How to Identify Natural and Unnatural Links - To Avoid Google Penguin Penalty

If you are looking for the solution to regain your website traffic and ranking on Google search engine, Voila!! You are on right blog! read and implement suitable steps of following scenario.

This is my case study on "How to Identify Natural and Unnatural links" to recover a website from Google Penalty, hope this will help you to decide the links which are pointing to your website are Natural or Unnatural links.

So, for clear picture Lets begin with basic Question:

Q: What is Google?
Ans: Google is a Search engine NOT  an Internet. (Most of the people who has less internet knowledge thinks Google is an internet not one among 60 trillion+ websites present on internet). 
And there are plenty of sites which are Similar to Google, Like:
Yahoo
Bing
Baidu - Largest search engine in Chinese
Yadex - Largest search engine in Russia
etc...

Case Study on TicketGoose.com(TG) to find reason for "Not Ranking on Google SE"

Step:1) TG Rank on SE:
For Brand Keyword – All SE will give same result (ie, TG on TOP)
For Business keyword – Each SE will give different result (Why?)

For Example : “Online bus ticket booking”

TG SERP:
Google          - No result up to 10 pages
Yahoo/Bing   - 5th Position
Yadex           - 3rd position

    
Step:2) Lets see which are the Top SERP Rank for  “Online bus ticket booking” Keyword and why?

On Google Search Engine - No TG Page is ranking, Note that Makemytrip.com is on Top and Abhibus.com is at 5th Position. 

So here logic is Google or any other SE will rank website on top if it fully obeys its guidelines and fit for its search algorithm and followed by it will rank less fit websites.

On Bing SE - TG website is Ranking at 5th Position marked by Yellow colour.

 On Yahoo SE - TG ranking at 5th position marked by Yellow colour.

On Yandex SE -  TG ranking at 3rd Position and Makemytrip at 1st.

Wow!! great TG website is ranking on 1st page of all other Search Engines except Google. and if you observe the other top ranking sites like Makemytrip.com and Redbus.in are ranking on all the search engine including Google with slight variation in ranking that happens because each SE has its own algorithm of ranking factors. But why TG being a top site on other SE don't has visibility on Google?

Why TG is not there on Google?

Has TG Indexed in Google? – Yes! it is Indexed. Check(site:ticketgoose.com)
Does TG not fit for Google Guidelines so it is not showing up?– lets see step by step.

Step:3) Link schemes
Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results will consider as Link scheme and a violation of Google’s Guidelines.

Check list of TG website link building Activities which are against Google guidelines:

1. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank - No
2. Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") - No
3. Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links - No
4. Using automated programs or services to create links to your site - No
5. Low-quality directory or bookmark site links - Yes
6. Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases or blog Comments distributed on other sites.  For example: There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress. - Yes

TG Examples of Unnatural Links:

Blog Comment 1

Blog Comment 2

Note: These Unnatural links affect sites ranking negatively.

7.  Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature,

       For example:
Thanks, that’s great info!
- Paul
paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego

TG Forum Signature link:

Forum Signature Links 1 

Forum Signature Links 2 

Admin Reply to Forum Signature 2

Scheme Result: TG was doing 3 Activities against Google Guidelines

Conclusion: By this case study i can say that only because of link scheme Google has put Penalty on the TG website so there are no search result for over optimized keywords on Google Search Engine. To know steps to overcome from this Read: How to Recover from Google Penalty?

Natural link or Unnatural link??

Now lets see some example to differentiate between Natural and Unnatural links

Example 1: Unnatura Link - On Foursquare page which has created to gather information on a particular location to help new visitors almost has 83 tips for that location. as shown in below picture
among 83, 82 are valid comment one which is given by my client name website is invalid because all other users are either suggesting or sharing their experience of that location but TG is talking about its own with backlink which is counted as Unnatural link by Google.

