Links are still SEO’s backbone, despite the fact they can be bought, exchanged, ‘earned’ in return for content and many other techniques that seek to influence search results. Google have had a gripe against falsely-earned links for a long time, but in the last few weeks they’ve really begun cracking the whip on illegitimate backlink building. The Manual Action Penalty has been their weapon of choice.
Image Credit: Ken Teegardin, under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
What is a Manual Action Penalty?
Not all factors that cause sites to lose SERP ranking are considered a ‘penalty’ per se. Unlike ranking declines caused by algorithms, manual action is conducted by real people from Google called Search Quality Raters and they do this manually by physically checking a website and its inbound signals. The practices that put a site at risk are:
- Unnatural Links to/from your site
- Keyword stuffing and/or hidden texts
- Deceitful outbound links
- False or deceitful outbound links
- Duplicate, spammy or low-quality content
- Spammy hosting service
- User-generated spam
Link networks have been seriously targeted for these violations. Names of Build My Rank, Ghost Rank and Anglo Rank are now well known among SEOs for being the high-profile casualties of Google’s crackdown. To be honest, even their names raise suspicion. Matt Cutts hasn’t been shy about naming and shaming them, either:
Link networks are not the only ones in danger, though. Any site which Google deems to be offering or accepting unnatural links is very much at risk. Expedia was a notable example, so was Rap Genius, and of course, MyBlogGuest. The latter sought to provide a platform on which guest bloggers and websites wanting content could hook up and exchange their commodities –an article for a link.
Perhaps the messiest of the recent cases was DocSheldon.com and his post about “Best Practices for Hispanic Social Networking,” sparking an open rant letter to Matt Cutts from the Doc himself.
It was one of those arguments that didn’t have an ending; Matt had some valid points but so did the Doc. It just goes to show how dangerous a ground you’re on if Google even suspects foul play. This case, if nothing else, highlighted the fact a small issue on one page can have serious site-wide ramifications. One seemingly unnatural anchor text led to the whole site suffering.
One important thing to remember though is that you can do anything you like with your site or your content – Google is not the internet. They are a profit-making organisation that has devised their own ways to rank web-pages. If you don’t agree with their methods, it’s tough luck, your site will still exist, just not on Google’s SERPs.
But if you value traffic from Google, there’s no use arguing about it. What webmasters should do instead is strive to investigate, correct the issue, and cross their fingers for a quick recovery.
Have you been targeted?
Despite a noticeable drop in traffic or position on Google’s SERPs, you can check if your site has been given a manual action penalty to your Google Webmaster Tools account and going to ‘Search Traffic’ and clicking ‘Manual Actions’.
The bad news is that these written notices are most ambiguous. Here’s an example:
And another slightly different one…
Well, at least you get notified in the first place, and the notice does tell you why you’ve been penalised. What it doesn’t give you are any concrete examples. You’re on your own.
It’s the unnatural links penalty that many people fear, and is often the hardest to recover from because a lot of links might be outside of your control. But, there’s no way around it.
Inspect all links… and I mean ALL
I don’t mean you should painstakingly inspect your source code line by line. Actually, outbound links are quite easy to check, it’s the inbound or backlinks that you may need to sweat over.
Thankfully, there are some great online tools you can use for the task. Google Webmaster Tools even has one that’s fairly accurate. However, if you want to double or triple check the list GWT supplies you, you can use:
Matt Cutts released a Google Webmasters Video last year that may help you determine which links to remove and which links to keep. Matt has also mentioned in another video that the links you may want to pay special attention to are the recent ones, perhaps those around the time that you received the manual action notification. But, in the interest of safety, you’re best to check all your backlinks. Every single one.
Start the clean up
Whether you paid an unscrupulous SEO company to build your links; whether your former webmaster thought reciprocal linking was the future; whether you paid small fortunes to a Russian link network or simply if your anchor texts are exact-match keywords, it’s entirely up to you to clean up your backlink profile.
Stage 1 – Analysis
It can sometimes be difficult knowing which links need removing/noFollowing and which ones you can keep. Check each and every linking page for:
- Low or no DA or PR for the website and page
- Tenuous relevancy of the website and page to your website
- Poor quality of the content, including spelling, grammar and coherence
- Remarkably different region of the website in relation to your own
- Low-quality or irrelevant link directory page
- Unnatural link neighbourhood (does the page link to several unrelated or low-quality sites?)
- Exact match anchor text that links to your site
This last one is critical. It’s seen from a mile away by anyone with any search knowledge. Years ago, if you wanted to rank for a term you would use this exact phrase in your anchor texts and sit back and wait to fly up the SERPs. Not anymore. For any link to look (and, well, be natural) it must conform to the following:
- Be branded (your domain or company name)
- Be a full URL
- Appear naturally in the content (sentence/partial sentence form)
And even then the ground is thin. The author bio is considered as generally safe ground for a backlink, but only if the author is a regular contributor to a website (if link juice is your primary aim, once you get a link from a domain, subsequent links won’t add to the weight gained from the initial link).
Workarounds
Let’s not forget that we are SEOs. We want to acquire links that are in some way related to a term we want to rank for.
