Extra Winner's Guide to Google Penalties Recognition and Removal 2012

[SEO Expert]

Guide to Google penalties recognition and removal 2012

1) Penalty recognition and removal:

A) Did you got some private blog network backlinks?

If you see a penalty some time after you got some private blog network post backlinks - even some long months later - it could meant that blog network got de-indexed (check your reports and forums for any comments about de-indexing networks).

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings without any reason (sometimes it could be 3-5 spots, sometimes 100-200 spots)
- un-explained dancing (no backlinking/onsite optimization done in last 2 weeks)

Solution:

If you see only dancing/small drop in rankings then it means your backlink diversity is low. Go and grab some different types of backlinks - mix of Manual Bookmarks (a lot of them from different providers) and unique article submission to article directories will help to regain your position - even stronger than before.


B) Did you pinged your website/got some Whois posted to it?

You can notice huge dancing (even tens of positions back and forward) or sudden drop way below top100.

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings or heavy dancing
- drop in just few keywords or group of related keywords


The main causes could be two:

B1) your onsite optimization is really poor
B2) you have nasty backlinking (some really poor backlinks/spam/porn links)


To determine which one is right - simply check what backlinks Google sees by checking Alexa backlink checker and Google search engine. If Alexa is not showing anything of ppor quality (spammed websites where you link is located) then search for your website as - domain.com (without quotes and without www or http://). If you can see any spammy links (use your common sense to determine) within first 5 pages - then go ahead with B2 solution. If not - use B1 solution.

Solution:

B1) Check your inner linking (for any dead ones), correct 301's, proper site map, proper coding of website (no serious errors). I would suggest getting some webmaster to check your coding (he do not need access to your hosting - he should be able to work by reading your sites code with his browser) or using IBP (expensive but extensive) or SEOmoz (less expensive but really user friendly) - I didn't tested other options so just check reviews on SEO non-affiliate forums/blogs/review sites.
After you are done hit your site with ping services (pingomatic, feed burner) and whois sites (hit it with like 1000-10.000 sites to get your site noticed by crawlers to re-check it).

B2) Build some high authority backlinks - perfectly 2-3 types of links.
I would suggest high PR backlinks at first (any high PR backlinks will do really). Once you have some good number of them get them indexed at once (build SB links to them or run them by one of the indexing/crawling programs like Linklicious/Backlinks Indexer/Lindexed etc.)
[For example - build some High PR (PR4+) forum profiles, High PR blog posts and High PR Web 2.0 properties]

C) Did you created a lot of backlinks lately?

You have created a lot of backlinks recently and your site is jumping around or lost a lot of rankings.

Penalty recognition:

- heavy dancing, moving up and down (from top position to out of top100 and backwards)
- most of the keywords changed position right after backlinking (possibly for worst)
- your website lost all rankings (but you can still see it in Google as top3 when you search for your own domain name without spaces etc.)

Solution:

C1) You are not in top3 results when you search for domain.com (where domain = your domain name, .com = your extension - do not use www/http when searching for it in Google)

It means your website got serious penalty from Google - possibly soft one.
DO NOT ask for reconsideration within Webmaster Tool in Google.

Follow those steps:
- remove Google Analitycs from your site
- close your Google Webmaster Tools account (cancel it)
- log out from Gmail/Youtube (from now on always log out from them before accessing Google search results or your site)
- opt out/log out from any Google owned business that could lead to YOU or to your website

Perform full onsite optimization - (Check step B1) but do not do Whois linking.
Build quality backlinks to your site - Facebook, Twitter and whole group of Reputation Management business sites (Linkedin/Merchant Circle/YouTube/MySpace...). Do it manually or get a guy that can do this for you.
Get some social backlinks (High PR Manual Bookmarks or Re-Tweets with your link in it).
Get all links crawled (use Pingomatic or more advanced crawling service)
After all this - wait for ~5 days and then submit your site to good list of Whois websites (minimum 1.000).

C2) You are on position 2-3 when you search for your domain name.

Build more diverse backlinks - create "Raw backlinks" (no anchor links) to your main page. You can use for this AMR - get some quality article from Ezine, do not spin it and submit it to article directories. As a link use your homepage url (not inner pages, just homepage).

C3) You are on position 1 when you search for your domain name.

This is just a dance. You can get few of crawling services (Pingomatic etc) and submit your site to them to speed up process of ranking selection.
DO NOT submit your site to Whois sites at the beginning of dance as this can mislead you with further investigation on whats the problem.

D) Did you maintained status Quo for last 2 months?

You have done nothing in last 2 months but all suddenly all your keywords started to falling in rankings.

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings without doing anything to the site by you
- complete lost of rankings by all the keywords

Solution:

D1) Your keyword is easy/medium competition

You lack link building - keep building backlinks on weekly or even daily basis. Try to diversify backlinks and fetch some high quality manual ones (Linkedin/Merchant Circle/YouTube/MySpace/Tumblr/Tweeter/Ezine...)
You need to re-build your whole SEO campaign so create a plan of backlinking and start getting them in proper quantities - use your common sense on how many of them. Regular site will use 3 different backlinks provider/sources a month (for example - Manual Bookmarking, Manual Web 2.0 and Scrapebox blast with 10K links - change strategy/providers each month).

