Since April 2012, the update of Google’s algorithm contributing to the ranking of your search results pages has been deployed, the so-called Penguin (Penguin for those in the know).
Through a specific case study, we will see how one of our clients was able to get out of a manual penalty for fake inbound links following the implementation of a low-quality search engine optimization campaign.
Part 1: Reminder about the Penguin algorithm
Part 2, click here: Case Study, Manual Penalty Output for Dummy Inbound Links.
A little reminder about the Penguin
The update focused on one of the fundamental criteria of the algorithm governing the ranking of search results pages, Page Rank. This Page Rank allows you to assign a rating to each web page based on the quantity and quality of the links present on the web and leading to it. To put it simply, the higher your score, the more likely you will be to peak at the top of the search results for given keywords.
This update heavily penalized some of the sites that had used techniques to manipulate the ranking of search results pages.
In short, by creating fake links directed to your website (by the hundreds, thousands sometimes even millions), it was possible to artificially improve its positioning for the queries of your choice. This technique is now leading to a drop in positions in search results pages.
Since a mention of a page is theoretically an acknowledgement of a website towards another website, creating fake links would contribute to altering the relevance of search results, lowering user satisfaction with the results offered (they may leave Google following a bad result) and thus, at the end of the chain, potentially reducing the number of ads placed online by the web giant. Google had to act and the Penguin was a success. The consequence for small and medium-sized businesses is a multiplied cost to ensure a good referencing of their business on the web.
Further, making it complex to position a website for a given keyword makes it possible to guide specialists towards the purchase of keywords at Cost Per Click through the Adwords online advertising placement program.
What are the techniques targeted by the Penguin?
On site, on-site criteria
- Keyword stuffing in the body text
- Keyword stuffing in the main tags (Title, H1)
- Too many ads and too many invasive ads
Here, the algorithm tackles to flush out sites that are mediocre or overload their content with keywords. Since the introduction of the Penguin and its updates, we generally talk about the necessary deoptimization of penalized websites (i.e. lightening the site of its overload of keywords).
The rule to follow:
Write for the user in the first place, then structure your content to make it accessible and intelligible to the search engine.
Off-site, off-site criteria
- The origin of the link (press release site, poor site reputation, out-of-context site)
- Link anchor (too many anchors including keywords with high competition)
- Affiliation to a link network (links from sites that form link networks)
- Structure of incoming links (links included in a Linkwheel, link wheel, site A -> site B -> site C -> site A)
- Dofollow commercial links (the purchase of links, advertisements placed online, even mentions from donations or gifts, all of this is prohibited and if the algorithm still seems to have trouble flushing them out automatically, the manual review can take this type of link into account in a penalty)
The rule to follow: create links whose integration on a site seems relevant and legitimate. This creation is rarely natural, but can take the form of an unsolicited link.
The main problem, in my opinion, with the prohibition of commercial links is that it prevents a natural promotion of the site through marketing efforts.
Giving a product to be tested for free to get a review, is something that has always been done and participates in the natural reputation of the product within society, as well as advertising placement, partnerships and why not, link exchanges. Prohibiting this point amounts to setting up a real web police, a law above the law, which you will have to know, because, as you know, no one is supposed to ignore it.
Example of good links to acquire:
I sell beautiful shoes. I have a page that deals perfectly with the maintenance of men’s leather shoes in winter, any page on the web dealing with this subject could legitimately be led to mention my article on maintenance, because its integration would help the user of the said page to undertake a thorough research on the subject and improve his satisfaction.
Whattypes of penalties?
If your site has used prohibited link-building methods in the last 6 months, an automatic penalty can be triggered overnight. If the fraudulent activity is older, the drop in traffic will usually occur at the time of algorithm updates. If your traffic drops instantly, it’s necessary to take action.
The rules to follow:
deoptimize your website, work on your link profile to make it as natural as possible (remove links, modify links, create links), use the disavow tool offered by Google to disavow unwanted domains and repeat these actions regularly. They should be conducted before the penalty if your site has been over-optimized in the past.
Manual penalties
Google’s algorithm is remarkably accurate, however, sometimes, it admits weaknesses, the manual penalty is one of them. Your site has aroused the suspicions of the anti-spam team. Google has spotted something, but is not sure.
After the analysis of your website by a member of the team (a real person), the sanction falls, the traffic of your website drops instantly and you receive a notification in Google Webmaster Tools giving you leads, to say the least, evasive, which are supposed to allow you to recover the referencing of your website.
