A Great Story about a Manual Penalty - How would you fix it?

[Eric Rohrback]

I felt this was too good not to share. Make sure you go read this Moz Post about a site's manual penalty, and how it got lifted. Anna makes some interesting points to consider (like you don't need to email webmasters to remove links), and what kinds of links the webspam team sent back as examples of bad links.

I GUARANTEE YOU WILL SEE A SCENARIO LIKE THIS IF YOU ARE CONSULTING OR RUNNING SEO FOR COMPANIES. It's bound to happen at some point. The more prepared you are with a playbook for getting these lifted, the better. You're going to get a client come to you and ask "why am I not ranking at all" then you'll see it... the manual action in their Search Console.

What would you do in that situation? What kinds of links would you look to disavow?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I saw that too and found it fantastic! I also find Marie's article on this to be one of the best I've ever seen: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for sharing Eric and Joy. Both great resources!

I GUARANTEE YOU WILL SEE A SCENARIO LIKE THIS IF YOU ARE CONSULTING OR RUNNING SEO FOR COMPANIES. It's bound to happen at some point. The more prepared you are with a playbook for getting these lifted, the better. You're going to get a client come to you and ask "why am I not ranking at all" then you'll see it... the manual action in their Search Console.

What would you do in that situation? What kinds of links would you look to disavow?

I'd be curious to hear answers to this too Eric.

Or any stories to tell about situations like this you've been in?

 

[CodyBaird]

Thanks Eric. That is the best post that I have read to date on penguin penalties.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[JoshuaMackens]

You don't need to email webmasters to remove their links to get a manual penalty disavowed.

Huge takeaway.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I've never emailed webmasters in the past, and it's nice to see other stories backing up that approach. It would be nice if you could easily talk to a webmaster to get a link physically removed but... if the link is sketchy to begin with, I don't think it's realistic to assume they'll actually respond to your request.

Always good to read others sharing the same point of view.

 

[CodyBaird]

I found 2 problems when emailing webmasters when the disavow functionality was initially offered in WMT/GSC:

1. No reponse or reply
2. no problem we charge $20 or X per link

I have a few clients that paid $1,000 to $4,000 to have links removed before hiring us. However, most domains that should be disavowed are in the "sandbox" with Google, therefore they are no longer indexed. Google wouldn't even know that your listing/link was removed.

I also use to include a "repentence letter/explination". I'm pretty sure that I might as well have tossed the letter in the garbage. See the link that Joy shared shares how the file is handled by the algo as opposed to the spam team reading letters all day and making disavow judgements.

I don't disavow urls - I disavow the entire domain. Here is the disavow file for milkmen's "repentance"/"confession for your viewing pleasure:

domain:alexawebsites.com
domain:ase.se
domain:bizdb.org
domain:blogs.discovery.com
domain:blogs.gocomics.com
domain:catalog.iwebtool.com
domain:com.milkmen.qirina.com
domain:community.musiciansonly.net
domain:deliberatedomain.com
domain:dig.do
domain:domainfound.net
domain:infrasec-conf.org
domain:fr.circlecount.com
domain:ip-72-55-190-165.static.privatedns.com
domain:jp.circlecount.com
domain:keywordsmanya.com
domain:listings.findthecompany.com
domain:lo-co.org
domain:masc.cc
domain:mcjonline.com
domain:milkmen-com.salt-lake-city.ut.amfibi.com
domain:nawords.com
domain:nl.circlecount.com
domainogljad.com
domainrofileengine.com
domain:rhymeswithright.new.mu.nu
domain:ripdir.rohanagrawal.com
domain:seductiveapps.com
domain:stuffgate.com
domain:tasz.hu
domain:taylor-swift.groundctrl.net
domain:taylorswift.com
domain:twtrland.com
domain:vision-iq.com
domain:whereto.info
domain:wldirectory.com
domain:10news.org
domain:10webs.org
domain:abilogic.com
domain:add-page.com
domain:add-website.info
domain:all-webs.info
domain:bandmine.com
domain:circlecount.com
domain:copub.com
domain:cutestat.cf
domain:danielamos.com
domain:detailsite.com
domain:domainmetrics.de
domain:ebusiness-directory.com
domain:find-people.asia
domain:followsites.com
domain:gimpsy.com
domain:goguides.org
domain:guitar-dreams.com
domain:hammerstud.com
domain:indexip.com
domain:ipsglider.com
domain:iwebtool.com
domain:joeant.com
domain:jonniker.com
domain:linkopedia.com
domain:linkplugapp.com
domain:lollercoasterlab.com
domain:minispace.com
domain:namedroppers.com
domain:nashvillebbb.org
domain:nawords.com
domain:ripdir.com
domain:sengine.info
domain:sitetrail.com
domain:statsnode.com
domain:wattpad.com
domain:weborial.com
domain:webstats7.net
domain:whereto.info
domain:wordsmanya.com
domain:yoall.com
domain:zillow.com
domain:imglance.com
domain:linkpad.ru


Seer Interactive created a great list of hundreds of display placements/websites in Google's Display Network that had horrible conversion or traffic that was mostly bots. I've thought many times that I should get together with a handful of SEO's and create a master disavow list as a starting point for those in the penalty box. That way webmasters unfamilar with the process can see what is garbage. They could also scrub the master list against their link profile to narrow down the work to only the domains outside the list for research. It would save us all hours and hours of work. Good idea or bad?