PENGUIN AND THE PENALTY

Benedict HayesVice President iProspect Communicate 2@benboombastic SEMPO Bangalore Meetup 2014

MEET PENGUIN 2.1

• Super charged• Super angry• Super deadly

AND…

WHATS HIS BEEF?

LINKS

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?

AND THEN…

THIS!

WHAT TO

DO?

BECAUSE OF THE INCARNATIONS OF THE

ALGORITHM THE INTERNET IS…

BROKEN

EVERYWHERE!

IS

TO THE RESCUE?

THE BIGCLEAN

WHO CLEANS?

WELL NOT

OBVIOUSLY!

BUT

YOU!

8 STEP CLEAN UP

1

1. COLLECT BACKLINK DATA

1. COLLECT BACKLINK DATA

DON’T RELY ON

EVEN IF THEY SAY SOUSE 3RD PARTY DATA

GET AS MUCH DATA AS POSSIBLE

AND THEN DE-DUPE

1. COLLECT BACKLINK DATA

2

2. DOCUMENT YOUR WORK

2. DOCUMENT YOUR WORK

• Contact Name• Contact Email

Address• Website Contact Form• Twitter URL• Facebook URL• Google+ URL• LinkedIn URL

• Date of 1st Contact• Date of 2nd Contact• Date of 3rd Contact• Link Status• Notes

WE NEED TO BUILD A MASTER FILE

2. DOCUMENT YOUR WORK

3

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

• Is the link coming from good content

• Is the link useful to the user of the page

• Is the link coming from a dodgy resource

• Is the link obvious anchor spam

GENERAL RULES OF THUMB:

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

STEP 1: DOES THE SITE INDEX IN GOOGLE?

If no?

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

STEP 2: FILTER OUT POOR SEO RESOURCES

Search in the URL:*seo**direct**list**link**free**best*

*resource**article**book**submi**web*

If yes..

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

STEP 3: IDENTIFY THE PAID ADVERTORIAL LINKS

If "follow"..

IF THERE ARE KNOWN PAID FOR TIEUPS BANNERS ETC.

GET A REL="NOFOLLOW" INSERTED IN THE LINK.

This needs mentioning in the final file!

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

STEP 4: FILTER INTERNATIONAL DOMAINS

If non-india…

IF THERE ARE LINKS FROM SITES OUTSIDE OF INDIA, WE NEED TO BE

SUSPICIOUS!

Unless of course you operate globally!

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

STEP 5: AUDIT WHAT’S LEFT

FOLLOW THE GENERAL RULES OF THUMB

But for more specific content types…

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

FORUM / BLOG COMMENTS

These are generally pretty dodgy, but if the comment is useful to the reader of the

blog or forum, is not anchored and adds value then the link is good

If not...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

DIRECTORIES

Remove if:• The site is not indexed in Google, this would

indicate a penalty• The site automatically accepts links without any

manual review• The site has lots of spam links pointing to it – Use

open site explorer• The site has categories for everything imaginable

(cars, holidays, sunglasses, websites, hosting, dresses

etc.) not relevant• The site is part of a network• The site contains keywords listed previously

If not...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

BLOG POSTS / ARTICLES

Remove if:• The post makes no sense, poorly written

• Every post has an external link• The blog is shoddy in design

• The blog has no readership• The post is not socially active• The post is not indexed and shows no PageRank

• No authorship mark-up

• Link is heavily anchored and out of place

• The owner/author is not easily contactable• Duplicated content

If yes...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

BOOKMARKS

Remove if:• The user is not active• Has no followers• All bookmarks are obviously

anchored for SEOIf yes...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

PRESS RELEASES

Remove if:• Content is bad• The PR is not newsworthy• Anchored link

• Not indexed

If yes...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

MALWARE

YOU DETECT ANY MALWARE REMOVE (IF THE SITE IS BAD) OR ALTERNATIVELY TELL THE SITE OWNER TO FIX

If yes...

