Penalty Recovery for Ed-Tech Website Case Study

Based on 3rd party tools like Moz, Ahref and SEMRush we found approximately 70k backlinks which were pointing to their website. Post understanding the number of backlinks tracked by these tools, we wanted to understand the toxicity/spam of these clicks. Following activities were performed:

1. Filtering the Moz’s data with a spam score of more than 30%
2. Filtering SEMRush’s data with Toxic Score more than 50
3. Filtering Ahref’s data
4. Finding Porn, Gambling Domains

After referring domains were analyzed using tools like Moz, Ahref, SEMRush, etc. We planned to reach out to webmasters and ask them to remove the backlink from their website. Hence, we started finding their contact information from various tools but it wasn’t of much help. Hence, we had to manually visit those websites and look for the contact information.

Once we had email id details of webmasters. We outreached to these websites asking them to remove the backlink. We used brand’s email id for this activity so that it looks more relevant. We not only contacted webmasters via emails but also reached out to them via contact forms that were present on their websites.

A PBN is a network of websites used to build links (and therefore pass authority) to a single website for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings. This scheme is similar to a link wheel or link pyramid, as it involves several different websites all linking to one another or to one central website. Google does not like link coming from such domains. Following Techniques were used to identify the backlinks:

1. IP Spam
2. Content/Anchor Text Spam
3. Trust Flow & Citation Flow Ratio

Once Backlink analysis and contact webmasters were done, it was time to review and upload the disavow file. Following activities were done in this stage:

Reviewing the Previously Uploaded Disavow File – There were many domains which were relevant, high DA and non toxic/spammy which were previously disavowed. Infidigit reviewed those domains and removed them from the new disavow file. 

Creation of New Disavow file – Infidigit created a new disavow file which consisted of more than 5000 domains which included irrelevant, toxic, spammy websites.

Uploading Disavow File – Once the above-mentioned activities were completed, the Infidigit team decided to upload the newly created disavow file on the Google Search console.

After outreaching to possible prospects and re-updating the disavow list, it was time to send a reconsideration request to Google. This time, the reconsideration email was detailed, precise and data driven. Within a span of few days, Google considered the reconsideration request and lifted the manual penalty which was raised.