There really is some sensationlist ill informed shit on this thread.
I mean real SHIT - general advice given about forum links. The guy gives a list of 20 links to a 10 year old website and you're analysing it like it means something.
Seriously - links may be the issue - they may not.
Penguin is still creating a LOT of noise in SERPs
Many social media sites are dominating page one for commercial terms as placeholders while the shuffle goes on (Facebook pages, Twitter posts etc) this always happens. Happened with P1, and the 4 updates between then and now. it shows that NOTHING HAS SETTLED YET
Without knowing the guys site, niche and competition in detail I can't see how anyone can give decent advice. Stating absolute facts based on the tiny snippets we know is not good SEO..in fact it's BOLLOCKS
There are people here I respect talking out of their box, I can anly assume they have had a tote on the wacky grass before coming out.
One thing is almost certain!
If you've been sandboxed - you have paid links or been part of a link scheme 99.9% certainty.
Now let's get out terms straight here. I'm talking Sandboxed.. not demoted, deranked, shuffled down. I'm taling your site does not appear in the top 1000 for any term it used to rank for other than if you type in the exact URL into Google. That's sandboxed.
I'm not talking about "used to be page one now I'm page two"...
... that's a shuffle. You have not been penalized, for the time being Google just thinks some other site is better than yours. Add content, link sensibly - but only AFTER the SERP movement noise has clamed down, and that might be abother 10 days yet.
But if you have been SANDBOXED - really SANDBOXED.. Site gone - not "demoted" but "gone" - then it's is almost certain that you have - or Google thinks you have paid links or private network links. Sad thing is most people with these don't even know they have them!
The owner will say "I've never bought private links". In the 13 consultations I've done since Saturday morning every single one (I kid you not..every single one) stated they had not bought private links. Some swore blind. But then.. 12 of them had.
Webmasters who didn't understand that certain "services" were in fact offering private links without making it explicit that this was what they were.
Here are some of the things that private link networks were described as that fooled the webamsters into thinking they were safe.
"Special Sauce" - The special sauce was subbing some of the work to a company that stuck your links on a private network
"We'll promote your site on our own blogs" - Think about it...that's a private network then isn't it.
"Guaranteed Guest Post Blog".. It was guaranteed because the blogs were...you guessed it - a private network
"Links Guaranteed on Home Page" ..erm how can they do that... Unless the network is private? Simple they can't and the network IS private.
That's just scratching the surface. I've seen $9 WSO's that turned out they were private links. One was some guys redundant blog network that got wiped out in the EMD levelling last year. Just making a few bucks before the next PR update... All the same it was a private network, and Google sandboxed the webmasters site it linked to.
If you type in "SEO backlink service" into Google then around 8 of the top 10 services all offer private links of some kind.
ZERO out of those actually name them as such. I would name names but many of these services advertise here so I won't. It's almost done without saying. Small scale, big scale, and so often not advertised. I want to KNOW if my links are on private networks not have to guess. Sadly if you buy services these days, the ones that offer REAL POWER..with SPEED can only manage that mix of speed and power by offering guaranteed high PR sites on link networks.
But for now do nothing. And for f$cks sake 20 pretty ordinary (not egregious - just "meh") links across a site ten years old is not going to get you sandboxed. If that was all it took I could take down 100,000 sites a day with a $47 tool like scrapebox.
Negative SEO does exist, but it's not that fine a line. Hold on. See what happens. Check any services you have used for private links. Check that none of your competitors haven't signed you up for private links.
One of the guys I chat to (Hi Martin) is using Elancer - hiring a pro to get his reconsideration request done. Looking on there, $200 bucks and a few weeks are what it takes - then you need to build up again - but it may not come to that. Wait till the 20th Ocotber before doing ANYTHING.
Scritty
