So, you have identified the nature of your penalty, you've gathered the data you needed, and you've done everything you can to clean up your act.
Now it's time to let Google know.There are certain things that the Google employee reviewing your request is told to look for. Think of them as the criteria you’ll need to meet in order to be considered.
There are two primary goals in a reconsideration request:
Once you carry out the preceding steps in this guide, you'll have done most of the work towards this goal already. This is where the spreadsheets you’ve been building up will come into their own. A thorough account of every step you've taken to improve your link profile will go most of the way to convincing the Google Webspam Team to lift the manual penalty.
The reviewer wants to be convinced that your mindset has shifted, that you're now much more aware about the importance of staying within their quality guidelines.
If the dodgy tactics had been employed by an SEO team, feel free to name the agency of freelancer that you employed.
Overall though assume responsibility for the work that was carried-out on your site. Be honest, divulge everything you can at this point. Doing so will likely compel the reviewer to help you out a little more if you have not been able to take down all the links that you need to, by giving specific examples and guidance.
Say that since using the services of the SEO company you have educated yourself about Googles Webmaster Quality Guidelines and about what constitutes legitimate SEO.
After reading your review, leave them in no doubt that you won't be making the same mistakes!
If it was your own people who built the links or produced the content that put you at risk of the penalty, then it's critical to retrain them.
Include examples of emails sent out to employees or any other evidence you have that you have arranged for your employees to become as well informed about SEO as you have now become.
No matter how compelling your submission, be prepared to send more than one.
It's entirely possible that some of the links that are causing the problem were missed in the original link removal process, or that your criteria for vetting links was not strict enough.
If you do need to send a second or third request, ask for some examples of the links that you're missing. Make it clear that you're doing your best and just need a little more guidance as to how to solve the issue.
Be aware also that if you find yourself waiting for a number of weeks before hearing back from each submission, it's entirely possible that more bad links had been put up or indexed in that time. It's worth re-running your link profiles prior to each submission to ensure that you're not missing any newly indexed links.
To make your life easier, we've included some example email scripts that you can use, don't forget to amend these with your own specific details and tailor it to your situation.
Before you begin, ensure that sharing is enabled on your Google Doc spreadsheet.
Right click on your document in Google Drive and click "Share…"Under "Who has access" it will say "Private - Only you have access" by default. Click "Change…".
Click the checkbox "Anyone with the link" and select "Can comment". You could choose "Can view" if you like, but it couldn't hurt to allow the webspam team the option of leaving you a comment directly in your spreadsheet.
Dear Google Webspam Team
On [date] we received a manual action penalty from Google, due to unnatural links pointing to our site, [www.yourdomain.com].
Allow us to apologise for the inconvenience caused, and thank you for taking the time to read this reconsideration request.
We have taken every precaution to remove all unnatural links pointing to our site by collaborating with the webmasters who linked to us. We have documented our work extensively in the following Google Docs spreadsheet:
[link to your spreadsheet]
In the above document, you will find listed every link pointing towards our site that we could find, we have highlighted which ones seemed to be in violation of your guidelines, the domains they could be found on, details of the webmasters who owns said sites, and a record of our attempts to have the links removed.
We have also included examples of emails we sent to have the links removed. All unnatural links that we were not able to have removed have been included in a disavow file which has now been filed using the disavow tool.
We have since educated our teams to comply with Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines, and we will take every precaution not to violate them in the future.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Company]
Dear Google Webspam Team,
On [date] we received a manual action penalty from Google, due to unnatural links pointing to our site, [www.yourdomain.com].
We attempted to resolve the problem and sent a reconsideration request on [date]. Unfortunately, this request was rejected.
We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience we have caused. We have re-evaluated our link profile meticulously, and believe we have resolved the problem once and for all. Please see the records of our work in the Google Docs spreadsheet below:
[link to your spreadsheet]
If we have still not addressed the problem, I would ask for you to please include in your reply some examples of our links that do not meet your quality guidelines. We would like to prevent the possibility of using up any more of your time, and while we have worked hard to comply with Google's guidelines and to locate offending links, it is possible that we have missed something. We would be most appreciative for any additional guidance!
Thank you very much for your time.
Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Company Name]
Dear Google Webspam Team
On [date] we received a manual action penalty from Google, due to unsatisfactory content on our site, [www.yourdomain.com].
Allow us to apologise for the inconvenience caused, and thank you for taking the time to read this reconsideration request.
We have taken every precaution to improve the content on our site. Find below an extensive content inventory where we have documented every page that we have removed or improved.
[link to your spreadsheet]
We have educated ourselves thoroughly on Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines, and we will take every precaution not to violate them in the future. It is important to us to keep our visitors happy, and this penalty has been the impetus we needed to improve the quality of the content on our site.
Again, we apologise for the inconvenience and look forward to hearing from you.
Warm Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Company]
Dear Google Webspam Team,
On [date] we received a manual action penalty from Google, due to unsatisfactory content on our site, [www.yourdomain.com].
We attempted to resolve the problem and sent a reconsideration request on [date]. Unfortunately, this request was rejected.
We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience we have caused. We have thoroughly reevaluated our content, and believe we have resolved the problem once and for all. Please see the records of our work in the Google Docs spreadsheet below:
[link to your spreadsheet]
If we have still not addressed the problem, I would ask for you to please include in your reply some examples of pages of ours that do not meet the quality guidelines. We would like to prevent the possibility of using up any more of your time, and while we have worked hard to learn Google's guidelines, it is possible that we have missed something. We would be most appreciative for any additional guidance!
Thank you very much for your time.
Warm Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Company Name]
It is less likely for a content penalty request to be rejected if you have completed a thorough content inventory and analysis as was described in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, for the simple reason that it will far exceed the depth of the majority of requests they receive.
However, if you're not approved the first time be sure to include a reasonable request for further guidance at the end.
It may surprise you what simply asking for help can do.
In 1-3 weeks after submitting your request you should receive a message confirming that it was either approved or denied. We've pulled some examples from across the web. Take a look at what you can expect to see.
At this stage in the review process it is a human being that you'll be talking to. Not only that, but a particularly sceptical human being. SEO is normally quite a technical business, but when it comes to reinclusion requests, being affable, reasonable, agreeable, open, and for all intents likeable, is a critical part of the strategy.
The most important takeaways are:
Once your reply comes back to you, and you're accepted back into the SERPs, I think we can all agree a top priority is to prevent this from happening again, to make sure that from here onwards, your SEO campaigns are risk averse.
Let's round off this journey with a detailed resource page, outlining everything you need to know about ranking safely, and sustainably, coming up next!
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