What do you think of this reconsideration request?
-
Just about to send a reconsideration request to Google for my site: seoco.co.uk and would like your input. I was going to include information about each URL I found and the steps I have taken but there is not room. What do you think of this:
“Hi guys, i got an unnatural links message from you back in February and since then my website rankings have fallen dramatically. I spoke to someone at SEOmoz and they said that my website probably got penalised for directory links so I have gone out and tried to get rid of all the low quality ones that I am responsible for and some that I am not.
Altogether I was able to identify about 218 low quality directory links. I attempted to contact every one of the directory owners twice over a two week period and I was able to get about 68 removed. I have used the disavow tool to devalue the rest.
Trying to get rid of all of those bad links was hard work and I have definitely learned my lesson. Rest assured I will not be submitting to anymore directories in the future.
Please can you give me another chance?
If my site still violates the guidelines please could you point out some of the bad links that are still there?”
What do you think? Can you think of anything else I should say?
Dave
-
Honestly, just list out the domains in an Excel file (or google doc) and make separate columns:
One column should read "Contacted" and another should read "Link Removed."
**note: The domain list should come from multiple sources, not just the GWT list. It is incomplete and untrustworthy. Use Open Site Explorers list and maybe even Majestic/ahref or all of the above. Remove duplicates and sort your list and it should be pretty obvious which are the spam links based on anchor text and domain URLs.
Put x's in boxes accordingly.
Then just go ahead and take all of the screenshots of email contacts you have and put them in a folder, zip it up, and attach it to the email.
That's what I would do. Like I said, the more info you can include the better. As much tracking and data as you can possibly overwhelm them with. They may not look through all of it, but it will definitely indicate to them that you have figured out the problem and worked really hard to fix it.
Please keep us posted on how this works. As you may be able to tell this is something I work on often and am very interested in the process and how it works out. I and the whole community would be incredibly pleased if you were able to keep us informed as to how it turned out.
Good luck!
-
Hi Jesse, thanks for the response, don't mind the harshness at all. I have all the data about URLs and the steps i took in a normal email but am not sure about how to attach it. What would be the best way and how to I do it?
-
Don't love it, honestly. You need to re-work this. And put a ton more documentation into it.
I'd leave out everything about SEOmoz. They don't care where you learned what you learned. All you need to do is explain that you understand how purchasing link packages is wrong and a terrible idea and that you are interested in removing all unnatural/spam links from your profile. Then go into how you determined which were spam links and what you tried to remove.
This is where you want to attach screenshots and excel spreadsheets showing what links/who you contacted and how many times. You need to provide as much data showing you did as much work as possible. Giving a blanket number just simply isn't enough.
Now beyond this, don't big. Be authoritative. Man up. Realize that you are talking to a webspam team who does not feel sorry for you. So talk to them like you're trying to get a job with them. Be cordial, formal, polite and mature. And don't ask them to "point out some other bad links" for you. They want to know that YOU KNOW what a bad link is, ensuring that this won't happen again. ---THIS LAST SENTENCE IS VERY IMPORTANT and should be the underlying theme of your entire email.
Sorry if I'm coming off harsh, I just want to help. There are a ton of blogs about this.. I suggest checking them out. You can search through YouMoz for helpful posts about this.
Hope this helps... good luck!
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
-
Error got removed by request
hey there, I have website, Which is Doing best on google, But from last 2-3 times i am Getting error in Google Search Console, removed by request., here is screenshot http://prntscr.com/iva5y0 My Question is i have Not Requested Google to Remove My Homepage URL, Then 1. Why I am Getting This warning again & again, ?? 2. Will this Harm My Sites Current traffic & Ranking Status ? 3.What Steps I need Take to stop This warning came again & again ??? Thnx in advance & please Help Out on this Query
Technical SEO | | innovative.rohit0 -
Google still listing pages from old domain after 2 change requests
Good Morning I put forward the following question in December 2014 https://moz.com/community/q/google-still-listing-old-domain as pages from our old domain www.fhr-net.co.uk were still indexed in Google. We have submitted two change request in WMT, the most recent was over 6 months ago yet the old pages are still being indexed and we can't see why that would be Any advice would be appreciated
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
I think I got hit by the latest Panda update
Hi everyone, I think one of my sites got hit with Panda. On Sept 18th the site dipped to "not in top 50" for almost all keywords. I checked GWT for the manual action email but my inbox is empty!!!!!!!!!! The lesser of 2 evils I guess. They had major server issues that week as well so it is hard to identify what caused the site to dip. My client has original content on the website but almost all content on the blog is copied. Do you recommend me deleting the non original content? Can the problem be elsewhere? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
What do you think about my new site?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for a review for my new site www.interlive.it Could you please let me know what do you think about the work that I did for my site. I'll be very happy to receive your suggestions. Regards, Mike
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Reconsideration Request a Success!
Hi all, Well I've finally gotten been able to get the penalty removed judging by this email: "Dear site owner or webmaster of xxx, We received a request from a site owner to reconsider xxx for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Previously the webspam team had taken manual action on your site because we believed it violated our quality guidelines. After reviewing your reconsideration request, we have revoked this manual action. It may take some time before our indexing and ranking systems are updated to reflect the new status of your site. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that could affect its ranking without a manual action by the webspam team. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If your site continues to have trouble in our search results, please see this article for help with diagnosing the issue. Thank you for helping us to maintain the quality of our search results. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team" This was after a reconsideration request was sent prior to disavow tool being released. In addition I also applied a disavow of all the links I was unsuccessful in removingwithout contacting Google and letting the original reconsideration request run it's course. I am making this post just to let everyone know that the hard work pays off and Google is just trying to make sure you are doing your best in removing the links. As 'Ryan Kent' always emphasizes, you must really be diligent and honest when trying to remove links. You also need to keep documentation, I anchored contact pages and email addresses, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th attempt dates. Now with the disavow tool, I believe if you do a "good faith" in removing the links, and it is well documented, you can use the disavow tool after multiple attempts, correlating both the disavow links and the spreadsheet sent to Google is and should be very important in a reconsideration request. Good luck! Also I received the message from WMT, and wondering does anyone know how long is 'some time' before site is reindexed? So far our organic traffic is still about the same prior. So I would like to hear what other's experience are after a successful reconsideration. Feel free to ask any questions!
Technical SEO | | William.Lau3 -
Has anyone seen direct improvement after April 23 by requesting reinclusion?
Using the open site explorer I have figured out that my former seo agency was buying name spam (mostly Asian sites)for my main keywords and did the same in a private network of blogs. I don't speak any eastern languages and seo Super Dude has left the planet. So... I don't really have much to report to the Google Webmaster folks. How much time - effort- cash do invest in removal requests vs, redo the whole darn site and hope for the best? All the best. Tom
Technical SEO | | tvw1300 -
Ambiguous Response to Google Reconsideration Request
Hello, On 9/11/12, we submitted a reconsideration request to Google for http://macpokeronline.com, at the time we received penalties from both penguin and manual removal. We have since worked on cleaning up our link profile, and got this response from Google: We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://www.macpokeronline.com/. We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take. I honestly don't even know how to take this, we always showed up #1 while doing a site search, so it is kind of irrelevant to us in this case. Is this the reply of them accepting our request? Thanks Zach
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0