Google Penalty –Unnatural Links
Unnatural links are the most common cause of a Google penalty. The reasonfor this inevitably ends up being the same – impatient webmasters trying to take shortcuts to boost their website ranking. They will buy high-quality links that people will swear by, oblivious to the fact that Google is constantly collecting data and reviewing footprints of “unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links,” as explained in their terms and conditions.
When Google finally let the hammer fall, not only will the buyers face the consequences, but the sellers as well. The link sellers usually operate large private blog networks which will all get penalised.
Be wary of backlinks – they could come back to haunt you. Image courtesy of Pixabay
How do you fix backlinks which violate Google’s guidelines?
The first step is to download the list of offending links from Google Search Console. Get the webmasters for the referring links to remove your links from their website. If the webmaster does not comply, or if the list is just too long, disavow those links from the Console. Once you are cleaned up your link, submit a reconsideration request to Google. Make sure you get every single one of them before submitting a request. Otherwise, the request will just end up being rejected.
Can you fix the penalty caused by outbound links?
If you’ve been identified as a link seller, chances are, your domain will be blacklisted. However, if you are simply caught up in a link exchange web, then immediately add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the offending links. This will prevent crawlers from following the links, and thus, sanitise them in the eyes of Google. Or better yet, just remove the backlinks, since there isn’t likely a good reason for them to stay. Tried everything? If you have had no luck, an SEO company who specialises in penalty recovery could have a better chance.