Remove junk backlinks?

[techgal128]

So I bought a site from someone only for it be to punished by the Google penguin update. I looked into the backlinks and it looks like the previous owner increased traffic by using the "buy 1000 backlinks" deal from low quality sites. There are far too many to email each site so is there an easier way to do this? At this point, is it recommended that I just get a new name and start fresh? My pages aren't indexing and I'm pretty sure these backlinks are the reason why.

 

[mhdoc]

Google has a re-inclusion request process where you go through the list of backlinks and indicate which ones you feel are valid. You send that to them along with an explanation of how they got there and why it will not be a problem in the future. It worked for me

 

[techgal128]

Great idea! The only problem is when I follow the instructions, I get taken to the manual actions section where it says:

Manual Actions
No manual webspam actions found.

Does this mean I don't have the option to send in the request?

 

[mhdoc]

I assume you found these pages

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604824

It looks to me like you can submit a request from one of those pages.

 

[enlytend]

Algorithmic penalties and manual penalties are two different things. Requesting reconsideration won't "fix" algorithmic penalties because there's nothing for them to "reconsider." All you can do is clean up what caused it and wait to see if there was a recovery.

If you're 100% certain your problem was penguin 2.0, you need a more "natural" link profile. Link diversity, anchor text diversity, balance of followed and no followed links...also links from sites with stronger trust rank.

Depending on how much of a mess you have, starting over with a new domain may be something to consider.

Also, is your site not indexed or just not ranking? If its not indexed google webmaster tools may tell you why.

 

[quadxnet]

I would start with the Google disavow tool to remove any bad backlinks, while working to get good backlinks. I would give it a little bit of time to see if the traffic and rankings rebound. If they don't I would then as for a reconsideration at that point.