A Case Study on Penalty Removal - Choose Your Brand Name Carefully

[Samwise89]

I just read this over at Moz. It was user generated, but was still worthwhile.

https://moz.com/blog/my-story-how-psd2html-worked-to-have-a-manual-penalty-revoked

This company were obviously spamming before and got busted and hadn't been able to recover from the penalty. Several companies had tried to the process and all failed.

This lady explains how it was that they started completely over and managed to get it done, specifically with the help of Google's first rejection. It showed them 3 seemingly random links, but they stopped and gave it thought and figured out what Google wanted, and it worked.

The first one was obvious and crazy that they thought it could slide, but the 2nd two were insightful. They really analyzed the "intent" behind the links.

The reason I thought this was interesting was because the company was PSD2HTML.com, an obvious EMD style domain and brand name. So any time someone typed their brand as PSD to HTML, Google saw that as link manipulation.

They had to give up a lot of legit and powerful links due to their choice of brand name.

There was a lot of conversation about why some EMD's were getting penalties and some weren't when Penguin first came out. Seems like Google's algorithm shows no mercy and doesn't care if it's legit or not. If your "Brand" name is an EMD, it's manipulative, plain and simple in their eyes.

Can anyone else figure out any other kind of secrets or insights out of this case study we can share and learn from?

 

[turbin3]

None of this is directed at you, Samwise. I just get fed up seeing bad information confuse people. The case study is bullshit, to put it plainly.

So this chick seemingly has 1 year of experience with penalty removal, on exactly ONE site (at least no other prior experience was mentioned), and is already issuing absolute statements? What a joke.

1.5 years, TWO marketing departments, and several contracted agencies to analyze 2,500 linking domains? Are you fucking kidding me? I've MANUALLY assessed tens of thousands on my own, in some cases for a few major national brands, and usually in a short timeframe (days or weeks). In one case, it was something like 50-100k linking domains and maybe 5M total links. 1.5 years? Fucking ouch.

Here's what I've found, across maybe 7-10 penalty removal processes for a pretty wide variety of clients.

1. For the love of God, save yourself time and use Link Detox from Link Research Tools
   • Use as the primary tool/platform to manage the processing and analysis of the link profile
   • I have done quite a few variations of this process, improving my efficiency with each one. Believe me when I tell you, I have seen the absolute depths of a full on manual analysis of large backlink profiles for a penalty removal process. I'm talking Scrapebox pulling every SEO metric for millions of links, carefully compiling spreadsheets of every halfway legitimate quality/trust/authority metric I can to MANUALLY build a link profile spreadsheet, to truly understand what is good and what is bad. I can regale you some tales of spreadsheet hell indeed.
   • It was a great learning experience. For fuck's sake, just use Link Detox. As they say in the military, you can get smart, or you can get strong (PT, punishment, etc...lol)
2. Do NOT assume anything
   • I have received "example links" from multiple reconsideration request failure responses, which included nofollow links, even 302 links in one case, and links that no longer existed. Yes, nofollows and 302's.
   • "Manual" is the operative word, and Google seems to act accordingly
3. No one gets their penalty removed "in 24 hours"
   • I hate those marketing ploys. You'll often hear similar claims made, including from a company I may have already mentioned. What isn't mentioned is the countless man hours, days, weeks, and number of resources that may have been brought to bear on the issue......before that reconsideration request is fired off.
   • I have received a reconsideration request approval within ~24-36 hours....after sending the request......after weeks worth of painstaking work and documenting those efforts, with proof for Google
   • Some reconsideration requests won't get a response for days or weeks. In one case, for a large national brand, for request ~#2 or #3, it took 3-4 freakin weeks for them to respond.
4. LRT + Pitchbox = Efficient outreach
   • LRT is worth its weight in gold for these sorts of situations. All of the shit I used to take hours doing manually, pulling metrics....done in minutes, running a simple report or two.
   • Plenty of easy solutions for domain owner contact info. LRT can pull some. Scrapebox may find some more. Pitchbox can too. Once you have the list of bad domains from Link Detox, get your contact info from wherever, dump the list in Pitchbox, fire up a template, and bulk send like a mofo. This doesn't have to take that long.
   • Beware of email limits. Gmail's regular limit is 500 per day for a standard account, BUT for third party apps using Gmail (Pitchbox) it's limited to ~100-150 emails per day. In one case, I was able to find a script specifically for Gmail, which allowed me to run a template in Gmail, which included reference links from a source CSV, allowing for easy bulk mails. If necessary, create several Gmail accounts and you're ready to start sending thousands of emails quickly.
5. Document your efforts
   • I have found it useful, and in some cases seemingly necessary to document the basic steps taken to correct the perceived issues that may have caused the penalty, as well as maybe a few metrics (sent 3,500 removal emails, received 340 removals, 120 requests for money, etc.).
   • This doesn't have to be a novel. Generally I've kept it clear and concise, focusing on demonstrating my understanding of the issue, steps taken to correct it, a few metrics to demonstrate progress, and then as many of the records saved to only one or two (as few as possible, keep it simple) source files, uploaded specifically to Google Drive.
   • I'm a bit blurry on this part, as it's been awhile, but from what I remember I used a bulk export somewhere, either in Gmail, or maybe running it through Thunderbird. Either way, I found a simple way to do a bulk export of the full meta data and email contents of every email sent and received. I copied all of this into I think 1 or 2 TXT files, and uploaded it to Google Drive. It may not always be necessary, as the article stated. Though one thing is for sure, they can't freakin say you haven't demonstrated due diligence. Better safe than sorry.
6. Don't worry about what just aggregate all of your links
   • Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, SEMRush, Ahrefs, or whatever. Doesn't matter, download ALL of your lists from everywhere, combine into one, then dedupe.
   • In some cases, for some penalties with some sites....(again, no absolutes)I've found it useful to start FIRST with doing the above link profile aggregation, BUT with linking domains only. If you have a lot of bad links, it stands to reason that you probably have quite a few domains that have a LOT of bad links. Stuff from scraper/RSS feed sites, or whatever.
   • Starting off with your smallest, easiest to process list can be the most time effective. If you're able to quickly identify a number of clearly bad domains, you may be able to submit a domain disavow file very quickly after starting, and be well on your way within minutes or hours.

That's all I can think of for now.

 

[Stephen]

The author does not know much about SEO if she is calling Google Penguin a penalty!