A long time ago I had read a quote in a blog post: “An SEO that never had a website penalized is not a good SEO.” I am not a black hat SEO and work with a very respectable online marketing agency, I am just tired of being beat by blackhat SEOs due to a too forgiving God Google.
The penalty (a -30 penalty) that made me a good SEO happened to my family company’s real estate site a long time ago when I trusted a company to do link building (AKA reciprocal linking at the time). The whole linking strategy turned out to create a giant link farm. I did a lot of clean up work, contacted websites that were linking to me, etc (hundreds of links) and took everything in my own hands from that day forward. Ironically, all the websites in that link farm came back magically after 60 days (almost like clockwork, as it came back literally 60 days after the site was punished). Some of them in the link farm had not even done a reconsideration request or even touched their link farm pages when their penalty was lifted. It was a way for Google to show the rest of the real estate industry “Don’t do it or else.” Ironically, other than a sample list of sites, many other sites in the same industry remained unpenalized and continue to do the same strategy to this day.
Another example happened on July 1st. I was (fruitlessly) trying to debate Matt Cutts about creating cloaking standards in the comments section of the SEOmoz white-hat cloaking post when I gave an example about another site network that was penalized because they were using streaming music video widgets to grab links to the real estate network through thousands of blogs, Myspace profiles, etc with perfect anchor text links. I had known for a fact that Matt had first-hand knowledge on those particular sites (just take my word for it…I can’t disclose how I know it), and those sites were completely removed from the index. Like clockwork (and it might be a coincidental preset time penalty, as it was July 1st), a miracle happened and that same afternoon some of the network sites (including the local market I have an interest in) came back from the penalty (it was a decent length penalty). I am not debating if Matt Cutts had a hand in it or there was an automated clock that set for July 1. I have no proof of either. I doubt Matt is that vengeful, though I went after him pretty good.
My point is the reason why the sites were penalized (music video links) remains intact. The site came back almost full strength in all its major keywords with those streamed music video links still attached. If Google is giving preset temporary time penalties for organized inbound linking sins and removing them in preset conditions, all I ask is what is the point of being a whitehat in terms of using external inbound linking strategies??? If all you get is a few months’ slap on the hand, so what? It is like a drug dealer being paroled after 2 years but the government not enforcing the RICO act, so the dealer still lives happily ever after with his millions.
As the Holy Book teaches us, confess oh mortal souls. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Google God forgives everyone. I thank Google God for showing me the right path as an SEO, but why let us follow temptation by letting the sinners get away so many times? Oh yea, even Matthew’s employers still stand a chance if people remain quiet about the whole subject for a while.
