Google Message About Unnatural Links

11 Apr 12 4:20 pm

It sounds like google is already telling you that they are doing something to your site when saying give them information with your reconsideration request. What i don't understand is your comment where you say ( I have sent a reasonable number of PR5 links (and a few PR6 ones) from one particular site.) I don't understand the comment did you mean to say that you receive pr5 and pr6 links from some site. It sounds like the only thing you can do is to send google the information they want if you think it is the site you are getting the hi pr links from then send it to them. From my experience you will never get any kind of clear answers from google as to what is going on this is the reason why I don't much care for them, They will tell you that you are doing something against there policy but they won't tell you what it is so it could be any of over a hundred things and you could have no idea where to start looking. So I think the only thing you can do is to do a resubmit and include what site you think could be the problem. If you are very lucky you might get an answer from a real person telling you if that is the problem or not.

12 Apr 12 3:14 am

I remember seeing a similar notice sent to a member of another forum that I frequent. His situation was a bit more complicated because he tracked all the links pointing to his site and discovered that his site was entered into some sort of network or wheel. All the "suspicious links" that Google referred to in his message to him referred to those links and there were A LOT. (He posted the links on to his forum post)

He sent an email back to Google and provided them with a copy of the links stating he did not add his site to this network , blah, blah. It took considerable time but Google did let him off the hook. But not without consistent effort (more like hounding to me) and communication with Google.

You can do the same and track all the links pointing back to your site. You might just find that one problematic link.

Please let us know how you get on.

Have a good day!

12 Apr 12 8:02 am

Hi Greg,

You could be right. No one really can tell what Google thinks or will do. I would still continue with my backlinking efforts, but will be more careful where I leave links. You can choose to sit it out, but in your shoes, I would do a little backtracking and check the links pointing back to my site.

Have a good day!

12 Apr 12 11:22 pm

Yeah, Have to agree with you E.

Personally I think Google has lost the plot.

I understand what they are trying to do but I think it is open to sabotage by other less than desirable characters on the net.

Greg, just out of interest, have you got links pointing out to other sources?

It's great to have some high PR backlinks coming in with different anchor text, but if you do not have a few links going out as part of your linking strategy.. the genius's at Google will send you emails.

Troy

15 Apr 12 4:54 pm

Hey Greg, one thing you might do is create one or two pages of "resource pages" with popular sites within your niche that gives some good outbound links, and isn't trying to make an affiliate sale.

This gives you some good outbound links without worrying about your main money pages. i do these with general keywords that get good traffic but aren't targeted to buyers. They also tend to get a lot of natural linking since other people like to link to resource posts that they find, especially bloggers.

In blogging, we call it link baiting because it baits other site owners to naturally link to us from their sites. Usually, instead of trying to get a sale on these pages, I go for trying to get an opt in. they can be really great list building pages because people will see you as an authority that they can trust to find relevant news within your niche.

This is why you see blogs doing things like top 100 lists with loads of outbound links to other blogs and resource pages.
you can do it with a "top 10" list all the way up to a top 100, 200 or even 1000 (although that would be really long to go through, might divide it up into multiple pages....)

One thing I am working on is building up an authority blog on forum marketing. right now I am working on 6 pages of link bait that are all resources for "Forums to follow in _____Niche market. I have 6 niches that I am doing a top 20 forums in those niches, to help people who are looking for forums find them.

It takes time to do a good link bait piece (some of mine take over a week of research to put together), but the ROI on the work is amazing. Having a good VA to do the research will help a lot. you can even hire a research assistant on Elance or Odesk for a one time job just to do one or two link bait pieces for your site.

I have one following my forum research guidelines picking out 20 forums in each niche. then I can spend a day following up and checking them myself as I actually write the posts. saves me hours of work that I can spend on other things, and gets a really great post that will drive more natural linking to my site.

18 Apr 12 10:04 pm

well, about GWT and google analytics.... If you don't own a real business with a prominent phone number and adress you should probably never use their tools. Affiliate Marketing is spam in their view and any data you give away to gaagle they will use against you sooner or later. I have never used their webmaster tools and i stopped using their analytics early 2010. That has helped me staying under the radar soofar.

And it is true what James says a resource page is really good and can give you some great traffic, and be sure you do follow links. It is only possible to build PR to a limited degree without outbound links. It will also tell G that you are not running a selfish website....

19 Apr 12 3:29 am

Thanks for that link.

BTW, does anyone know whether the penalty I incurred would have been a manual or algorithmic one?

20 Apr 12 5:42 am

Hi
It seems that Google is serious about cracking down on unnatural links. The fact that they have sent out these warning letters shows they have the capability of monitoring your sites.

There are two schools of thought in dealing with this.

One school thinks that this is a phishing strategy of Google to get the source of unnatural back links. That is, If you feel guilty then you can write them a letter detailing these. Google can then use the information gathered in their favour to put on more stringent measures against such.

The other school of thought is to abide by their rules. To reply to their letter regardless whether you think you are guilty or not. To clean up your act before you get penalized. If you depend on Google for your websites you better tow-the-line otherwise you might end up losing what you have worked for.

Good luck to all!

21 Apr 12 4:34 pm

I am not sure how anyone ever gets in contact with google anyhow because I have tried in the past to get answers about things and can't even find a place to ask a question except on there stupid forums and who knows if there are even any google employes looking at and giving answers there. As far as back links I think a problem could be if someone goes to a site and makes comments to an article and leaves a link that is ok but if you stay on that site and leave a comment and a link on 15 or 20 of there articles or blogs in one day, that is what I think google sees as an un natural link. I was reading this same subject on one of the google webmaster forum pages and some jerk wad there just keeps saying that just about everything is an un natural link, she thinks article marketing is spam and un natural and making a nice long comment to an article even if it is in your niche is also spam, So I know she is an idiot and never read anything she ever has to say because I have never seen her say anything good about anything. I myself have 40 and 50 links from many of the same websites but the links are all from different dates which is what I think is natural. So I will go on maybe 20 different places and make one or 2 comments on each and I am done for the day. I don't even worry about page rank from the site because it could be a PR site today and a PR 3 to 5 site in months. I can't say to be worried or not but I would play it safe and just fix what needs to be fixed you don't want your site to vanish. Also what is this site about that you get 400 clicks a day. Mark