Google recently announced that people can now check to see if their site has received a manual action. Now that it’s possible to have concrete evidence of a penalty, many are wondering how to file a reconsideration request. Some have tried and failed, others are just getting ready to start the process.
Filing a reconsideration request is so much more than writing a good letter. A good reconsideration request will have HUNDREDS Of hours of work behind it. In this article, I will detail exactly how to go through the process to create the perfect reconsideration request to get your website OUT of the penalty box.
Start with a Backlink Audit
Start by downloading all of your backlinks. There are a few sources for acquiring this data: Google webmaster tools, LinkDetox, MajesticSEO, Ahrefs, or OpenSiteExplorer. The key is to get as many as your backlinks in front of you as you can. Google claimed in early June that data from Webmaster Tools is enough, however recently many have questioned this statement. I personally use data from LinkDetox for my backlink audits.
LinkDetox downloads your backlinks and adds a great deal of data to the report. The tool will automatically evaluate the links and tell me if they are toxic, suspicious, or healthy. It also tells me if there is a risk associated with that link (here are is a list of some of the risks), if the homepage and linking pages have pagerank, domain age, IP address, site theme, and much more.
Once I have the file, then I upload it to Google docs and modify the file by adding additional columns:
- Anchor type
- My classification
- Link Type
- Link Level
- Remove Link
- Disavow Link
- Disavow Type
- Comments
- Contact Name
- Email Reference
- Contact Form URL
- Contact Form Reference
- Whois Name
- Whois Email
- Notes
- Link Removed?
You can see a copy of the spreadsheet here:
I will explain what each of these mean in the course of this article.
At this stage I have all of the LinkDetox fields as well as my own, and the document is ready for me to analyze.
Evaluate the Links
I use Google Documents for this, and my first step is to start by filtering all of the links. Before we do this, I’ll give you the classifications that I use for link type:
- Natural
- Profile
- Forum
- Blogroll and Footer
- Rented/Paid
- Blog Networks
- Scrapers
- Comment Spam
- SEO Article Syndication
- Guest Blog
- Link Exchange
- SEO Directories
- SEO Bookmark
- Expired Domains for Links
- Sitewide Link
Of course there are other categories, but these are some of the main ones I use.
Link Level, the column next to Link Type, is used if I’m not 100% sure how to classify a link. I may call it Suspicious, Remove: No, and say “Potentially Toxic”. I may choose to keep it in my first reconsideration request, and if that doesn’t work, I will then go back to the suspicious, potentially toxic ones, and include them in the next round of removals, disavows and reconsideration.
Now, let’s move on to the next stage, which is to start filtering the file.
Filter by Toxic in the Detox column
- Our classification: Toxic
- Link Type: NIG (not in google) or virus (LinkDetox has two types of toxic links, I’ll specify which one it is)
- Remove Links: Yes
- Disavow Links: Yes
- Disavow Type: Domain
By the time I’m done with this, I’ve already marked all of the toxic links as ready for removal and disavowal.
Filter by NoFollow in the Link Status column
Since a nofollow is the equivalent of a disavow, I mark all of these as such in the sheet.
- Our classification: NoFollow
- Link Type: (leave blank)
- Remove Links: No
- Disavow Links: No
- Disavow Type: No
I leave all of the nofollows alone as they are not helping or hurting a site.
This is the time consuming part of the process. At this stage, you have to go to each and every one of the sites in your backlink profile and make an assessment. Is the link natural? Is it an SEO link?
Here I need to clarify an important distinction between the process of evaluating a backlink profile for a reconsideration request and a penguin filter penalty. If you have manual action, the only way to get this action removed is to submit a reconsideration request. The manual action will not go away on its own; the only way for it to be removed is if you write a successful reconsideration request and Google removes the manual action on your site. Some webmasters, however, choose NOT to file a reconsideration request despite their manual penalty because they may still have a large volume of traffic and rankings. Removing or disavowing the links necessary to pass a reconsideration request may result in the loss of current rankings and traffic. Manual actions impact specific pages and keywords, but the site may still rank for other pages, new pages, long tail or non-money keywords. If you do NOT have a manual action, then you cannot file a reconsideration request. You should still go through the link audit process, classify your links, and make the effort to remove as many toxic and negative links as possible. The remaining toxic and suspicious links that weren’t removed could be disavowed while you simultaneously focus on high quality signals.