- Use key terms in close proximity to links
- Include partial-match terms in the anchor text
- Ensure that the content around the link (indeed the entire page) is themed to your term
- Use semantically-related terms in the content and around the link
- Attract brand citations close to links
Regardless of who built them or why they were built, or whether they adhered to best-practice when you built them matters not one jot. Links that don’t adhere to these current best-practices need attention. Google wants you to make the effort of cleaning them up – to punish you for your sins in a sense.
The best practice has always been, and will always be, a naturally occurring link. If you’re in the fortunate position to even expect a link because of something you’ve produced, then simply allow it to form as the host webmaster wishes. Branded; with keywords; with unrelated words; with a smiley emoticon. It’s his decision and will only serve to build you a natural backlink profile.
Stage 2 – Contact
Google wants you to do one of two things: ask for the link to be completely removed or ask for the link to be noFollowed. And this latter one deserves a little sub-section of its own.
The noFollow
NoFollow links don’t pass Page Rank (link juice). They appear to Google as if your only intention is to drive traffic to your website – a perfectly legitimate reason for a link. Asking for a noFollow is much more advantageous than asking for the link to be removed. Your brand should still get a mention, and the link will remain to drive traffic. This should only be employed, though, if the content is of a high standard and you’re happy for your name to be associated with it.
There is even some evidence that noFollow links correlate with high rankings anyway. Surely the practice of noFollowing links shows Google how ethical you are; should this not be an indirect ranking factor in itself?
Whether you want a noFollow or a complete removal; it’s time to write to these websites with your request.
Be honest and direct but polite
Remember, you’re essentially telling this webmaster that you think that being connected to their site is a potential danger to yours, and you need them to break that link so your site is safe. Hardly a nice e-mail to receive is that.
Thank them for the link in the first place, and stress that you are taking ultra-precautionary measures in light of Google’s latest crackdown.
Moreover, if your requests are ignored, it’s important that you show Google your efforts. Google wants to “see good-faith efforts” from you with regards to removing spammy/bad links, and to keep documentation of those attempts. Keep a spreadsheet of those spammy links you found as well as of your removal request letters. Take screenshots of your emails as proof, and of any before/after screenshots of successful changes to links.
Stage 3 –Disavow
If stage 2 didn’t produce any results, you’re within your rights to use Google’s Disavow Tool. You need to collate all the domains of the links you want disavowing and list them in a text file. This is your Disavow File.
To understand more about how the process and this tool works, check out Google’s info page as well as Matt’s video about it.
As Matt iterated in the video, you should forget that this power tool is not the answer to all your ills and should not be used lightly. He adds that you have to be careful because it’s very easy to make a mistake and include a domain or a link that you didn’t want removing. Another Googler, Eric Kuan, also mentioned in a Webmaster Central Forum to use this tool only as a last resort. So listen to Cutts and Kuan, and refrain from being too trigger-happy with the Disavow Tool.
Keep Checking the links
There’s no harm in being overly thorough about this. Regularly check those inbound links- those that have been rectified, those which have been removed, and those that remain.
*Extra tip* If you find that a page which used to contain a link to your site is no longer there, or the domain has expired or just isn’t working, then disavow it anyway. It’s much better to be safe than risk it being a terrible link and popping back up in your profile in the future.
Stage 4 – Send that Reconsideration Request
Image Credit: stuartpilbrow, under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
To be clear, you can’t skip the steps above and go straight to sending a reconsideration request.
After doing all you can to rectify the errors, draft your reconsideration request, making sure to…
Be Transparent. Confess everything. Recognise your past mistakes and go cap–in-hand to Google, promising to piously worship their guidelines as you should have been doing all along. As Matt and Alex have said, what’s important is that you need “to enable or reinstate trust with your site” and Google. You will get nothing by being sneaky.
Be pleasant. Remember that this is a ‘request’, and by definition, it is to ask somebody for something politely. And if it’s important to be polite to fellow webmasters, it’s even more so with The Man. Besides, people (even Google people) respond more favourably to good manners than rude behaviour.
Remember to provide proper documentation of all your efforts to remove those spammy backlinks and not allow those questionable outbound links to pass PageRank.
Read all about how to properly submit your reconsideration request on the Webmaster Help Page and also check out Matt Cutts’ tips.
Stage 5 – Patience is a Virtue
Image Credit: Lauren Hammond, under CC BY 2.0 license
If you’ve watched Matt’s video about the Disavow Tool, you already know that it could take weeks for Google to check, re-crawl, and re-index your site – not to mention getting around to opening your request in the first place. After all, your site is not the only one they punished. So try to be patient and remember that Googlers are not robots but people, too.
Stage 6 – Learn your Lesson and take it to Heart
Image Credit: amboo who?, under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
If your painstaking efforts are rewarded and you see some improvements to your ranking, remember what you’ve changed. Don’t go back to your old spammy ways – if you ever practiced them, that is.
Conclusion
The quality of your content will determine how many links you get from now on. Quality directory submissions are probably the only legitimate way to craft yourself a link these days.
Always remain vigilant of your backlink profile. You may think twice about doing harm to other sites but there are site owners out there who are not so considerate. As Google becomes stricter, negative SEO could become much more rife.
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