Google notice of unnatural links detected 101
 

Several of my sites along with many of my friends received this message from Google at the weekend:

"Google Webmaster Tools notice of unnatural links detected...please submit your site for reconsideration"

Before I get into the 101 i'd like to address a few myths flying around the forums.

This is not a random email designed to scare people – it’s real and when you receive it all of your rankings drop. In the last 6 months alone I got 122 competitive keywords into the top 5 of Google and now all but a few have lost their ranking entirely.

It's not caused by one source of links - my sites used different link sources and received the penalty.

It has nothing to do with Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools is where the message is sent if your site uses it. Some of my panelized sites used Google tools and some didn't - I always diversified risks. Reasoning that because you don't use Google Webmaster Tools you must be safe is just ridiculous.

Since the penalty i’ve being thinking about the way forward. Some of these suggestions are well known and obvious but some may not be:

1. Don't link build to keywords in sets i.e. don't built links to one or more keywords until the desired position is achieved and then move on. This is not natural.
   
2. Built less links. I've been looking at how many links legitimate sites receive and most don't receive that many. Certainly not 1000's in a few months.
   
3. Stay away from spun content. If The Best Spinner can auto spin your content then you can be sure Google can unspin your content.
   
4. Avoid tools like Magic Submitter, Senuke, AMR, Scrapebox & Xrumer. These tools are designed to create mass links and that's just not natural.
   
5. Don't think that blasting second tier links is safe. Just because they’re not pointing directly at your money site doesn't mean Google can't detect this pattern.
   
6. Future proof your link building. Shortcut methods that work today may be slapped down tomorrow; it's only a matter of time.
   
7. First focus on getting your onsite SEO as good as possible. This is about 10% of successful ranking and you will not be panelized for it. A site with a keyword rich URL, good content and optimized tags will rank effortlessly for most keywords.
   
8. Don't just drop links to your site, drop links to authority sites in your niche in the same post.
   
9. Make sure you have a clear understanding of what a natural link profile looks like before starting any link building and try to mimic natural.
   
10. Sign up to Link Research Tools or similar and monitor your backlink profile.
    
11. Don't assume you're clever or safe. One of the greatest downfalls I recognize is arrogance.
    
12. Get unique content for your posts. Either hand write it or use iwriter
    
13. Dont ping your links - if Google can't find it naturally then you probably don't want Google to find it.
    
14. Make your site/content useful and attract legitimate links - fly by night monetized sites with aggressive link building simple don't work long term. The site has to actually be useful.
    
15. Try to make your site as white hat as possible and approach any fabricated link building like watering down beer.
    
16. Be carefull of blog networks; yes they work but will they work indefinitely? It would be so easy for Google to bust these networks.
    
17. Mix in lots of generic anchors. The natural link profiles i see have lots of 'More', Click Here' 'Visit Site' and image links. If you use Link Research Tools and look at natural sites you will see the biggest category of keyword is often 'other'.
    
18. Stop trying to find the shortcut. You can be sure of there is a shortcut, it will be sold as a service and Google will eventually discover it.
    
19. Practice patience and think if IM and SEO in terms of years. Next year this will make decent money.
    
20. Pick your battles wisely. A very competitive keyword requires great link building and may take years to see ROI.
    
21. Make sure links are from numerous sources.
    
22. Don't over optimize keywords.
    
23. Keep the velocity of incoming links manageable and realistic.
    
24. Maintain balance between links to inner pages and the home page.
    
25. Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics - if you're afraid of these tools then you're probably doing something wrong and are afraid of Google finding out.
    
26. Make sure a percentage of your traffic is from referrals. A fabricated link profile often generates very little referral traffic. Likewise a natural site has a degree of visits from typing in the URL not just organic rankings.
    
27. Make sure your link profile includes nofollow links

Excellent points! Thank you for taking the time to post that and share it with all of us on this forum. I understand alot of people have received that same notice since March of this year. Google is definitely trying to clean up house and will continue to do so as it rolls out new algorithm versions. Penguin was the last one and it also did some damage to alot of sites that over-optimized or had junk content. Stay on the white hat side and you should do fine.

you have posted really such an informative topic and point out good tips.