After this laconic notification, it will then be impossible, unlike an algorithmic sanction, to get out of the penalty without drafting a detailed and reasoned request for reconsideration.
The rules to follow: Check out the case study below.
Case Study, Manual Penalty Output for Dummy Inbound Links
The reasons for the penalization
In this case, the owner of the site had used the services of an agency “specialized” in SEO, the algorithm had already been deployed for 1 year and dust.
The agency’s promise?
Quality links to industry-related directories and blogs, as part of a package that promises an attractive amount of links.
Stay away from this kind of dubious engagement, you can’t promise to acquire any amount of links. Reasoning in terms of the quantity of links makes no sense, we will gladly talk about quality, research, variety of sources, work on the competition, on the current profile, local referencing, content creation… but never a quantity of links.
The bonds acquired were genuine bad bonds of rare mediocrity.
Important: our client, aware of the bad work done, had, 3 months earlier, submitted a document disavowing the links that appeared to him at the time to be bad for his SEO.
On a beautiful day in December, our client receives a message during a manual penalty in google webmastertools
In summary, Google informs, through a generic email, of a penalty for ” Dummy inbound links”. Following this, the sacrosanct Google explains that it has detected a set of artificial or fake links pointing to our site. Then the call to order regarding the violation of Google’s guidelines on participation in link networks or link purchases.
Finally, our friendly search engine offers a series of recommended actions to get out of the penalty: make sure that dummy links pointing to your site are removed.
Reading this email, we learn little. Google maintains doubts, purchased links, network of links, we don’t really know which foot to dance on. The conclusion even borders on openly mocking: “make sure that fake links are removed”. Thank you for the relevance of your recommendation.
Fortunately, the anti-spam team offers us with a smile a little more solid leads to organize our work of removing links and requesting reconsideration:
In short:
- Prove that manipulations not authorized by Google’s Quality Guidelines have stopped
- Prove that you have addressed the issue and implemented the necessary actions to resolve it
- Proving that it won’t happen again
- Include details of the work done
- Describe the manipulation work carried out, or even denounce the SEO who has taken actions without paying attention to ethics.
- Include a Google Doc, detailing the work
As you can see, you have to convince, argue, provide evidence, in short, justify yourself. During this time of hard work, the site will no longer be offered in search results. Even for the brand name.
So what can be done to get out of the penalty?
Of course, we have more or less followed the recommendations in this video. There is no point in hoping for a successful request for reconsideration without strictly following the recommendations in this video.
Without painstaking work, any application that fails would involve starting the process all over again. Not putting in enough effort leads to the project being prolonged, a waste of time and of course money for the client.
However, the theory is what it is, the reality on the ground, the budget devoted to the exit of the penalty are quite different and will impact the chances of success of your project.
Ideally, we should have spent 8 to 10 more hours to ensure maximum chances of success, but this was not the case.
The main stages of our work:
- Link Profile Analysis
- Link removal work
- Sending an update to the disavowal document
- Sending a request for reconsideration
- Waiting for our judge’s decision (since requests for reconsideration are reviewed by humans with all that implies).
Working time: 20 hours
Number of domains covered: 250
It is important to take into account in order to master the ins and outs of the draft request for reconsideration after a manual penalty that a real person will be your sole judge. This person has a guideline to follow, essential points to check, but, like any human, he can make mistakes in your favor or against you.
Step-by-step method
- Link profile analysis. The first thing to do is to take note of the profile and the causes of the penalty. Over-optimized anchors, poor quality directory with unequivocal names, a quick tour of the owner alerts us to the situation. Bad news for our client: 90% of its links have to be deleted. To carry out this analysis, we used 3 different tools, we recommend using at least 2 tools including Google’s webmaster tools to get the widest possible view of your link profile: The external links section of Google Webmastertools, Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO.
- Choice of criteria for selecting links to remove or disavow (included in the analysis).
- Formatting of client documents. A link monitoring table had been created with the actions carried out for each area. For us, it was a question of updating it. If it does not exist, it is a question of creating it.
- Updating and formatting of the disavowal document. As the disavowal document did not contain any indication of the actions taken, the links had to be revised. Each action carried out had to be annotated in the following form:
# Le propriétaire de example.com a supprimé la plupart des liens à l'exception des suivants : http://spam.example.com/contenu/commentaires.html http://spam.example.com/stuff/paid-links.html # J'ai contacté le propriétaire de domainespam1.com le 01/07/2012 pour # lui demander de supprimer des liens, mais je n'ai reçu aucune réponse domain:shadyseo.com
- Extraction of new inbound links registered by Google Webamstertools, Majesto, and Ahrefs.
