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When I finally got around to getting this awesome theme released back in January, I redid all of my advertising prices as well as the way I did things. Since then, every advertisement link mentioned had the “nofollow” tag added to it, stopping Google from passing authority to the advertisers. I forgot one small detail though, back in my first month I had sold a few text links for $100 and forgot to add the nofollow tags to those, and some kind fellow decided to report my blog.
Long story short, Google found out and lowered my pagerank from 4 to 2. I wasn’t too worried about it, because my search engine traffic has actually gone up since then, so I knew it was only the toolbar number that went down. At any rate, I did a few very simple steps to getting my pagerank back that I thought would be very helpful to the thousands of blogs that got hit as well.
This isn’t rocket science, but I wanted to make this post to tell the thousands of blogs complaining about pagerank that they can stop complaining and get their pagerank back in TWO DAYS.
Getting Your Pagerank Back
- Fix your mistakes. Add a rel=”nofollow” to every advertisers hyperlink.
- Log your mistakes. Jot down the URL to every link that you fixed.
- Change your policy. Make sure on your advertising page that you DO NOT pass pagerank.
- Submit a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster Tools.
- Make it short and professional.
- Learn from your previous mistakes, don’t do them again!
When you are submitting your reconsideration request, you want to make it as precise as possible. It is going to be manually reviewed by REAL people, so you want to cater to them. For your convenience, I have documented/saved my exact reconsideration request that resulted in a manual review and me earning my pagerank 4 back. Please use it as an example, or a starting point, and not as word-for-word copy paste. You should want to personalize your own request, and make sure to mention all of the flaws you corrected and apologize for them, and promise not to do them in the future.
My Google Reconsideration Request:
To whom it may concern,
I have been blogging for a nearly 5 months, and about three months ago I completely redesigned my entire blog and made it fully compliant with the Google webmaster standards. All of my text links and paid reviews have “nofollow” on them. I did however, make the mistake of selling links inside posts in the very early days of my blog, which have resulted in my pagerank being reduced. I do apologize for that, and I have since “nofollowed” all of the external links in them. I have done the necessary changes to make sure that MixedMarketArts.com meets all of Google’s requirements, and I will continue to comply with the Google webmaster standards in the future.
You may see here ( http://collinlahay.com/category/reviews/ ) that all reviews that are paid now have a notice at the top, and all the links inside those posts are nofollowed. This will let my readers know which posts are paid, and also it will let Google know which links to not pass pagerank too.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and I hope you can see that I comply fully with the Google webmaster standards. I would be very greatful if you could return my pagerank to my blog. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Collin LaHay
http://collinlahay.com
I anticipated that Google would have thousands of requests to review, and it would take at least a month to get someone to take a look at it, but I guess I was wrong. It is now less than 48 hours since I submitted the request and my blog has had a manual review and it has passed the exam. My pagerank has been returned to a 4 and as far as I know, any penalties have been removed.
I hope this quick 15 minute guide will help you earn your pagerank back, and on a more personal note, I would like to thank BloggingMix for the initial inspiration of telling me to take 15 minutes out of my day to submit a request. Without that blog post, I wouldn’t have even cared about my pagerank because the traffic was still there. While I won’t get any more traffic now that my blog is a PR4, it is still nice to know that I don’t have any penalties on my domain.
I hope this quick guide helps you, and I look forward to everyone fixing their mistakes and getting their pagerank back. Good luck!
Fantastic man! I had bookmarked BloggingMix’s post when he wrote it, in case I ever needed it as a reference. Now I know I can come here or there when I need to reference this, though I shouldn’t unless I forget to “nofollow” paid links, but I just must be diligent in doing so.
Good One man!! I am also going to do it…to get out of google slap for one of my sites!!
Make sure you tell your advertisers that you are adding nofollow to their links. Or give them a refund.
I have announced that the whole time, and have never had any complaints…
I just cant figure out why people are all hang up on PR, it doesn’t bring you any extra traffic or sales to your site , the average surfer doesn’t even know about PR.
I think adding stuff to your code for “PR leakage is nonsense and a waste of time, but that is just me i guess
Keep up the good work.
Dave
Nice post, very informative. Thanks for the reconsideration letter example. Bookmarked!
Congrats, I actually submitted my own request to Google yesterday.
I’ve actually heard a lot of people say that they didn’t have to submit reconsideration requests, and that simply adding the nofollows and waiting was enough. I think I’d try that first, but that’s just me.
That method, you will never know if Google will notice that you fixed your ways. I don’t believe sending an email saying you fixed your errors will ever put you back farther than the penalty already has.
Wonderful!
Recently, they also reduced slashed my pr by one.
I am wondering whether I should write or leave it up.
(If I write, your post is going to help me!)
Wow, my PR went from 4 down to 2. I removed the ads I added 6 months ago and fired off a reconsideration request and 3 days later I am back to 4! My Google traffic increased 2 fold.
woohoo!
Thanks
-J.J.
Do you know them little widgets for your blog that allow you to sell links? My something list they are called. Well, some blogs are selling link like crazy and even though these are nofollow people still buy. I might give it a try
[...] with Google’s standards (as far as I can tell). I followed Collin’s instructions on how to get your pagerank back, including sending an email to Google letting them know that I’ve recognized the error of my [...]
Exposed SEO is very right, you can not remove the follow as advertisers might be buying the links for that particular purpose.
Its crazy though, your business is based on great content for readers and the way you make your money is from advertising, but you cannot give your clients valuable advertising (link love) without getting into trouble. Its actually wrong.
I think that there should be some sort of leeway. It needs to be relative to the number of advertisers. You are doing it in a “fair” way and not purposefully selling link love like so many other sites that abuse the system.
How did you know that Google took your pagerank because of those links. Unless I’m missing something, you could have incriminated yourself.
I normally follow the books pretty closely and those were the only two links I had forgotten to nofollow. A simple patch and my pagerank is back.