Example 2: Natural Link - In this example TG has commented with a backlink and this post is valid and natural because the content is informative on same forum subject and backlink make sense which leads me travel website where i may book online bus ticket for my fav destination

Outcome:  

• This case study helps our SEO team to find and remove nearly about 40,000 spam links which are pointing to TicketGoose.com 
• On Saturday morning i,e 18th Oct 2014 since Google has released Penguin 3.0 update for which we all were waiting since last one year!! we got our expected result.
• This morning 18th Oct all major keywords were ranking on 1st and 2nd pages of Google SE and till today these Keywords are ranking well with small fluctuation in ranking positions (Search one yourself by using above mentioned Keywords). 

Thanks for reading this blog.... Feel free to share your Outcome by this case study in comment section...!

For consultation & help Contact me @ ataullamomin@gmail.com

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How to Recover from Google Penguin Algorithmic Penalty?

First thing you have to identify the type of penalty affecting to your website, Either

1> Google Penguin - This penalty affects website due to Aggressive link Building.

2> Google Panda - This penalty affects due to thin content on your website.

Lets see Symptoms of Penguin Penalty on website in Details:

• Sharp drop in Rankings of group of keywords ( the keywords which are targeted in aggressive link building Ex: if your site is belongs to travel niche and suppose targeted keyword is "Online bus booking" and it was ranking on page 1 suddenly after Penguin update it goes to #100th or #200th position)
• The webpages containing keywords ("Online bus booking" or other targeted keywords) might be de-indexed while the rest of the site indexed. (in some case your contact us, FAQ, about us pages will rank instead Home page for primary keywords)
• In some case even though you got a penguin penalty you wont get any message concerning unnatural links inside Webmaster Tool, WHY?? because again there are 2 kinds in Penguin Penalty

1. Algorithmic and
2. Manual Actions

In Algorithmic Penalty Google robots itself detect all your link building tactics which are against Google guidelines like forum signature links, blog commenting, low quality social bookmarking etc and affect your site by above mentioned factors. And this penalty wont get resolve until next penguin update, but before that make sure you have removed all unnatural links pointing to your website else again you have to wait up to next penguin update (for example: Suppose your website got algorithmic penalty in Penguin5 on Oct 2013 it wont resolve until Google Penguin6 Algorithm update comes. For which webmasters like me whose website is under algorithmic penalty waiting eagerly to get out of this!!)

In Manual Actions - Google team fellow will manually discover unnatural links which are built against Google guidelines and You will get clear message in Google Webmaster tool along with "recommended actions" to recover from penalty. Here you have to execute "recommended actions" mainly they will recommend to remove all unnatural links, Once you done with this action send reconsideration request in WMT. This wont take out your penalty immediately but you will see gradual improvement in your traffic as well as rankings and here in Manual Action no need to wait up to next penguin update.

Have a look where you will get "Manual Actions" in WMT 

Once you confirmed by above mentioned points that your website is under "Algorithmic Penalty" not in Manual Actions then follow the below steps.

Steps to Recover Website from Google Penguin "Algorithmic Penalty"

1. Identify all unnatural links pointing to your website by the help of Cognitive SEO tool

Note:Cognitive tool wont discover all unnatural links pointing to your website but yes by this tool you will get clear picture of unnatural links pattern which cause penalty on your website.

2. Discover all backlinks and separate Quality links from unnatural or spam links, Using Webmaster Tool. The best way is download latest discovered links in WMT and review it manually and repeat this step every month.

For better result along with WMT, also make use of SEO Mejestic and Ahrefs tool to discover backlinks. 

Read:How to Identify Natural and Unnatural Links - To Avoid Google Penguin Penalty

3.Once you collect all unnatural links start removing these links, like Blog Comments link from blogger domain thin and low quality pages, other niche related directory links, low quality SBM links, over optimized anchor text forum signature links etc

4.If there is no option to remove detected unnatural links and you are unable to contact webmasters of particular sites, Then how do you tell Google not to consider those unnatural links pointing to your website? by Submitting these domain list to Disavow tool.

Syntax: domain:www.xyz.com

5.After this start focusing on Onpage improvements in terms of structure, quality, inner link optimization and user experience. and this time Offpage should be 100% organic.

6. Do not expect immediate result you have to wait up to next penguin update. before that make sure you have done with all suggested steps.

Thanks for reading this Blog..!! Feel free to add your points on penalty recovery steps in comment section.. :)

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