplicates, or missing citations. code is good on the websites. we do not have anchor text links pointing to the site from gust posts or whatever. we have plenty of content. our DA/PA is great. Audits of the website are great. I've been doing this a long time and ive never been so dumb founded as to what google has done this time. Or better yet what exactly is wrong with our clients websites today that was working perfectly for the last 5 years. I really am getting frustrated. im comparing my sites to competitors and everything's better. Please someone guide me here and tell me what im missing or tell me what you have done to recover from this nonsense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
Does including your site in Google News (and Google) Alerts helps with SEO?
Based on the following article http://homebusiness.about.com/od/yourbusinesswebsite/a/google-alerts.htm in order to check if you are included you need to run site:domain.com and click the news search tab. If you are not there then... I ran the test on MOZ and got no results which surprised me. Next step according to :https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en#ts=3179198 is to submit your site for inclusion. Should I? Will it help? P.S.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is a followup question to the following: http://moz.com/community/q/what-makes-a-site-appear-in-google-alerts-and-does-it-mean-anything0 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Clickable links in Google SERP
Hi, I came across clickable links appearing below the meta description in Google SERP. The links are not necessarily the top pages for that particular domain and sometimes tend to reflect the newly added stock. Is there a way to determine what factors account for this? Thanks, mryxN.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RaksG0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
How long is the google sandbox these days?
Hello, I'm putting up a new site for the first time in a while. How long is the Google Sandbox these days, and what has changed about it. Before it was 6 months to 1 year long. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0