How to Recover from Penguin 2.0 Penalty

Is your traffic and SERP’s ranking plummeting tremendously?  Do you see a major drop compared with a day or two before? If this scenario sounds much closer to home then you are definitely hit by the Penguin 2.0 from Google.

How Does Penalization Occur?

Not-so-long-ago, a number of SEO companies used to employ link networks and inferior link building tactics. A lot of companies found themselves benefitting from the setting up of links deliberately designed to manipulate page and site rankings. SEO executives had a field day refining their link manipulation prowess, and for some time, it all seemed to be the way to go. That is until Google unleashed the furious Penguin, which came in a series of 5 successive updates.  The release of Penguin, just as that of Panda and the page layout algorithm update before it, sought to sanitize the ranking of websites by ensuring that only those websites that adhere to the Webmaster guidelines and are of a high-quality get to be ranked highly. Most webmasters are at a loss as to what to do with their plummeting traffic and rankings. I am going to take a look at the right course of action to get you out of the mud.
What to do When Struck by Penguin
Conduct Backlink Profile Analysis

The first step is to conduct an exhaustive backlink profile analysis. Examine the anchor text spread of all the backlinks pointing to your site including the low quality ones.  Although the vast majority of tools that are designed for use in such situations are paid for, some good free tools are also available such as Google webmaster tools, Bing webmaster tools, Netpeak Checker, Majestic Link Index, and Ahrefs. The objective of such analysis is to determine the amount of keyword anchor text in existence as compared to branded, junk, or URL anchor text. As you proceed with the analysis, make a note of all the contact details of the webmasters that you might need for the removal of the backlinks.

Apart from the aforementioned, you must also keep in mind that no one tool can give you a complete picture and much will be left to your judgment. You can also shed some light on the picture by contacting your previous SEO agency to inquire whether they utilized any black hat tactics. In carrying out backlink analysis, devote your energies to ‘follow’ links only as they are what Penguin is after.

Isolate Unnatural Links

The process of identifying unnatural links is quite an important one. It is a two-pronged effort that involves the use of tools in the identification of all potential unnatural links followed by manual analysis. The first step is to down load your backlink profile from a number of sources. Some of the best sources are:

Google Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools
Link Detox Tool and
Majestic SEO Tool

Link Detox has a distinct ability to raise red flags for all back links characterized by high, moderate and low risk. Majestic SEO gives you an ability to take a closer look at all backlinks originating from low citation and trust flow domains.

Penguin has a Strong Aversion to:

Comment spam
Spammy blog-roll links
Classified spam
Link networks – private and public network
Forum signature spam with exact march
Sitewide backlinks
Free for all directories
Article marketing links with the blemish of signature spam at the bottom
Exact match anchor text ‘widget app’ links


Remove Links Manually

The initial step in ridding the unnatural links rests with you. You must remove all the offending links that you have control over. Examine all SEO reports to identify all the sources of unnatural links. Your previous SEO Company can be of great help in this effort.
Contact Webmasters of the Unnatural Link Sources
When you are done with the manual removal of all links that you preside over, the next step is to contact all the webmasters of the sites that have unnatural links pointing to your website. If the address is not mentioned on the website, you can try using domain tools to find it. After sending your initial request, wait for about a week before sending a reminder. In every communication, remember that the webmaster has no obligation to do your bidding, therefore, be polite. This is not an instantaneous process and may take a couple of weeks.
Google Disavow Tool

Your last weapon in the unnatural link removal arsenal is the Google Disavow Tool. When you unleash The Disavow Tool on the remaining list of links, remember that it is preferable to disavow a whole domain that targeting individual pages.
Re-Evaluation, Reconsideration and Anchor Text Ratio Dilution

After completing the disavow process, re-evaluate your backlink profile by conducting another analysis to see where you stand in contrast with your starting point. You can enhance your position by building quality links to dilute your anchor text ratio although this is not always necessary except in instances where there is a dire need for anchor backlinks diversification. Where you had been sent a manual penalty notice in Google Webmaster Tools, it is important to make a reconsideration request. Apart from that it, is not really necessary to do the request.
What to Expect

If you have made a submission for reconsideration you can go no further than simply waiting for the determination on your case by the Google’s web spam team. In such situations, it has been known to pay to be big. Big companies go through this process with great ease.
If you had not received a penalty notice, there is little that you can do apart from waiting for the next Penguin update roll out for you to recover and realize the fruits  of your efforts. 

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