Why did our PageRank go down?

Recently a newspaper contacted me. Their PageRank had dropped from 7 to 3, and they wanted to know why. They genuinely didn’t seem know what the issue was, so I took some time to write them an in-depth reply. Part of the motivation for my blog is to provide information in more scalable ways, so I figured I’d strip any identifying information from my email and post it. Here’s what I wrote:

Hi, the usual reason why a site’s PageRank drops by 30-50% like this is because the site violates our quality guidelines by selling links that pass PageRank. Here’s our documentation on that: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 and here’s a video I made about this common case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFcJ7PaLoMw (it’s about 1:30 into the video). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all is a good recent article about paid reviews. In Google’s world, we take paid links that pass PageRank as seriously as Amazon would take paid reviews without disclosure or as your newspaper would treat a reporter who was paid to link to a website in an article without disclosing the payment.

In particular, earlier this year on [website] we saw links labeled as sponsored that passed PageRank, such as a link like [example link]. That’s a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and it’s the reason that [website]‘s PageRank as well as our trust in the website has declined.

In fact, we received a outside spam report about your site. The spam report passed on an email from a link seller offering to sell links on multiple pages on [website] based on their PageRank. Some pages mentioned in that email continue to have unusual links to this day. For example [example url] has a section labeled “PARTNER LINKS” which links to [linkbuyer].

So my advice would be to investigate how paid links that pass PageRank ended up on [website]: who put them there, are any still up, and to investigate whether someone at the [newspaper] received money to post paid links that pass PageRank without disclosing that payment, e.g. using ambiguous labeling such as “Partner links.” That’s definitely where I would dig.

After that investigation is complete and any paid links that pass PageRank are removed, the site’s webmaster can do a reconsideration request using Google’s free webmaster tools console at google.com/webmasters. I would include as much detail as you can about what you found out about the paid links. That will help us assess how things look going forward.

How To Secure Your Website From Link Spam And Adverse SEO

Before starting our conversation, allow us to perceive how ancient SEO’s perceived  their activities and techniques in SEO.  Discussing the complete SEO market may be separated into 2 major classes. The primary team considers the concept of figures whereas the second team considers the concept of worthiness.
 

The second team that considers in manufacturing worthiness could be a prime level   for people who keep removed from dark hat chicanery to get bigger ranks. Their concept is simple: turn out worth. Hyperlinks, a decent popularity, and income can adhere to on their own, while not having to cadge for it each single day. That’s the most effective, and doubtless the sole, thanks to maintain a web site and make sure that it seems the ages.

However, people who believe that this is often a “numbers game,” use a variety of bogus activities and techniques to get larger positions as quickly and as simply as doable. They get links from associate websites, spam the boards, and use inaccurate ways to get additional PageRank, whether or not naturally or inorganically. These ways still advance and modify as Google modify the characteristics of their ways, however the most concept has stayed unchanged for over a many years that is increase PageRank by manipulation links, no matter their natural or inorganic characteristics.

Google’s Penguin upgrade changed all this.

Google inspired the Penguin upgrade for its algorithmic slim to lower the positions of internet sites that use bogus activities to get larger ranks in Listings. This contains decreasing the  ranks  of internet sites that don’t adhere to appear for  links   website owner wonderful recommendations, get entangled in exchanging links techniques, spam boards and web directories for trademark links, use hiding or sly JavaScript markets, and originated variety of dark hat treatments to manage positions. A clip from Google’s formal writing is below:

The Inquisitive Case of Adverse SEO

Since Google’s latest algorithmic is concentrated at decreasing the positions of internet sites that use dark hat strategies; some web site owners are worried. What if an opponent tries to cut back my site's positions by buying links on spam websites or adult websites that time to my sector? there's no approach I will stop anyone from getting spam links for this web site. It’s their cash and their selection.

Since Google are considering link spam collectively of the alerts of a spam web site, "What if my website is found in a very bogus positive?" How am I able to tell Google that these links don't have anything to do with the site and are created by a contending supply that is envious of the success of my business? If there's not how to cut back the result of spam links or paid links that I actually have made, Google can hunt for these  links   disqualify and slender my whole website?

Source: http://blog.ribbun.com/how-to-secure-your-website-from-link-spam-and-adverse-seo/