D2) Your keyword is in high competitive niche

You need to check your backlinks.
Go to Alexa.com and Google.com and search for your backlinks.
When in Google.com search for domain.com (without quotes, where domain.com is your domain name).
Go through first 10 pages (if there is as much as that) and look for backlinks you do not recognize.

D2-A) You found backlinks that you do not recognize (made by your competitor) - you need to make them weaker or stronger:

D2-A1) Make them stronger - build backlinks to those bad links (do not do it if the anchors are nasty ones like - "Porn", "F***", "Cocaine" etc or there is more than 1.000 outgoing links from the page). Get some proper Scrapebox blasts to those links in order to create authority in them. Around 100-500 backlinks per bad link is enough. Get all the backlinks created to badlinks crawled (use Linklicious/Lindexed/BacklinksIndexer).

D2-A2) Make them weaker - to do so you need to make your website authority one. Create high authority backlinks to your website comming from popular social sites + Wikipedia (if you can - possibly as a source link or in-article anchor) + Wiki sites (there is many service providers offering such a Wiki submission). Build few hundreds of high PR backlinks to your site without anchor ("Raw Link"). Get all the backlinks crawled using popular pinging/indexing services.
If none happened - submit your site to Whois database after 2 weeks of creating major backlinks.
Keep building backlinks constantly and take care of diversity so this wont happen again.


2) Avoiding Penalty and Google reviews:

A) Onsite Optimization
B) Offsite SEO
C) Overall Quality Score



A) Onsite Optimization

You are required to keep a very good onsite optimization.
You need to prevent having serious coding loops or errors as Google will detect it easily. Any dead links (within a site or going to other sites) can affect your rankings and cause problems.
List of things to look at:

- Check your websites code for any serious errors. Your code should be W3C validated: http://validator.w3.org/
- Check for dead links - Google hates them: http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com
- Interlink your inner pages to main page (Inner Page linking to main page with one of your main Anchor) or other way around (main page linking through footer with Anchors to most valued inner pages - not too many though)
- No excessive advertising - 2 ad blocks are enough, 3 is a lot, 4+ can affect your rankings
- No linking out to Scam/Spam/Illegal sites - one link to Scam e-commerce shop can drain out your authority
- Proper content quantity/quality for crawlers to index - 300 words article is not enough to fill whole website. Every site, even MNS should have more than 1 page and more than 300 words article
- DO NOT post spinned content on your website - Google will index copied content as long as it is quality and related. Spinned content can get you de-indexed or penalized
- You do not need to link to authority sites - by doing so you will pass some juice on them but also you will get more Google trust. Evaluate which option is best for you.



B) Offsite SEO

To impress Google you need proper diversification and constant backlinking.

- Create different types of backlinks. There is no "Miracle Backlink". You cant dominate results with just one backlink type and hope for Status Quo. You need to diversify your campaign so Google wont see any spam attempts. Even if you are #1 keep building diverse backlinks (if #1 was achieved by blog posts from
private network - build some quality Web 2.0 and .Edu links for diversity and security).
- Keep constant backlink flow. You cannot create 100K Scrapebox backlinks at once and expect best. Keep building backlinks daily, weekly or even monthly to maintain your good authority and trust within Google.
a) Monthly backlinking example - buy automatic bookmarking, 10K Scrapebox blog comments and wiki links in one month - then in next one create new "campaign"
b) Weekly backlinking example - create 1-2 different backlink types like Private Blog Network submission and Forum Profiles first week, .Edu backlinks and Linkpushing other week.
c) Daily backlinking example - build daily amount of backlinks like blog comments, forum profiles bookmarks and manual high PR backlinks
- Mix quality with quantity - Scrapebox or Xrumer links are good as long as you will mix them with high authority (or high PR) backlinks. Do not worry about getting 10K Scrapebox links - but add some extra high PR Bookmarks or Articles same week you done them for fast and secure results.
- Get high authority backlinks indexed using indexing/crawling systems - any high authority (or high PR) backlink can be artificially forced to cue for crawling by Google without any negative penalty.


C) Overall Quality Score

Look at your website as manual reviewer will do it.
He have less than a minute to evaluate your website and he will look for following:
- code/keyword report
- relevance of content to keyword
- ad spam/affiliate spam attempts
- content lockers (do not use content locker if 100% of your traffic is from Google unless you are experienced in what you do)
- misleading information/links

Research based on 500+ strong private blog network and 1K+ customer cases.

[antont]

great info...thanks for sharing it

[ab1337]

Most impressive, thanks for sharing

[cocklin]

Unique and impressive article .
Essential information ,help me much.
I am Clear and understanding everything.

[cassanova378]

wow thanks for this great info :)

[cassanova378]

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[renael]

Wow, awesome and very comprehensive information. I clearly have a way to go before I am an SEO Expert's bootstrap! Thanks so much for taking the time to provide detailed examples of various types of penalties as well as strategies to remedy them. I'm bookmarking this page right now!