Professional website designers know that it is bad practice to place unnatural links on a client’s website. It is normal to place links directed back to your site but going overboard could be detrimental. While this can be avoided, there are still some who place such links against Google’s policies and guidelines. The guidelines stipulate that placing such links may affect the ranking of a site, especially when the unnatural links violate Google’s policies. Before you know it, Google could impose strict penalties on you. However, the good news is that you can avoid this problem with these simple tips.
1. How about Obtaining a Reversal?
One of the ways of overcoming an unnatural link penalty is by obtaining a reversal of the manual decision. If you are hit with the penalty, you can try addressing the problem using the Google-recommended Lynx text-based web browser. This will help you examine the website. The browser is reputed because it helps you view the website in question as effectively as you would if you used a search engine spider. For looking at links, using the Open Site Explorer would be a good idea. Using these two options would help you know the reasons why you have been penalized.
2. Get Rid of the Problematic Links!
After determining that the links on the site are the problem, there are two options you can go with. The first one is to include the rel=”nofollow” option to the <a> tag. The second one involves redirecting those problematic links to another site which is already blocked from search engines. For this you will need a robot.txt file. If you have managed various sites before, this may be problematic and tedious. The best thing to do would be to contact the current site owner to change the footer link for you. A record of the changes should be kept as they would come in handy when you want to resubmit the website.
3. It is Time to Submit your Appeal
Appealing to Google to resubmit the site is advisable but only after you have ascertained that link backs have been checked using OSE as well as Lynx Browser. Your request has to be well-thought of before you submit your appeal. It should contain information such as your location, job and reference to the penalty you received from Google. It is also important to let them know that you are sorry after you confess. Google will want to know the steps which you have taken to avoid the problem recurring again therefore that should also be included in the appeal submission. It is important to note that the appeal will not guarantee your site’s re-submission but there is no danger in trying.
4. Prevention is the Best Cure
There are other ways of ensuring that Google changes their mind. For instance, you can try guest-blogging and use content which Google approves of. Removing all unnatural links from your site is also another option. However, the most appropriate way of avoiding such penalties is through avoidance from the first instance. This way, you would not need to worry about getting penalized in the first place.
