10 Steps to Remove Unnatural Link Penalties from Google

At this stage you are either reading this article because you have received an unnatural link penalty, are looking to do some basic backlink clean up, or just want to become a better SEO. While Google Webmaster Tools will tell you which backlinks are pointing to your website, they won’t tell you which ones are actually harming your rankings or site performance. They also don’t necessarily show you every backlink your website has so the information in Google Webmaster Tools is helpful, but isn’t necessarily enough to remove a penalty (weird right?). Read on to found out more…

Step 1: Identify Toxic Backlinks

The best way I found to identify toxic backlinks is to use third party tools such as Moz, aHrefs, MajesticSEO, Link Research Tools, or one of the many other great options on the market. The tool I found to be the most reliable and time effective is Link Research Tools. Not only does Link Research Tools tell you which backlinks pointing to your website are considered toxic (and why), it also has awesome features that allow/perform the following:

• Upload previous disavow files
• Upload backlinks scraped using other tools
• Gather backlink data pulled from other sites like Moz, Sistrix, etc.
• Select whether to check follow vs. nofollow backlinks
• Perform “what-if” analysis to determine if links you are going after in your link building strategy are “toxic”

This means it will cross reference links that are already being excluded by Google as well as score other links that may not have been picked up by their scraper.

If you are pretty comfortable only using Link Research Tools to identify your toxic backlinks, which you should be, here is a quick guide on how to knock that out:

To keep it simple, the higher the number on the gauge the more work you need to do to clean up your backlink profile. If it’s red like in the example above, you’ve got some work to do. If you really care to learn how Link Research Tools develops this score you can read it here.

Link Research Tools provides a variety of charts to help you better understand your backlink profile and you can definitely go as deep as you want. For the sake of this guide, we will focus on the links that are labeled “High” in the Link Audit Priority. The chart gives you a break down like the one shown below and all you have to do is click the “High” section on the right hand side.

When you click the “High” link it will direct you down to the bottom section where you will see all of the links you should focus on cleaning up. Link Research Tools allows you to export these links into a CSV or XLSX which makes it very easy to begin our clean up. In case you can’t find it, here is a screenshot to help:

Now that we have downloaded the backlinks we need to clean up, we can get them set up set up to track our results. Most people may prefer to use a basic excel sheet, but because I’m a fan of Google Sheets, I usually send mine up there. I’ll explain more in Step 2.

Step 2: Create Google Spreadsheet

Now that you have a solid grasp on the backlinks that you need to clean up, we should get them into a Google Spreadsheet for easier management going forward. Take the file that you recently exported from Link Research Tools and open that up on your desktop/laptop computer so we can delete a bunch of columns we don’t need. We should delete all columns except the following:

• Domain
• From URL
• Email (there may not be much here just yet but we will gather these later)

Now that we are left with just three columns save that document so we can get to work on setting you up to be able to effectively track your efforts. To make this easy for you, I created a Google Spreadsheet template for you to work off. That can be downloaded here.

Once you open the link above you will realize you have View only access so you need to save this to your desktop by going to File > Download as > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). The next piece is to add this document into a Google Spreadsheet and add our toxic links. Assuming you have a Google account and are already logged in, here are the steps to do so:

Step 3: Gather Contact Information

At this point, we are onto one of the most critical steps in our unnatural link penalty removal process. Each of the domains that we have identified as “High” priority to be removed has a Webmaster hiding somewhere around the world. We need to find out how to get in touch with this individual because we need to ask them to remove the link from their website pointing to yours.
There are many ways to find the email address and contact information associated with a domain, but it really boils down to three main ways:

1. Scraping their website
2. Performing a Whois look up
3. Uses the contact form on site

Link Research Tools sometimes provides you with the contact information for a domain (the Email column from our export). However, I found that in most instances, I need to use another software/program to help me gather email addresses. That’s where our premium SEO tool will come in handy as it is able to scrape email addresses from websites and perform Whois look ups for you. If you aren’t interested in the premium version you can obviously use the free SEO tools, but if you have large quantity of domains I definitely recommend the premium tool.

At this point we should now have the following:

1. All toxic backlinks that need to be removed
2. All (or most) email addresses for our toxic backlinks

Now we are ready to move onto the next step which is contacting Webmasters.

Step 4: Begin Contacting Webmasters

Contacting Webmasters is like trying to date your dream girl, you keep trying to get her attention and only sometimes will they give you the time of day. Think about it. We’re all website owners, which means we are very busy. We most likely don’t answer every email that is sent to our inbox. For this reason, we need to make sure that if we do get their attention, our request is extremely simple to understand and carry out.

You want to make sure that the email address you are using is one associated with your domain and hopefully one that won’t hit their SPAM filter. That will increase the success of our efforts. Depending on the size of your list, it may make sense to break it into sections. For example, if you have 300, maybe do batches of 50 or 100 to make it easier to manage. While not essential, definitely helpful.

It’s time to visit our Google Spreadsheet to start grabbing the email addresses of the Webmasters we need to be contacting. So with your preferred mail client open, start sending out those emails!

Email to owners of websites with one backlink pointing to your domain:

Dear Webmaster,

Cheers,
[insert your name]

Email to owners of websites with multiple backlinks (on the same domain) pointing to your domain:

Dear Webmaster,

Cheers,
[insert your name]

Step 5: Keep Track of Link Removal

The purpose of the Google Spreadsheet we created in Step 2 was so we had an easy way to keep track of our efforts. Once we start sending out emails to Webmmaster’s there will be a multitude of responses. Some of them will be bounce backs because it is an erroneous email address, others will be responses, and a large majority may go unnoticed the first time around. That’s why we update our sheet was we go.

