Recovery from Bad link Building

Ralph Jasper Jose December 12, 2012

2012 is almost over. I kept thinking, what happened to those people who have got link problems during this years course. Were they able to recover? How about those company owned websites who were hit by Google Penguin or unnatural links messages, Some of them even got penalized. Whether they participated in bad link building or not, Google is just maintaining their business' integrity.

How Does This Happen?

There's a lot of possible reasons why, but it usually starts when someone pays a bad SEO, then that SEO creates a lot of spammy links or a friend of yours tried to help your site or you have the guts to say that you did it. There's no telling how dire the penalty could be. creates

Does a Recovery Process Really Exist?

Yes it does, But first, you've got to make sure it's bad links that got you into trouble. If so, wait a bit, give it some time, see if the issue will be resolved all by itself. If it did, maybe a somebody sent an SQL injection to multiple websites and pointed a thousand spammy links towards your site. If that's the case, your own link builder or webmaster can easily remove those links or if Google sees this issue,and it really does not sound like it's your fault, they will fix it right away. What if not? You can try three steps

1. Cut loose ends – You have to check out each and every domain that links to you and decide if these links are clean or not. Of course, if they are clean, keep them and if there are bad ones, ask for their removal.
   
   
   When asking for removal, be polite, don't rush in, you are asking a request from someone you barely know.
   
   
   Extend your patience, think that these people are also busy with their own tasks, wait for them to see through the issue.
   
   
   Show positive attitude towards the other party, use phrases that let them know that they matter. Like:

“We received a complaint from Google regarding a few links on our web site,

it concerns us that the link on your web site to ours might seem like a paid link and affect the Integrity of both our sites. For that reason, It would be best if these links be cleared out to avoid issues in the future.

We've found the links on these pages: 
http://www.domainwithlink1.com
http://www.domain2withlink000002.com

http://www.domain03withlink003.com .”

2. Be creative – If most of those links are targeted to low value pages, you can try (at most cases) completely remove that page and return a 404 or in some cases, you can do a 301 – redirect that page to another identical page to shake off the bad links. What if those links are targeting you home page?

3. Appeal to Google - If you’ve done handling the unhealthy links, however, you still don’t see your rankings improve, you have to contact with Google directly. Specifically, this implies filing a reconsideration request via Google Webmaster Tools.

It would definitely do a lot of damage to your site once you get hit. The recovery process in addition is slower than the way you got your peak before. You can try to advertise your site manually or via outsource link building, I'm sure it wont hurt to stand back up and try again, all you need is determination and still, SEO.

I 'm sure you want to ask, how much will you recover? That is a million dollar question where there is no easy answer. If you have been hit by Google Penguin, you'll have to play a waiting game, waiting for an Algorithm Update and hope for best things to happen.