Reconsideration Request for Google
A reconsideration request is one step in a detailed process that eventually leads to an appeal to the Google Search Team asking them to reevaluate your website and to revoke a manual action penalty against it. Google used to accept reconsideration requests from domain owners and webmasters who suspected that there was an algorithm penalty impacting their domain. However, this is no longer the case. Now, only if you have a message from Google in your Webmaster tools saying that there is a manual action against your domain do you have the option of submitting a reconsideration request.
We began this discussion by stating that a Google reconsideration request is just one step in a much more detailed process because it is true. What is also true is that that there's a lot more to this process than merely submitting a letter to Google asking them for a "Mulligan," or second chance. Your best chance of getting your manual penalty removed starts with understanding the entire penalty reconsideration process.
The penalty reconsideration process
Recommended steps to take before submitting a reconsideration request:
- Clean up your website: Google wants to see that you have taken the necessary steps to remedy the issues on your website that led to the manual action penalty in the first place. If you have poor quality, spammy content, you will have to address this by removing and/or rewriting much of this content. If you were cited by Google for having unnatural links, you will have to begin a vigorous campaign to identify poor quality backlinks and then contact domain owners and webmasters requesting that they remove these links to your website.
- Create a detailed worksheet: In order to chronicle all of the actions you have taken to restore your domain to compliance with Google quality guidelines, you will need to create an xls spreadsheet. This worksheet is then submitted to Google along with your reconsideration request and will serve as evidence of your efforts. This worksheet should include the exact dates of your actions as well as the specific changes you were able to make to remedy the problem.
- Internal controls: Google will want to see that you are implementing definite internal controls to guard against your domain falling out of line with their quality guidelines again.
If your domain was penalized for having too many unnatural links or other problems with your backlink profile there is another step you probably should take before submitting a reconsideration request - making use of the Google Disavow Tool.
At some point during the course of your backlink audit and outreach campaign to have poor quality links removed you will run into a situation where there is no way to have the link removed. Whether you can't reach the domain owner or they ignore your request, refuse your request or you run into any number of dead ends, there will always be some backlinks that you have no control over. In these instances, Google has set up a Disavow Tool.
After you're sure that you cannot get certain links removed, you can submit some or all of the links on an entire domain to Google via their disavow tool, asking them to ignore these links when their search engine crawls and indexes your domain.
At this point you are ready to submit your reconsideration request, asking Google to reexamine your website, to review the actions you've taken to remedy all problematic issues and to revoke the manual action penalty pending against your website.
Or you could make the smart choice - and put the PenaltyBeGone proprietary reconsideration process to work for you. By doing so you will eliminate any chance of making critical errors that will result in a waste of your time, your money and your website being right back where it started - with a Google penalty hanging over it.
The PBG Proprietary Reconsideration Request Process
- Comprehensive review and analysis of website's layout, content and backlink profile to identify any aspect of the domain that may be non-compliant with Google quality guidelines.
- PBG Findings Report - summary of PBG findings following site analysis including recommendations for remediating all areas of concern.
- Complete review and analysis of backlink profile
- Create action/tracking spreadsheets to record and monitor penalty removal process and to create reports to be submitted to Google.
- Identification and isolation of poor quality links.
- Outreach campaign to domain owners/webmasters identified as having poor quality links pointed to website requesting they remove these links.
- Follow-up requests to domain owners/webmasters
- Track compliance to our outreach campaign.
- Create and submit Google recommended and properly formatted Disavow document for all links not removed during outreach program.
- Create and submit Google reconsideration request Google Doc action worksheet documenting link remediation campaign.
- Monitor and respond to all Google replies and notifications.