Received this email today and wanted to share how I helped this person to fix their site after they had been hit by a Google update and submitted a reconsideration request. My responses are in capitals in bold under the questions.
Hi,
Read your article here http://www.seo-hop.com/panda-penguin-google-update-january-17-2013-uk/
Sailing in the same boat, so thought that you might suggest from your experience.
Your thoughts and suggestions would be highly appreciated.
1. Detail description:- I had a site whose keywords were in top 10 but suddenly they have reached to 250 and above. This happened on 21st January 2013. And from those days the ranking is continuously dropping. The strange thing is I haven’t done anything different to the back linking efforts. Only thing that I have changed is, content of site keeping in mind not to do the stuffing of the keywords. And content was changed a month ago. Is this due to Content? In WBT I have lost around 15000 backlinks. I had sent my site for reconsideration when the ranking was dropped. We did not receive any warning email in WBT.
1A. BACKLINKS IN WBT ARE DUE TO AN UPDATE IN WBT. SUBMITTING A RECONSIDERATION PROBABLY HURT YOUR SITE WORSE BY ATTRACTING MORE ATTENTION. YES A BIG CONTENT CHANGE DOES HAVE A MAJOR EFFECT. THERE ARE ALSO CASES OF HAVING TO MUCH CONTENT AROUND THE SAME TOPIC THAT WOULD CAUSE A FLAG TO GOOGLE. REGARDING YOUR CONTENT I WOULD NOT KNOW UNLESS I DID AN ANALYSIS AND WE HAVE TO BE CONTRACTED FOR WORK IN ORDER TO PERFORM THIS. IN FACT WE ARE MAKING AN SEO LEARNING SITE IN 2 MONTHS.
2. Then new update was: The new thing now is that I have got back the lost backlinks but the ranking is continuously dropping. Some of them told that my site was hit by the update that occurred on the 22nd of Jan 13. So they suggested me to remove all the directory and social bookmarking links. For removing these links they suggested the Google disavow link tool. So my question is that should I use this tool and filtered the low quality backlinks coming from these sites and then upload them. Will it really help?
2A. BACKLINKS ARE BACK BECAUSE OF THE WBT UPDATE. THE DISAVOW TOOL MAY HELP, BUT I WOULD DO BRAND LINK BUILDING AND MANUAL REMOVAL OF DIRECTORIES BEFORE USING THE TOOL. I HAVE HAD MUCH SUCCESS WITH THIS.
3. Last update is reply from WBT :- Finally received the reply from Google reconsideration request
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.example.com We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.example.com for compliance with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. We’ve reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
After receiving this mail my next step was removing all the links (contacting them or using Disavow Tool) and improving my site on the technical basis and then again sending it for reconsideration. So please suggest now what kind of SEO techniques I should follow.
3A. WELL THOSE WOULD BE THE TECHNIQUES. CLEAN UP YOUR SITE, REMOVE LINKS MANUALLY, AND START BRAND LINK BUILDING TO SHOW YOU ARE A REAL COMPANY AND NOT A SPAMMER. ALSO I WOULD DIG DEEPER INTO THE LINK SCHEME THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. IT SOUNDS DEEPER THAN JUST DIRECTORY LINKS. POSSIBLY YOU HAD AN SEO COMPANY THAT PURCHASED LINKS OR YOU MAY HAVE. IF SO DEFINITELY GET THOSE REMOVED.
Please Suggest
Thanks & Regards
Author Seo Hop
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