Google Penalty/Sandbox - Tips on how to get out

[jwm]

I was overly aggressive with my link building to one of my exact match sites and been stuck back to around position 600 in the SERPS.

Been there for around 2 months now and can't seem to move it at all. Tried completely changing the front page titles, description and content which i had heard can work - but this had no impact at all.

Anyone have any hints or tips on this one? I don't have access to the links so can't undo the damage this way

 

[dashu1]

have you applied to google to have it re-instated?

 

[mat]

I think there isnt much you can do except wait.

Get your site in the best possible shape and hold out.

 

[denchomsky]

This happened to one of my sites, I suspected it was because I was keyword stuffing (putting keywords to often in the page). I rectified this as I believed it to be the cause but it had no immediate effect.

Like mine was, your site is probably 'dancing' , I doubt you are being penalised, google is just deciding where to place your site, my site is now on position 7 for its main search term but it has been as low as page 700 when it was dancing.

If sites were penalised for over backlinking then competitors could put each other out of business by spamming thier sites with dodgy backlinks.

All you can do is wait, and hopefuly your site will return in a better position than before, I just stopped wasting time investigating and constantly checking SERPS and just left my site alone and got on with something else.

The same thing is happening to another of my new sites, and I know there is nothing dodgy about it at all.

The best advice, which is actually on google help pages (normaly no help) is dont build a site for google, build it for the user.

 

[boxfish]

If sites were penalised for over backlinking then competitors could put each other out of business by spamming thier sites with dodgy backlinks.

This is pretty easy to do on new sites and does happen, not so once they have a decent link profile.


My advice would be to keep everything as it is but keep building high quality links slow and steady.

 

[getmein]

Time to add more, better quality links and vary the anchor text. Also try getting some different types of links etc

 

[Blossom]

If you're desperate to get out, you could recreate the site on a subdomain and make sure you don't have any links to it from the original site.

I'm assuming that all the links you got go to the homepage - it's pretty risky doing that aggressively. If you have lots which don't go to the homepage you could try 301'ing the page the links go to.

 

[js1]

I was overly aggressive with my link building to one of my exact match sites and been stuck back to around position 600 in the SERPS.

Been there for around 2 months now and can't seem to move it at all. Tried completely changing the front page titles, description and content which i had heard can work - but this had no impact at all.

Anyone have any hints or tips on this one? I don't have access to the links so can't undo the damage this way

It could be something as simple as the links to the site been devalued, without more info, age of site, age of links, change made, url of the site, past history of the site and history of back links before you owned the site, etc, etc... its a guessing game.

Changing the "Title Element" in itself could see the site drop in the serps in certain circumstance, or a spam report from a competitor.

Are the links varied? (Another approach)Try not looking at how fast you build the links (certain tools, apps, content, freebees, news reports i.e link bait, can attract thousands and thousands of links overnight) look at the links themselves on the same ip, same whois, interlinking to each other etc?

Without more info it’s impossible to give advice imho.

Best of luck.

P.s if you haven’t already, you must keep a record of everything you do and the results, this will help rectify if any problems if they occur.

 

[js1]

? You lost me, on nearly every point?

 

[Systreg]

? You lost me, on nearly every point?

Don't waste your time mate, he's just a spammer posting his fake sig line link, Paullas deleted the same link in his first post the other day, just reported his one above also.

 

[bensd]

Don't waste your time mate, he's just a spammer posting his fake sig line link, Paullas deleted the same link in his first post the other day, just reported his one above also.

I reported earlier as well.

 

[arold10]

First I would suggest you to file a reconsideration request. If did not violate The Google Webmaster Guideline tell Google that you didn't violate their guidelines with your link building campaign. If you had violated their guidelines you can tell them what you are going to do to clean up your act.

Something like that had happened to one of my sites I was so aggressive in building back-links till I got to the 4th position for a highly competitive keyword in a matter of three months. Then one day I check my keywords position in the Google search result my ranking was gone and I was devastated it just like my works were in vain.

When I check a penalty checker tool which is very good in checking penalty, it's reported that my site has a severe penalty. I did file a reconsideration request and told Google that I did't violate their guideline. Then I did something that may look unusual, I pray about it to God and then after four days my ranking come back where it once was. Maybe that is a coincidence, but since I am Christian coincidence is not really something that I believe in because one my sites got penalized by Google despite I file a reconsideration request, it took me more than 1 month to recover from it, but this one took me only 4 days.

 

[theaffiliate]

When I check a penalty checker tool which is very good in checking penalty, it's reported that my site has a severe penalty.

Could you let me know a link to the tool?

 

[arold10]

Could you let me know a link to the tool?

Here is the tool that you can use to check if your site is penalized. It works really good.
http://tools.seomoves.org/penaltychecker/

 

[newguy]

Here is the tool that you can use to check if your site is penalized. It works really good.
http://tools.seomoves.org/penaltychecker/

How does this tool actually work? What criteria is it looking at? Any idea?

EDIT: I tried out "google.co.uk" and it says "This domain has a severe penalty.". Hah.

 

[wb]

How does this tool actually work? What criteria is it looking at? Any idea?

EDIT: I tried out "google.co.uk" and it says "This domain has a severe penalty.". Hah.

Was just about to post the same about Google.co.uk :lol:

 

[Aegean]

LOL that made me laugh. Another brilliant consumer SEO tool on the web!

 

[jj1]

I had the same thing for one of my sites when I used anchor text that was too similar - I created extra links with different anchor text, a few nofollows, a few plain urls and then waited - and waited.

It took some months but my site did recover.

I have heard that Google can sometimes give a "fixed time penalty" - eg three months.