{"id":7551,"date":"2015-03-05T12:03:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T10:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=7551"},"modified":"2018-07-10T12:29:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T09:29:22","slug":"unexpected-ranking-boost-after-sitewide-links-penalty-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/7551\/unexpected-ranking-boost-after-sitewide-links-penalty-reduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected Ranking Boost after Sitewide Links Penalty Reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a TRUE<\/span> <\/strong>& SUCCESSFUL<\/span><\/strong> story from Bryan Stenslokken<\/strong>, SEO Manager at St. Louis-based internet marketing company\u00a0Clix<\/a>.<\/em>
\n \u201cBelow you will see presented another interesting recovery story from one of our great customers. Even with a\u00a0sitewide\u00a0link penalty reduced to a partial one, the site recovered its rankings. After nine months and another disavow\u00a0the Partial penalty was removed also, leading to an even bigger ranking boost. It’s a great story about organization, analysis and patience!”<\/em><\/p>\n

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In December of 2013, we took on a client who had received a site-wide match manual penalty from Google. In May of 2014 (five months later) we submitted an initial reconsideration request for the client. We were able to get the site-wide match penalty dropped to a partial-match penalty. Furthermore, last month we submitted a second reconsideration request to address the partial match penalty, and successfully got the manual spam action revoked.<\/p>\n

Two\u00a0for two you say? Gratifying to say the least!<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s right\u2014we submitted two\u00a0reconsideration requests and\u00a0received two suitable\u00a0responses for\u00a0both of them.\u00a0However, we certainly wouldn\u2019t have had as much success as we did without the help of\u00a0cognitiveSEO\u2019s backlink analysis tool<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitewide Links Penalty Applied – Manual Action<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The client came to us with the site-wide match penalty. Their previous SEO vendor was automating the client\u2019s link building using a formerly popular black hat SEO software called SEnuke. Thousands of keyword-rich anchor text links were being created on a monthly basis. Some of the types of websites that the links were being created on included web directories, article directories, blog networks, and forums.<\/p>\n

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The client was working with the SEO vendor for about three years, and had no idea that automating link building could cause so much harm to a website.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a matter of fact, the client continuously saw positive results in keyword rankings and organic traffic while working with the shady SEO vendor. That is until Google took manual action and applied a site-wide match penalty on the domain.<\/p>\n

\"Initial<\/p>\n

The client\u2019s organic traffic significantly dropped, and the good times came to an end.<\/p>\n

\"Cause<\/p>\n

Below I will detail the exact steps we took in order to recover from the manual penalties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Understand the Type of Penalty<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The first step is to identify and understand the type of manual action that you\u2019re dealing with. Here\u2019s a list that Google has on their Manual Actions page:<\/p>\n

\"Types<\/p>\n

In this case we\u2019re dealing with\u00a0unnatural links to your site<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. When inbound links are the underlying cause of the penalty, the main goal is to get as many spammy, unnatural links removed as possible. Trust me, that\u2019s much easier said than done!<\/p>\n

Gather the Link Data<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This is probably the most important step in the process\u2014especially when dealing with tens of thousands of links. For the initial reconsideration request that we submitted for the client, we only took into consideration Google Webmaster Tools and cognitiveSEO\u2019s link data. This was a mistake and most likely the reason why the site-wide match penalty only got dropped to a partial match penalty rather than a full recovery. Unfortunately, there\u2019s not one backlink data source out there that will show you every single link that is pointing to your site.<\/p>\n

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Whoa whoa whoa\u2026backup a minute. You\u2019re telling me Google doesn\u2019t provide every inbound link pointing to my website?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No\u2014Google does not show webmasters every single link pointing to their site (very frustrating).
\nSo when we were addressing the partial match penalty we decided to include a couple more link data sources. We gathered link data from Google Webmaster Tools, cognitiveSEO, Bing Webmaster Tools, and MajesticSEO\u2019s historic index.(cognitiveSEO uses by default the Fresh Index)<\/em><\/p>\n

Import + Evaluate Links and Build Disavow File<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This is where the features of cognitiveSEO came into play, and significantly made our lives easier. cognitiveSEO allows users to import links<\/a> from other data sources, and automatically removes duplicates and other discrepancies during the import process.<\/p>\n

\"Import<\/p>\n

After getting all of the inbound links in one place, we began evaluating and classifying the links and referring domains using cognitiveSEO\u2019s convenient and user-friendly Link Navigator<\/a> tool.<\/p>\n

\"CognitiveSEO<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Link Navigator tool gave us the ability to easily build a domain-level disavow file for the client. This saved us TONS of time, and you know the saying\u2026time is money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We chose to disavow at a domain-level<\/strong> rather than a link-level due to the amount of inbound links that we were dealing with. The disavow ended up having a total of 1,509 referring domains. Manually building a disavow file for 1,509 domains would have been very time consuming (and a huge pain in the a**).<\/p>\n

\"CognitiveSEO<\/p>\n

Link Removal Request Email Outreach<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After exporting the domain-level disavow file from cognitiveSEO, we copied\/pasted the domains into a Google Sheet. We then gathered whois information (names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) so that we could begin reaching out to webmasters to kindly ask them to remove links.
\nHere\u2019s a screenshot of how we formatted our link removal request email outreach spreadsheet:<\/p>\n

\"Link<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t get many responses from webmasters, and a significant amount of the responses that we did receive required payment for link removal.<\/p>\n

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We did not pay for any link removals, and I highly advise you do the same.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Keep in mind that Google does not expect you to get every single unnatural link removed. However, they do want to see that you made a good effort.<\/p>\n

cognitiveSEO Chart Showing Drop in Unnatural Links<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"Drop<\/p>\n

Reconsideration Request<\/strong><\/h3>\n

According to Google, a good reconsideration request does three things:<\/p>\n