In the Status column of the Google Sheet you will notice a drop down that contains the following options:

• Not contacted
• No response
• Pending/sent
• Link removed
• Disavow

Each option is pretty self explanatory so I just recommend modifying each domain as you go. The other recommendation would be to send an email and wait about 3 days before sending another email. This gives Webmasters a chance to respond before you go blowing up their inbox again. For larger scale efforts with 100s of domains that need to be removed, you will want to send the emails in batches so it is easier to manage. For example, send 50 emails the first day, 50 emails the next day, 50 emails the following day, and so on. Then be sure to wait about 3 days and follow up accordingly. You want to make sure you give Webmasters enough time before going the disavow route. I recommend sending about 2-3 emails to each Webmaster you are reaching out to. The 1st is the original email and the others are follow ups. Anything more than 2 follow ups is most likely a waste of your time and effort. The final piece is to make sure you update your Google Sheet as you go because it will make the next steps easier.

Step 6: Review Status of Links

After we have attempted to contact Webmaster’s once or twice in an attempt to remove our backlinks, we need to do a comb through of our Google Sheet. By this time, we should have about 30% of our links labeled as “Link Removed” and all other links should be labeled “Disavow”.

Now to prep for the next step, let’s save the Google Sheet to your desktop by going to File > Download as > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). In the column labeled “Copy this in Disavow File”, you should copy the contents of this section to your clipboard. We should now have a list of every domain we need disavowed and it will be in the proper format for the next step.

Step 7: Write the Disavow File

There are a few ways to write a disavow file so Google understands your request. For our efforts, we are going to ask Google to ignore the entire domain that contains backlinks pointing back to your website. This means that all other associated pages (URLs) linking from that root domain will be ignored as well. For example, if your disavow file tells Google to “ignore the entire domain” of www.octatools.com, that means it will ignore any and all links contained on the Octatools website not just the homepage.

It’s now time open up your favorite text editor so you have a blank file. I generally use Notepad since I’m on a PC, but any similar program will suffice. In this file you want to paste in the list of domains that have been copied in the previous step (remember copied from the column “Copy this in Disavow File”). You should have a list of domains and nothing else in your document. The domains should be contained on separate lines and in this format “domain:sampledomain.com”. Next go ahead and add the following lines of text to the very, very type of your file:

#attempted to contact owners of the domains listed below and got no response on [insert date] and again on [insert date]] #please remove unknown spam domains:

We should now have our messaging at the top followed by the list of domains that we want Google to ignore (disavow). Once we have our text file sorted out, it is time to save this document as “Disavow.txt”.

To make this super easy, I’ve created a sample Disavow file below to show you exactly how it should look. Obviously, the dummy information should be swapped out so it aligns with your specific situation.

#attempted to contact owners of the domains listed below and got no response on 9/13/2015 and again on 9/20/2015
#please remove unknown spam domains:
Domain:testdomain1.com
Domain:testdomain2.com
Domain:testdomain3.com
Domain:testdomain4.com
Domain:testdomain5.com
Domain:testdomain6.com
Domain:testdomain7.com
Domain:testdomain8.com

#thank you for your cooperation Google Webspam team

Step 8: Write the Disavow File

We’re in the home stretch here so bare with me. Now that we have our file prepped and ready, we need to get that puppy into Google so they know we mean business. Google for some reason makes it extremely difficult to locate the area were you are able to upload your disavow file. Don’t worry though, I’ve got the steps below to help you out.

Step 9: Write the Reconsideration Request

If you have in fact received a manual action from Google for your unnatural backlinks, it is important we get back in Google’s good graces. By this point, we have done everything we need to do. All that remains is asking Google for forgiveness, which is easier than it sounds. In some cases, Google is quick to forgive. In other more severe examples, Google will require a great deal of effort to have the manual action against your site revoked. It may take more than one attempt to make this a reality. I’ve had client were it took almost 6 months with 4 rounds of backlink clean ups and 4 reconsideration requests before Google revoked the manual penalty.

There are definitely a variety of opinions on how to write a reconsideration request and there is no right answer. However, there are 5 main sections that every reconsideration request should include.

Overview

We need to tell Google why we are writing the reconsideration request and include dates of notices received from Google.

History and What Happened

Be honest about the history of your website and your link building efforts. Explain to Google what happened to put you in the situation you are in. Don’t make excuses because no on cares.

Work Performed and Effort to Clean Up Backlinks

Show Google that you have actually done the work required to be forgiven. This is why we went through all the work up until this point.

Going Forward and Conclusion

Communicate to Google what you will be doing going forward to prevent something like this from happening again.

Signature

Make it personal and stamp it with your name and title.

Hello Google webspam team,

Step 10: Uploading the Reconsideration Request

At this point we are about to put the nail in the coffin. We’ve done everything we are supposed to do and we’ve written up our plea for forgiveness. Now we just need to upload our reconsideration request via Google Webmaster Tools to make it all official.

At this point, you should be more than equipped to remove an unnatural link penalty that is levied on your website by Google. This process is very lengthy, but is essential to the health and success for your website within Google SERPs. It is important to note that this process is similar for other penalties your website may receive. I’ve revoked penalties for Malware using the same process. The main difference is that you won’t be cleaning up backlinks, you will be cleaning up the Malware on your website.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this guide and message me if you need further assistance. I will do my best to help out.