How to get out of a Google penalty?

[np2003]

We hired a freelancer SEO todo our SEO and I think our site fell into a Google penalty, we were ranked on page 1 for a certain keyword and now it is on page 4. Other keywords remain unaffected and the site's PR remains the same.

I think the penalty is due to to having too many inbound anchor text links being the same text?

The SEO guy informed me he bought lots of anchor links, plus he placed us on some wordpress themes (footer sponsorships).

We've told him to take down the links he bought, but what happens to all those sites linking to us now on their wordpress theme footers? Last count, we noticed thousands of domains linking back to us? There is no way we can contact these domain owners to ask them to remove their wordpress themes.

Does this mean our site will be in the penalty box forever? :(

[goodroi]

personally i am not against paid links. i use carefully selected paid links and have very nice rankings. your ros wordpress theme links is the exact opposite of carefully selected paid links. sorry but it is not surprising you are having trouble.

it is possible to come back from the brink. it will take some effort and time. personally i try to avoid using official reinclusion requests since it may expose other problems with your site.

step 1 - stop wordpress theme ros links. congrats you have already done this. over time some of the sites using your wordpress theme will switch to other themes or go offline. if your situation is really bad then you may want to consider paying a wordpress designer to make a better theme without your link. this could entice the current sites linking to you to upgrade their theme and thus stop linking to you.

step 2 - work on gradually getting new links with different anchor text. google generally does not respond well when you get a large amount of links overnight. they really dont like when you get 200 sites linking to you with the exact same anchor text in their footer. here are some suggestions for new links - give away content with links embedded in it, run a contest, support charities relevant to your industry, interview people with websites who are likely to link back to the interview page. ideally you want to gain links that are embedded in relevant content and not ros footer links which rarely ever get clicked.

step 3 - do your homework when hiring your next seo. ask for samples and references.

good luck:)

[bwnbwn]

I would do a reinclusion request. Add full details of what happened who you hired the seo's website and all that you have done to correct the issue. By not asking for a reinclusion your not really telling Google this was a bad mistake and you didn't know this SEO was buying or doing this type of activity. I assume you have fired this company so if this SEO paid for the footer links by him not paying they will all get deleted I hope.

[BenFox]

Depending on your site and the competition inyour niche you could also consider abandoning the site altogether and starting a new one.

Page 4 isn't that bad really so I would probably work on building some high quality links to my site like goodroi says and try to get a good selection of links that use your brand name as anchor text. If you don't see any movement then consider a reinclusion request.

[bwnbwn]

Page 4 and you dead. Well maybe excpt for a couple clicks a month.

[brinked]

step1. stop dealing with the freelance seo, you do not want someone who gets involved in link schemes.

step2. file a reconsideration request in google webmasters and tell them your exact situation.

step3. Do not get involved in link schemes. If it worked, everyone would do it.

You learned a valuable lesson, and you will never make this same mistake again. Consider it a valuable lesson, dont ask your freelancer for a refund and come out knowing you know a lot more than you did yesterday.

You should be fine.