The Curious Case of Penalty Recovery

by Jenifer Renjini - 2/21/2014 14355 Views

The Success Story on How We Worked and Revoked On a Google Manual Action

It was like any other day, [31st - December] the usual when I started my bike while the birds chirped as usual when they hear the bike start. It was a little breezy with clouds and a perfect day.. I rode at a 50 plus singing my favorite song and I enjoyed it all along the way and stopped at my company.

The Task

While I reached my desk, Meena my colleague said that Boss was calling for you. Boss usually asks to write about sensational news or inquire about the status of the jobs as I was also heading the Quality control team. When I had this discussion, I was taken aback when he asked me to work on revoking a penalty recovery for [http://www.e-sandhurst.com/]. As Amarnath who was on a long leave for his sisters marriage, Guna(Boss) insisted me to do the job. Until then I had been a theoretical person following trends, analyzing them and writing on it. This requires a lot of ground work, time and thorough knowledge on the links. The Boss is a person who does not take a NO for an answer. Reluctantly I accepted the job but was jittery on how I am able to do it. I asked him when this is supposed to be completed. The answer was YESTERDAY.

The Start

1. Segregating the Do-Follow and No-Follow links

There were a total of [1355] URL’s and the first job was to find out the do-follow and no-follow links. As no-follow links does not matter, the job is to work on the do-follow links. No automated tool can be reliable,but can be used for cross reference. So I had to work late night and my mother was not thrilled by that, as I myself is engaged and she wanted me to have all the rest I can.

2. Identifying the broken links

Although Google Webmaster tools provide a set of URLs all of them may not be live. This is a fairly simple task as I used a multiple URL opener [weburlopener.com] to identify the dead links. So the list of URLs has now reduced to an extent which is good news.

3. The Machete Approach

Matt had always recommended a machete approach, which is “if a page is bad then how can the domain be good?"

That is his philosophy

and we have to dance with Matt no matter we like him or not. So I had compiled the unique domains from the list of URLs (after filtering do follow, dead links).

To my relief the list came down to [816].

4. Breathing down the neck

Meanwhile the Boss had been so impatient and was asking status every 4 hours and asked me if I could do it or if he should find someone else to do it. I had asked him not to disturb for another 2 days and I will get him the results.

5. The URL Audit & Help

Amarnath Meena Nisha

Apart from Amar , Meena & Nisha [photos above] are the best when it comes to analysis. If you wake them at sleep and ask if a domain was good or bad, they will immediately have the answer without a blink of eyelid. I had personally trained them initially on SEO and they were more than willing to help. But knowing the Boss who hates shunting responsibilities to others, I decided to do it on my own under their guidance. I then analyzed the domains thoroughly for the following

Low quality Article, Directory, Bookmarking, Social Media sites
Links from SPAMMY Blog Comments
Forum Signatures
Links from Banned Network IP’s
Paid Links
Links from FFA, SPAM & Link farms
Links from Malicious Sites
Links from Irrelevant Sites
Links from Foreign Language Sites
Links from Content Scrapper Sites

6. Sitewide Link Audit and Anchor Text Audit

I analyzed for the Sitewide links and found that there were more than a 30 percent of Sitewide links having the same anchor text. I had to contact the webmasters for diversifying the anchor texts or else I have no other way than disavowing them. So I included them too in the bad domain list.

Now I had [442] bad domains for which I need to contact the webmasters to remove those bad links. Seeing my dedication my mother also stopped complaining, she must have sensed I am doing something of interest and enjoying doing it.

7. Collecting the contacts

This is the boring part so I had requested Boss that I am not doing this data collection job and he nodded saying, I never asked you to do that. I engaged the data collection team to find out the contact information, leaving no stone unturned. They used the below tactics and more to find those contacts

Few Sample of our Contact Details

8. Contacting webmasters for link removal request.

Every webmaster was sent a polite individual link removal request explaining how the link could harm both our sites.

Link Removal Request

"Hi,

I am Sukhbir, working for http://www.e-sandhurst.com/ I am trying to remove some backlinks pointing to our website http://www.e-sandhurst.com/ from http://articles-book.com. I would really appreciate your help in removing these links.

Here,Sample Backlink URL : http://articles-book.com/Article/Guidelines-on-How-to-Incorporate-a-Business-in-Singapore/331422

The links may hurt both our rankings and I will be grateful if you can remove the link. If you could please send a confirmation note letting me know that the link has been removed, I would really appreciate it.

If you have any queries please feel free to enquire at linkremoval@e-sandhurst.com

Thanks in advance!

I hope to hear from you soon.

WebMaster

http://www.e-sandhurst.com/"

I sent two reminders in a span of 6 days time. I got about 20% of links removed and some of the webmasters even demanded money, from $2-10 to remove the links. But I did not budge and just put them on the disavow list. I did what I could do the best and even called some webmasters to remove links for which some of them responded.

9. Compiling the Disavow File

Now I am left with no choice and with the help of Nisha and Meena compiled the disavow text file.

Some of them here,

domain:saratogaaccountant.com
domain:stepneygate.com
domain:mzdossier.ch
domain:helpwithcreditnow.com
domain:lawyerspages.com
domain:206-224-65-15-host.prismnet.net
domain:bulldogblog.net
domain:wondergirlsworld.com
domain:ratemypindick.com

and uploaded it to the WMT. [Click here]

10. The Reconsideration Request

I explained in detail on our efforts to clean up the bad links and how I was able to get rid of them and the rest has been disavowed. I provided the proof of mailing, screenshot of contacts and replies I got from webmasters who had removed the links.

11. The Penalty Revoke

I got this wonderful message from google on[19- Feb-2014] after working for [2 months] .

I was so very delighted and thanked Meena & Nisha with all my heart. I then was jubilant and conveyed this happy news to the Boss. His reaction was “thanks” like he was thanking a waiter who served him a coffee. Maybe he has seen hundreds of revokes, but this was one of my best days.

12. Client Appreciation

After the worst reaction from BOSS, I had this heartwarming message from the client, "Mr.Surbi.."which matters the most.

I am giving a treat to Amarnath, Meena, Nisha and others who had guided me and made this happen.

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Category :

SEO News

Tags :

Manual action, Google penalty recovery, reconsider

About Jenifer Renjini

Here at SubmitInMe, I write articles focusing on SEO trends and latest SEO updates, providing you the right information on the right time. My Life and Career both lie on the same graph, So Far So .... more info about the author