- Data fusion, elimination of duplicates, construction of a central file. 500 domains to be processed, including nearly 250 new domains (GWT, Ahref, Open Site Explorer) since the last sending of the disavowaled document. We used the Ablebits column merge tool as well as a relatively trivial column comparison formula.
- Request to remove links from webmasters. The operation was not very successful, but the requests for payment, as well as the absence of contact data, were carefully listed for inclusion in our disavowal document.
- Highlighting sites with the same IP address. The idea here, since 99% of contact attempts fail, is to highlight the networks of links. Remember the notification received by our client, the subscription to a possible network of links was suggested. Thus, by determining the common IP of the fake directories and blogs on which the site was registered, it is possible, in theory, to prove the difficulties of contact and the research work undertaken for each site. To do this, we used the metsander.nl/tools/domains-to-ip/ tool to determine the IP linked to a given domain. 10% of the sites were hosted on common servers.
- Notes of the actions carried out for only 250 domains. Contacts, non-existent forms, requests for payment for deletion, network memberships. It is on this point that the project was the most feverish. While we took action on nearly 250 domains, another 250 domains had been processed by our client, a tiny proportion had been the subject of an action, but they had been disavowed before the manual penalty. 200 links were found without any particular note. We therefore mentioned the date of the first disavowal request and mixed the document so that the same note would appear in a diluted manner in the final disavowal document.
- Formatting and sending of the disavowal document. You have two formatting options, disavow a link or disavow the entire domain. Of course, we disavow the entire domain so as not to leave room for possible duplicate pages. Finally, for each area, a note describing the work carried out in the form described above is added.
- Drafting of the request for reconsideration. It is a question of integrating the elements stated in the video above. Argue, link to our discussion paper, justify our efforts, prove good faith, demonstrate policy change.
The following is an example of the reconsideration request document provided:
Dear Google Webspam Team Member,
Thank you for taking the time to review our affected site [date] by a manual penalty for “dummy links”.
[date de la campagne de liens factices], we made the decision to hire a web marketing agency to promote our online business on specialized sites and directories. She was in charge of finding partners and contacts in relation to our industry. Unfortunately, the agency did not contact any relevant sites. On the contrary, the agency has used networks of fake blogs and directories, which will contribute to the creation of thousands of fake links.
These meagre results were discovered [date de la prise en charge], so we set up a campaign of link removal requests to clean up our profile. Naturally, we have terminated the contract that bound us to this agency.
After sending requests to remove links without much result, we submitted a first disavowal document in [Date of submission].
We have worked tirelessly to remove as many links as possible. We found more than 500 domains referring to our website.
We are a small company and our business depends mainly on our indexing in the search engine.
In addition, we contacted as many webmasters as possible. In most cases, it was found that:
- There was no possibility of contact, either by form or email
- The webmaster asked for payment for the removal of the link
- we received no response
- the website was part of a linking system (same IP, same model)
We are convinced that these low-quality websites receive a large number of removal requests making any hope of an answer utopian.
If you can view the following link disclaimer, we have added as much detail as possible (when did we get in touch and/or why we were unable to reach them).
While we have only managed to remove a small number of domains, please note that these sites are fake and we have reviewed them one by one.
We have carefully read and read Google’s guidelines and we are committed to no longer using techniques that attempt to alter the search algorithm. We are now trying to focus on community management and the production of quality content, as evidenced by the implementation of our blog [adresse du blogue].
Thank you in advance,
Kind regards
- Waiting for the results. In just one week, a positive response arrived. The request for reconsideration was successful and the penalty was lifted.
Success
The 20 hours of work completed were carried out over a period of two months. The disavowal document and the request for reconsideration were sent one week apart, for a return to normal the week following the request for reconsideration (note that the work was carried out in English).
Here, we can clearly see the moment of the manual penalty as well as the penalty exit. The penalty finally lasted only two months and a week, thanks to painstaking work carried out with precision and method.
The time required is difficult to estimate, but depends greatly on the number of referring sites, the current state of acquisition as well as the type of links.
Nevertheless, this case shows that it is possible to get out of a manual penalty with a very limited number of deleted links, to do this it is necessary to make the documents as accurate as possible and to comply with the recommendations set out in the video presented above.
If you have been hit by a manual or automatic penalty, if you have feedback to share, if you have failed or on the contrary managed to get out of a penalty, or you simply have a point to bring to this case study, it will be our pleasure to read you in the comments below.