unnatural inbound links question

hey everyone

I was recently informed in the GWT of "manual spam action" arising out of "Unnatural inbound links". This happened to my company's website (interactive agency) and I know exactly how it happened - sitewide links in customers footers.

I wish to ask whether a change in the anchor of links to domain.com or domain is sufficient or if it's also required to change them to nofollow so that the reconsideration request was accepted?

thanks in advance for your answers

Have you built any blackhat links to it? If so, I would advise against the reconsideration request.

dafoss said:

hey everyone

I was recently informed in the GWT of "manual spam action" arising out of "Unnatural inbound links". This happened to my company's website (interactive agency) and I know exactly how it happened - sitewide links in customers footers.

I wish to ask whether a change in the anchor of links to domain.com or domain is sufficient or if it's also required to change them to nofollow so that the reconsideration request was accepted?

thanks in advance for your answers

Click to expand...

I never tried asking webmasters to change the anchor of the link to my client domain. Because I think it is still unnatural.

Either no follow them or completely ask them for removal.

Then add them to your disavow list.

dafoss said:

and I know exactly how it happened - sitewide links in customers footers.

Click to expand...

Template creators are probably f'd. If you give away something with a backlink you're screwed too... In the end the only authorized links will be adwords links, google considers everything else spam.

I'd remove the links if possible (contact your old clients), or disavow them in webmaster tools.

How-to guide:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

In the future, just list your company name, or avoid a link (i.e. Website Design by CompanyNameDOTcom). That way, potential clients can still find you.

bartosimpsonio said:

Template creators are probably f'd. If you give away something with a backlink you're screwed too... In the end the only authorized links will be adwords links, google considers everything else spam.

Click to expand...

In-content links are safe too

only way you are getting rid of an unnatural link warning is by a reconsideration request after you have removed links.

ask me how i know.

i followed everyones advice on here for years after getting slammed by a BMR unnatural link warning and another random link warning on a domain that didn't use BMR. They told me to sit tight and it will recover. Well after sitting around for about a year I figured it wasn't gonna come back without doing something, and rightfully so.

Then I jumped on the "disavow" bandwagon. Even after Matt Cutts and everyone else was telling me to remove links first and then file a disavow on links that couldn't be removed. I decided to just disavow and disavow. Well sure as shit that didnt work either.

The only thing that worked was removing the backlinks, or trying to and documenting the whole thing. After that I sent in a disavow with notes about removing links and how those linsk couldnt be removed. I explained in disavow notes that I filed a reconsideration request and in the reconsideration request told them about the disavow. Then after about 3 months of this my one site finally recovered from unnatural link warning.

For the second site I had that got hit I used a link removal service called linkdelete. They did it for me. i also looked at a few different services in this area like linkdetox but i found them to not be what i needed because they only create a disavow file.

at the end of the day you have a long road ahead of you. start by removing all sape links and any links you can get rid of by yourself and then start the full link removal campaign while documenting everything you are doing. good luck.

wow thanks for sharing your story and advice TheLinkGuy

dafoss said:

hey everyone

I was recently informed in the GWT of "manual spam action" arising out of "Unnatural inbound links". This happened to my company's website (interactive agency) and I know exactly how it happened - sitewide links in customers footers.

I wish to ask whether a change in the anchor of links to domain.com or domain is sufficient or if it's also required to change them to nofollow so that the reconsideration request was accepted?

thanks in advance for your answers

Click to expand...

I wonder if there is a way to code it so that the link is only active on the homepage....