Recovery After Google Penguin Update

Post Penguin Recovery Process – part I

Published on May 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

In the wake of the Google Penguin update, there are literally hundreds of thousands of site owners who are desperately seeking information on how to recover after Penguin. Although there is no quick fix or silver bullet solution, there are things that can be done to amend the offending issues. This article will provide a Phase I approach to solving website ranking problems.

Google Penguin made a loud statement about unnatural backlinks, and related backlink patterns that seem spammy or dubious. Working to manage backlink issues is the first step to solving your problems. Most likely it is NOT going to be quick or easy, however it is an essential process – unless you want to start completely over with a new domain name.

Penguin Recovery Step 1

Check backlinks to identify potential problems. You can use free backlink checker tools to generate a list of backlinks to your domain. Most of the free backlink checker tools do not provide a truly complete list of backlinks however they are extremely useful. You want to look for patterns such as an excessive number of links from a single site or domain, links from site that appear to be totally unrelated as they may be part of a link farm, and links from article submission sites.

DISCLAIMER: Below, we are showing EzineArticles merely as an example of a WHOIS lookup for an article submission site. We are not implying or stating that use of their site has or can cause search egine related problems. Google has not specifically identified this site as a source of ranking issues.

Penguin Recovery Step 2

Remove backlinks that are spammy or questionable. The removal of backlinks is the most challenging part of the process. This is true because it takes a lot of time to manually access and remove each link, and many of the links are on site where you do not have the direct ability to remove links to your site. When you do not have control access to a site where a backlink exists you can use a WHOIS Lookup Tool to identify the owner of the website (URL). Some WhoIs lookups will return incomplete information, and other queries will not yield information if the domain owner is using any type of privacy protection. For those domains where the can find the site owners physical address or email address you can send correspondence to request that they remove links to your site.

Link Removal Request Text

To request removal of a link you should make a sincere and polite request to remove links. We advise against using any threatening or emotionally charged language. A sample message is as follows:

Dear Site Owner,

A WhoIs lookup indicated that you are the owner of the domain name XYZ.com (insert domain of site showing link to your site). We request that you remove all links from this site, or any others that you control, which may point to YourDomain.com.

Sincerely

Your Name Here

Your expectations for site owners to remove links should be rather low however any actions are better than no actions. Remember that these site owners have no motivation, beyond being respectful, to help your cause. If a paid service has placed these links on your behalf it is difficult to imagine that they will devote free time to undo their work.

If your website has experienced significant rank losses after Penguin you cannot afford to be passive, and think that all will be resolved on its own. You should be proactive and take this time to clean up the loose ends in your internet marketing.