Unnatural links message from Google

I receive the unnatural links message for our e-commerce site. We did buy some BST services. In reviewing the google forums, it seems that there are some companies that are offering to review your links and send emails to the web site owners asking for removal. You would then provide google with proof that you made an effort to remove the links.
Does anyone here recommend a service or company that can do this for us? This is a very reputable site and unfortunatley we experimented with some link building in order to compete with the big companies out there that outranked us and google slapped the little guy (us). Any additional advice or insight on how to get out of the unnatural link message is highly appreciated.

I am currently going through my links and emailing webmasters to remove the ones pointing to my site and keeping track ... anyone else have any advice?

There's not much advice anyone can give you, apart from doing what you are already doing and trying to get those bad links removed.

That sounds pretty rough. I don't have any experience with link removal services but I can imagine that works a bit like herding cats. Which BST were you using?

How long ago did you get the unnatural links message?

Yeah would be helpful if you could point out which BST you used, not saying they were bad, just could help in identifying the problems thats arised.

I know you are currently looking for a solution for the problem more than anything else, but can you share what got your site penalized. I do not ask for the particular service that caused the problem, instead what amount and type of links it was.

With these Unnatural Link Messages, what normally happens is you'll get dropped only for those keywords that you had a lot of unnatural links built for; you will not be deindexed unless your site is really crap. It can take a while for the keywords to drop, but drop they will....

Based on all I am reading, the best thing you can do is to remove your bad links as far as possible and submit Reconsideration Request.
The only silver lining I've read is that these penalties eventually expire after some time; can take many months it seems. If your site is worthy of fighting for, you will continue to do the necessary, such as adding content.

But I'd advise to go slow on the link building, or even stop it altogether in the meantime. Don't go near blog networks or Fiverr gigs....you might not get caught, but when you do get caught, it's over....I expect many more surprises from Google coming down this year.

yeah, this is the biggest problem with the bst threads is that they don't allow a diverse number of anchor text which will get you in trouble...

i have seen a few that allow more than a few and they are moving in the wright direction...

If it is just a lack of variety cant you just link your way out as well by expanding your keywords? And tell Google you have no idea what they are referring to since your only advertising method was some press releases to inform potential clients of who you are and a few Dir submissions? Unless of course you have been doing reciprocal linking like they have told us is a no, no for some time now... My previous company did this like mad and have lost 80% of their clients. All I can say is "I warned them".

Instead of stopping all your link building, you may be best off with a moderate link building campaign going forward but use it to dilute your keywords instead. And no 15,000 link blasts with the same 'Click here' either. Good luck!

Do you know with certainty which links are bad?

In general I think it's best to engage as little as possible with Google so I like the advice that the above guy gave and I think a stronger link profile is probably very important for not getting caught in these filters. I guess if your site is squeaky clean go for the re-inclusion thing but think really hard before outing these sellers and letting Google go over your site with a fine tooth comb. Do you really want to give them more to analyze? Also keep in mind, the more info you feed, the harder SEO gets in future. That's the point of the shakedown.

Thanks for all the advice. It is a reputable e-commerce site so I have submitted the site for reconsideration and am working frantically on contacting webmasters. You can see which BST threads by clicking on my name and looking at my posts - not really wanting to call them out here and not sure if they caused the issue. Google will *NOT* tell you which links are bad or fishy - they just tell you to follow the google guidelines. You have to manually go through every link and then see if it fits their guidelines (which are strict).
The site was seeing about 18-20K impressions a day through google and it is now below 2K and we sell a diverse selection of items in the apparel industry. The site is not deindexed but it is not showing up in serps for the 67 keywords that we track.
Lesson to all to be very very careful about what links to your site - reading through the google forums and they have become very good at detecting unnatural and penalizing.

My would have been to NOT submit a reconsideration request so soon because now you will be manually reviewed within a week and get some generic message saying that your site does not meet the G policy blah blah and look for unnatural links....repetitive i know! However maybe you will get lucky.

What you SHOULD DO now is to build a second (sister) ecommerce with thesame products (but unique text) and start trying to rank that NOW! It could take months, if at all, for your site to come back and best to start rebuilding today for the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is that your new site ranks well (doing things properly this time) and your old site eventually comes back and you now have two not one site.

These days its best to have at least 2 sites anyway with different linking strategies targeting thesame keywords so if one gets hit then at least you have a backup.

Cheers.

NetMarketer said:

Do you know with certainty which links are bad?

In general I think it's best to engage as little as possible with Google so I like the advice that the above guy gave and I think a stronger link profile is probably very important for not getting caught in these filters. I guess if your site is squeaky clean go for the re-inclusion thing but think really hard before outing these sellers and letting Google go over your site with a fine tooth comb. Do you really want to give them more to analyze? Also keep in mind, the more info you feed, the harder SEO gets in future. That's the point of the shakedown.

Click to expand...

This is spot on and bestmate above is also on the button, imo google has been sending these out in mass to catch unsuspecting webmasters like a catch 22 scenario, I think when they send the messages out they don't know for sure what your at but then you reply and BOOM your for sure up to dodgey link building tactics and bye bye rankings

I've seen lots of cases were google has sent out this message but rankings have maintained so long as no response is made to google from the webmaster, this is just from personnal experience and it looks as if you have not been so fortunate. However I myself would not approach google "whatever you say - say nothing."

Listen mate! You have got to get these links cleaned up ASAP. Your rankings will fall and hard too. I had the same warning in March and i didnt take action. bad idea. my rankings dropped big time.

back then i hired someone to clean up the backlinks for me. it took a shit ton of money and a lot of time too. sucks big time but after finally spending a lot on this i filed a reconsideration. first time i didnt win and they told me what i should focus on.

spent another month and cleaned up links more. finally did another reconsideration and won. about a week ro two later my rankings were nearly the same before the penalty.

if you are serious about cleaning up your rankings you gotta delete your links. for real. adding more shitty low quality links isnt the answer at all. that will get you deeper in the hole for sure. they know you built crappy links and gave you a warning building more isnt helping. this isnt a penguin penalty we are talking about here.

you can do this yourself or now theres a bunch of services to dot his for you. removeem.com has a software for like $500 i think or they charge $10 per link removed. linkdelete.com is a service that manages everything for you and is dirt cheap. im using them for another site of mine as a test and so far like their system. theres also another service that is for directories but i heard they are a scam somehow so i didn't really look at them since id on t have directory links.

good luck mate

This is happeneing all over the internet. Google is getting a bit obsessed in my opinion. Just diversify and make sure that your sites have multiple keywords.