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

IF YOU ARE UNSURE REMOVE IT!

IT’S BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY!

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

3. IDENTIFY THE SPAM

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Don’t rely 100% on the tools a manual review still needs to happen

4

4. FINDING WEBMASTER CONTACT DETAILS

We need to make a sterling effort, and find any which way possible to contact the Webmaster:

• Email Address• Website Contact Form• Twitter• Facebook• Google+• LinkedIn

4. FINDING WEBMASTER CONTACT DETAILS

WHOIS

Get the webmaster’s name use all social media

channels and hunt them out…

*company name* + *webmaster name*

4. FINDING WEBMASTER CONTACT DETAILS

4. FINDING WEBMASTER CONTACT DETAILS

COOL TOOLS:

5

5. OUTREACH

Email / contact the webmasters:

Rules of engagement:• Be polite• Don’t spam / wait be patient

• Try to email from the domain that has issue

• Keep it short and to the point

• Be personal try to get the webmasters name

• Never threaten

*Tip: Create an ID for each link that you use in the Title of your Email / Communication to track workflow for particular links

5. OUTREACH

Sample Email:

source: http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal

6

6. DISAVOW TOOL

GOOGLE WANTS TO KNOW THAT YOU HAVE MADE AN EFFORT!

Tips:• Do not just list the domains and be done with it – this doesn’t

wash• Show your working• Don't include the http://www. prior to a domain• Don't include anything after the domain extension.

Eg: .com, .co.in (unless you're only disavowing a specific URL).• Put each domain on a new line and add comments to the file

so Google knows why you're disavowing them. Prefix all comments with a # symbol.

6. DISAVOW TOOL

SAMPLE FILESHOW YOUR WORKINGS!

7

7. SUBMIT THE RECONSIDERATION REQUEST

I’M SORRY GOOGLE, PLEASE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME, IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN!

What you need to say:

• Everything you have done wrong in the past, and that you won’t do it again.

• What you've done to fix the problems (include a link to your Google Docs file, make sure anyone can access)

• How you will stop this from happening again. (steps you've put in place, training, quality control etc.)

• Who you are and what your company stands for (The more senior the better)

• Apologising for the issues and inconvenience

Dear Google Webspam Team, On the %date_of_penalty, we received a penalty from Google for unnatural links pointing to our website, %website_url.

Firstly, we would really like to apologise for the inconvenience we have caused and thank you in advance for reading our reconsideration request. In the past, we have carried out some techniques on our website which we now realise are outside your Google Webmaster Guidelines. This includes purchasing links which pass page rank, blog comments and forum spam (**example**).

After reading your webmaster guidelines, we realise we were completely in the wrong. To rectify the issue, we have checked all the backlinks pointing to our website using Google Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO and contacted as many of the webmasters as possible in order to have these links removed.

All of the work we have carried out can be found in the Google Spreadsheet below:

%link_to_google_docs_spreadsheet

In the above spreadsheet, you will see a list of all the links pointing to our site, the webmasters we have contacted and the links we have successfully removed. There are multiple sheets included in the above spreadsheet, which show screenshots of emails we have sent to webmasters, contact forms etc. Any links which we haven't been able to remove have been added to a disavow file which we have submitted to Google.

I am very sorry for the work we have previously carried out. We now realise that we were completely in the wrong and we will ensure this will never happen again. I'm confident that our website is now in line with Google's webmaster guidelines and we will ensure that this is always the case.

We look forward to hearing from you and once again, sorry for the inconvenience.

%Your_full_name

%Your_company_name

7. SUBMIT THE RECONSIDERATION REQUEST

8

SIT BACK AND WAIT

AND THEN

ONE FINEMORNING

HALLELUJAH

THIS ARRIVES:

NOW DON’T DO IT

AGAIN OR…

THANKSAny Questions?

Presented By:

Benedict HayesVP Strategy@benboombastic