If, however, the loss of traffic is to your money keywords and this is affecting your business too adversely, then a reconsideration request is the only option. When evaluating your links, you have to use a Machete. If the link smells like SEO, label it as “SEO”. There will be a human reviewing these links, and they’ve probably got a very refined taste for links acquired through and for SEO. Don’t make the mistake of leaving links because you think maybe the search quality team reviewer may not notice. Earn yourself a clean slate and be honest. Label SEO links appropriately and count them as such.
If you are reviewing links because you had a Penguin filter penalty, then you can be a little bit more gentle. You CAN fool an algorithm. We do this analysis in four stages to try and leave as many links as possible to the site, but this is the subject of another article. Here, we are concentrating on Reconsideration Requests, and for these to pass, you HAVE to be very brutal with your backlinks and very honest.
So now let’s proceed with the analysis.
Are the links SEO links or Natural Links?
You now need to look at each and every one of your links and determine if they are natural or SEO links. I start by labeling all of anchor text as Money, Brand, Compound or other. I can see the anchor text in the report so I can just go down the list and label them all at once (minus the toxic or nofollow links – no need to waste time on those).
Money terms are the “anchor text” that a webmaster is targeting as part of his SEO campaign. Compound terms include the Brand term plus another term – money or noise. Other is words like “click here” , “visit”, sentences, etc.
Once I’ve got everything labelled, I filter by “Money” and most likely I will mark all of those as SEO links. I will spot test them to see if perhaps some of them might be natural, but almost 100% of the times these are SEO links.
Then I mark these columns as follows:
- Our classification: Toxic
- Link Type: Forum/comment/profile , etc
- Remove Links: Yes
- Disavow Links: Yes
- Disavow Type: Domain
Then I go through the rest of the links. To make a decision, I visit each of the sites to see if they look natural or sites created for links. I also look at the stats that LinkDetox gives me, such as pagerank, age, backlinks to the domain, and more. Based on the information in front of me, I can make a judgment call on whether to label the links as Toxic or Healthy.
If the links appear Healthy, then I mark the columns as follows:
- Our classification: Healthy
- Link Type: Natural
- Remove Links: No
- Disavow Links: No
- Disavow Type: (leave blank)
By the end of this process, I will have a fully labeled Backlink Audit file.
Start the Link Removal Process
First I create a new gmail account for the client that will be associated with the reconsideration request. This is what will be used during communications with webmasters during the link removal phase.
Next, I have a team member start searching for contact information. I have them filter by “Remove Links” “Yes”. These are the domains where we need to find a contact email address or contact form. If neither are found, I have them look at the WHOIS and find a contact name and email. They add the information to the sheet accordingly.
Now that we have all of the information, I have them start emailing. Here’s an example letter that I use:
Subject: I have a question about (URL)
Hi (name),
My name is (Made up name) and I work for (Your Site Name).
I am dealing with an unnatural links penalty and am trying to remove as many links as possible to my domain. I would greatly appreciate if you’d help me out by removing any links pointing to my site?
My site is (Your Site Name), and links from your site to mine can be found on these pages:
(Their URLs)
I am sorry to ask this of you, but this penalty from Google is really hurting my business and I’m simply trying to follow through their recommended steps.
Thank you so very much for your time and help, I really appreciate it!
Sincerely,
(Made up name)
We then document every single email and contact form sent, by following these steps:
- Gmail Emails
- After sending each email, go to the right hand corner of each email, and hit “More”, then “Show Original”
- Copy and paste this into a Google doc, correlating the number on the Google Link spreadsheet with the email.
- Contact Forms
- Take a screenshot before hitting “submit”
- Reference the screenshot in a Google Doc, correlating with the number on the spreadsheet
This will allow us to give proof to Google that we really DID try to remove as many of the toxic links as possible.
