Post Google Penalty Link Building

[DesignEx]

A client of mine who in the last few months wanted to "GO BIG" on link building, in particular more black hat stuff, was hit with a penalty. We used quite a few services in the Marketplace here, and ended up with a 'Partial Penalty' which supposedly only effected some of the incoming links.

I worked to remove some of the worst incoming links, and just today many of the rankings came back (not all the way, but enough).

Now the penalty still shows in Google Webmaster Tools, but the rankings are back (hopefully not just temporarily).


My question is, what can be done going forward to A) Build clean links / improve our link profile with Google, and B) Decrease our chances of getting a penalty again.

I'd usually just buy a few gray / black hat services, as well as the internal SEO, and hope for the best.

Also, I'm not sure now that our rankings are back if it makes sense to file a reconsideration report or not.

 

[ThopHayt]

I'd slow the velocity of linkbuilding down a bit and be sure to dripfeed anything you do and only use the best quality moving forward. You'll have to be VERY cautious on quality now. Legit links only for a while. If you have some QUALITY tier one links that have not been hit you could choose to focus on building a better quality tier two campaign to those properties instead. Consider yourself as if you are on probation. No more shit links mate, tread carefully.

-ThopHayt

 

[alternatesword]

Go slow as your site already went to watch list. Just like thophayt said, you can make strong your existing tier 1 links but also don't stop creating new links suddenly.

 

[Aedan]

I'd slow the velocity of linkbuilding down a bit and be sure to dripfeed anything you do and only use the best quality moving forward. You'll have to be VERY cautious on quality now. Legit links only for a while. If you have some QUALITY tier one links that have not been hit you could choose to focus on building a better quality tier two campaign to those properties instead. Consider yourself as if you are on probation. No more shit links mate, tread carefully.

-ThopHayt

this is a very good suggestion
maybe just stick to relevant links from legit sites for now and do it very slow

 

[ridersark]

I'd stop linkbuilding for a month or two and then begin doing them in fibonacci numbers each month. 1 1 2 4 8 16 32..... The idea is to stop and begin very slowly.

 

[drogon]

Since the penalty is still showing, have you sent a reconsideration request explaining what you have done and ak the penalty to be lifted? Maybe thats all you need to do and not necessarily build more links.