How do I Get Rid of Penalty?

[milean]

I suspect 4 of my sites have been penalized for crosslinking. I have removed the links among the sites, but they are still not in the top 1000 results for the main key phrases.

Is it possible to get rid of the penalty by dropping the penalized domains and replacing them with new ones. The content will remain the same.

(Each site has PR 3+ and and has 600-1,000 pages in the index related to its theme.) BTW, all of the sites were in top #5 for the main key phrase until Jan. 24.

Thank you!

[Crush]

Maybe look at this [webmasterworld.com...]

[cbpayne]

>Each site has PR 3+ and and has 600-1,000 pages

So if they have PR and pages are in the index, what makes you think it has a penalty?

[milean]

Crush, thanks for your link. Maybe I'll post my piece there...

[milean]

cbpayne, I think there is a penalty, because all of the sites were scoring in top 5 for their main key phrase until Jan. 24 and have now disappeared. I have removed the crosslinking, but they haven't reappeared.

They are all big sites with 600-1,000 pages each, related to the main key phrase theme, so if there was no penalty, they should score at least within the top 1,000 results! Don't you think?

[MHes]

I would not think in terms of "penalty" as "being ignored". You have pr, you're in the index, it's your keywords that are being ignored. Try completely changing your whole approach to seo if the site has been dead for so long.

[Schneewittchen]

@mhes
as you say, G now "ignoring" 99% of my site? i dont know what kind of penalising it will be, so im not able to change anything...i dont know what? i cant find my page on top when i search for mydomain.com - only spammers. when G ignore "some keywords" why not for all? why the greatest spammer in my line of buisiness still listet in G-Serps 1 - 10? (affiliate-pages, copied content a.s.o.)
@milean, you are only one of thousands of webmasters they are missing sites in Google for the moment. this pages are imho(!) not completely removed, only "missed"...perhaps a new sort order, G have some technical problems or data lost. take a look in other threads...all the same.

[MHes]

Do you come up for other phrases that you have not targetted? I suspect you have overdone the optimisation on the keywords you want to appear for. Make sure you do not have too many internal links, either within your site or from other sites, with the keyword phrase in. Make the inbound links more natural and less targetted, by using a variety of matching words which describe your subject. Do not match the page title and h1 and bold tags with all the same phrase. Make the pages focus on a topic as a whole, rather than one phrase. In other words, throw out the old optimisation and try a softer and more gentle approach, with broad match terms linking to more useful and varied topics around your theme.
When did you remove the cross linking? Google often shows changes in the cache but I suspect ranking sometimes isn't effected for many weeks. I have had sites come back after 2 weeks since a change was spidered and cached.

Good luck

[Schneewittchen]

>>Do you come up for other phrases that you have not targetted?<<

no, G have only 20 sites in cache now...from over 200.000 (most sites are dynamical php-sites)impossible to find anything ;)

>>I suspect you have overdone the optimisation on the keywords you want to appear for.<<

oh, i think it is legitim to use "mysitename" in each sites as title, the sitename is also the main- keyword. many of my sites have a "mainkeyword city" title,description and <b>-tags. "mykeyword + city" - visitors are also relevant as "mykeyword"-visitors.
the "professional spammers" still GOOD listet since many years and all Quality Guidlines from Google are ignored:
-----------------------
Quality Guidelines
Avoid hidden text or hidden links. -> YES
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. -> YES
Don't send automated queries to Google. -> I DONT KNOW
Don't load pages with irrelevant words -> YES,YES
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. -> YES and yes and yes.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. -> yes yes yes.............yes.
--------------------------

and so on....a little SEO will be penalised, do it very hard and you will be listet great for the future?
i can post 20 SPAM urls from other sites in my business -> no problem, only search for "keyword city" and getting serp 1 to 10. i have a more relevant AND REAL page for this search and beeing listet after 10 sites of spam and affiliate-pages. oh...no, now never.

>>Make sure you do not have too many internal links, either within your site or from other sites, with the keyword phrase in.<<

i have a "large" community, the internal link strukture is the same for each site, profiles, guestbooks, last visiors aso...so there are more than 1 million links
impossible to remove...it was 3 years ok, now im a spammer?

[MHes]

"i think it is legitim to use "mysitename" in each sites as title"

You might, but Google may not. Keyword domains have been a problem for google and perhaps they are ignoring your keyworddomain and thus your main keyword. With "a million links in" you probably are triggering a filter. Try removing the keyword from your pages and replace it with a graphic, so most of the occurances appear as a link in only. Its very difficult to comment but I still think your problem is you are over cooking the optimisation, especially with having a keyword domain. Think of it from their perspective, you may appear as a spammer, although it sounds like you have a legitimate site which is not spam.

[Schneewittchen]

[irony start]
Google have kicked 2 of my domains, thats sure now. i dont know why. Google is God, when G say im a spammer, than i have to live thereby. i dont need Google for new members, i have made my page for users not for a godlike search engine. it concerns to me only the principle. spammers are better listet than my REAL page, good luck for the future - without me, hope G feel better now and his adwords makes G richly.
[/irony end]