Now, wait to see how many emails come in and mark any links that were removed in the Link Removed? column on the spreadsheet.
Create your Disavow File with the Remaining Links
After waiting a week after sending out emails, you can then work on your disavow file with links that weren’t removed. Here are the steps you need to follow:
Make a copy of the spreadsheet so you have a backup, as you will be modifying it. Sort by Disavow: Yes, Domain. Domain disavows have to be formatted this way: domain:site.com Make sure you leave out the http:// and www. Remove all of the duplicates so you only mention each domain once, and copy all of those into a notepad. Next, add the page disavows by simply copying and pasting the URLs. Save the file as Sitename.txt, and upload it to your Google Webmasters account.
File a Reconsideration Request
Now you are ready for the final step – the actual reconsideration request. I can’t tell you how many people come to me saying, “My reconsideration request was denied!”. My question always is, “Did you do the prep work required?” In this video, Google makes it clear that you need to do penance and show a massive effort to right your wrongs:
“It’s almost as important to help Google understand that you’ve tried to correct things. Great documentation is extremely important for a reconsideration request. It’s indicative of the amount of effort that you’ve put in to clean up your site. Because the purpose of reconsideration request is to enable or reinstate trust for your site with Google, the more documentation you provide us, it’s easier for us to reconsider and see the progress you’ve made on your site. The mental model that we need you to have is: We’d like to see as much of the link spam to go away as possible, so that’s your first goal, to try to get as much down, and then we need to know that, ideally, we’re not going to see this sort of link spam in the future and so that’s where the documentation comes into effect.”
So now we have all of the documentation required, and it’s accessible to Google through Google documents (which they trust and will open). This is an example of the letter you can send them:
Dear Google Webspam team,
I appreciate your time in reviewing this reconsideration request. Our website, www.site.com, received an unnatural links message on (date). Over the past few weeks we’ve spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up our backlinks and removing as many of these as possible.
Link Removal Efforts:
For every link that was unnatural, we sent an email to any email address that we could find on the site as well as on the whois information. We also submitted a contact form wherever we could find one to request link removal.
We have thoroughly documented our attempts to contact webmasters. In the following spreadsheet, you will see a list of links we considered unnatural, as well as a reference number that correlates with our outreach efforts:
(URL)
You can see the source code of emails sent here:
(URL)
And screenshots of contact form submissions here:
(URL)
Many websites requested payment to remove our links. We paid for as many as we could, except for those who requested exorbitant fees.
We successfully removed X amount of links.
On (date) we submitted a disavow.txt file with all of the links that we couldn’t manually remove.
We’ve put a lot of time and effort into learning more about Google’s policies and quality guidelines and will never engage in such practices in the future. Our focus will be on providing a great service to our community, creating and sharing great content, and growing our online presence organically. Thank you so much for your consideration in removing the penalty to our site.
Sincerely,
(Name)
Submit the letter here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en
Then you wait patiently to see if your efforts were enough to get you back into Google’s good graces. If not, be even more wrathful with the links you called healthy, send out another round of emails, and send a new reconsideration request.
How to Recover your Rankings
Once the penalty is removed, chances are unlikely that you’ll get your rankings back. The same links that got you penalized were helping you to rank. The problem is that Google has declared war on link building. Not only have they gotten amazing at identifying SEO footprints, they’re also enforcing their guidelines with Penguin and other filters. In their new webmaster help videos and guidelines, they’ve now added other previously methods that were previously considered white hat: Guest Blogs, Widgets, Infographics. So what’s left?
Amazing content. Whether in the form of articles, ebooks, videos or presentations, they’ve never claimed to penalize great content. So it’s back to the old school method of creating great content and combining it with excellent outreach and social media. Marty Weintraub has amazing information on how to use paid social marketing to increase visibility of your content assets. In their guidelines they do mention that guest blogging and infographic marketing is acceptable in MODERATION and if it’s very high quality, so you can still rely on these tactics, but they have to be combined with editorially acquired links.
Need help filing a reconsideration request? Don’t hesitate to reach out to me!
