What I Learned Recovering From a Google Manual Penalty
Facts and misconceptions about penalizations and reconsideration requests
A few weeks ago I received on my Webmaster Tools account the message every SEO in trouble wishes to read:
Manual spam action revoked.
This is what I learned in months of endless spreadsheets, links removal, rejected reconsideration requests, and bad advices passed off as absolute truths. Don’t take this as a guide: I just want to share my thoughts about the toughest job challenge I had to take up lately. Also, this story only refers to link related penalties.
1. Too many tools are useless
I did not automate all the process: I simply collected the domains linking to my site (with the tools you all know) and checked them one by one. This was the longest but safest way to really understand what was harming me. I did not check every single page of course, because I could easily recognize and exclude the trusted sources, but I had to work hard anyway.
Always keep in mind that on the other side there’s a real person who:
- pushes the “penalization button”;
- reads the reconsideration requests;
- checks if the links they identified as spammy have been removed (or disavowed);
- decides whether to remove the penalization or not.
I tried to work as much as possible from the Google spam team point of view and I thought:
What would I do if I received my own reconsideration request? Do I deserve a complete recovery? Have I done things right? Am I clean now?
The only way to be confident with that was to do most things manually, without overusing automated tools to decide if a link was good or bad. Tools can be very useful, but also harmful if you rely too much on them.
In other words, to get over a manual penalization a lot of human job is required.
Read the full story or visit Gabriele Toninelli’s website →
