What To Do After Getting Hit With a Google Manual Slap

Thanks for posting another great thread T0mmy!

One question : The manual reviews are totally random or only for the high competition keywords or because a competitor report the site to google or other ?

Thanks!

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Rather than saying it's random, I would say it's more like getting a speeding ticket. Lots of people speed, but only those who get caught get a ticket.

According to staff commenting in the Google support forum, spam reports are largely actioned based on how high a site is ranking for high volume keywords. Low ranking sites reported in Webmaster Tools are used for aggregate data only.

Put it this way, if you are ranking on the first page of Google for a high volume keyword, and someone reports your site, expect Google staff to be all over you like a cheap nylon suit.

look_nohat said:

made a tiwib (thisiswhyimbroke) style site and got my pure spam slap because of too many affiliate links on a page after 2 years with no problem.
is it recoverable by removing affiliate links and re-write or replace the content with high quality one (more like thin content/keyword stuffing penalty)?

really big thanks for this actionable guide, those manual reviews are pain sometimes.

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Yes certainly, fix up every issue they have mentioned with regards to affiliates links. Go through every page on your site, tidy everything up.. no affiliate links, solid content, good onsite seo and so on. Add regular content then, adhere to the same standards you just carried out fixing up your old content, repeat this for a month or two. File your re-consideration request then.

..and for the love of god, do not attempt anything shady or against the TOS during this time frame. This one sounds like an easy enough fix if you follow what I've said, feel free to PM me later in the process if you need further advice.

LatteGrande said:

Thanks for the tips. I have one potential site that slapped by google a year ago and I have submitted a reconsideration request myself but rejected. Then I use a service here on BHW but after 3 times submissions and wasted 2 months, the result is the same. In the end, I gotta let it go in Google battlefield. The funny thing is, the site is still number #1 on both Bing and Yahoo up until now and managed to make a decent money monthly. Lesson learned: never ditched any of your sites.

Anyway I've heard that it's getting harder or almost impossible to rank the site again after the penalty lifted. Did you get the same issue with this Tommy? Or is it just a myth?

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What is the service you used during that time frame? Was it a service to remove penalties, or an actual SEO/Link building service? IF it was the latter then you could have made things worse, you really shouldn't be adding in more SEO "services", especially if they are questionable which many here tend to be.

It sounds to me like you could be throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks. The first thing to do there would have been to find out the cause of the penalty, then work on fixing it. You don't mention what the penalty was for? Did they let you know or do you have any idea? It's hard to answer without knowing more details. What was the reasoning behind ordering the service here?

Always enjoy the read, thanks t0mmy!

Amazing post once again Tommy!

Great post, Tommy. This is extremely informative.

If I may add something here, I'm a strong believer in the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

When it comes to Google, people need to understand that an ounce of prevention is worth tons of cure.

If Tommy hasn't pointed it out and made it clear, let me make it clear: it's almost impossible to get a manual penalty lifted.

This is especially true if you got hit due to link choices.

My best suggestion as far as link-building is concerned is to actively police your backlinks.

If you notice the quality of bad links increasing, you need to be proactive and disavow them as quickly as possible.

You need to understand that is easier to stamp out a forest fire when there are just small outbreaks instead of waiting to act until the whole forest is on fire.

I hope you see where I ‘m coming from.

The second thing that I need to get out there is that you need to be very, very careful regarding where you get your backlinks.

It's much better to wait and put in a lot of work gating a few quality backlinks from solid websites in your niche instead of playing the volume game.