Paid links caused a ranking problem - how to repair the damage?

[Zennya]

Greetings to all,

I was asked to help an owner of a business after three years to find out why is domain dropped under a particular key word term. The possible answer, he used three different SEO companies, all selling links.

The last company added over 10,000 new links in a very small amount of time. He did not budge an inch, during this period of time. Now he is hovering on the top of the second page under the one keyword term, but does very well over all on others.

Many of the sites have now been blocked from Google, and many still remain. I have been trying to remove them, but in some cases their is no way of doing this.

I have managed to have him stop buying or working with any company at this time. Yet this is difficult and frustrating since everyone who does talk to him says it is all about links, links, links.

I have tried over the years when I did work at him explain what it takes to have a good website. Regarding links, it is a matter of how good is the link, verses how many.

I can see Google is weeding many of these sites out, will they all just drop off? Or do I keep trying to remove them? Or?

I would love the company who sold him the links to remove them, yet this is not going to happen. They got their money.

Any assistance would be very helpful.

Thank you,

Zennya

[Planet13]

Hi there, Zennya:

I have to ask this: do you really want this guy as a client?

If he has used three different companies (before you), then he is obviously grasping at straws in terms of ranking, especially if he has allowed them to buy links.

I just don't think he will appreciate the hard work you will need to do to get his site ranking well, no matter what you do.

So let me ask you this: Do you BELIEVE in his site? Do you believe that the content is good enough that it SHOULD rank at the top of the google results?

If no, then I would personally walk away from it.

If so, well, it is going to be a challenge if he suffers from an Over Optimization Penalty (OOP). If you search this forum for Over Optimization Penalty you should be able to find several people who have incurred such a penalty and they will usually list what they have done to overcome it and how long it took. I think some people took three months, some six months, some a year, some 18 months.

Some never overcame it.

One piece of advice though: I would go through the site again and again, because there could very well be a TECHNICAL problem that is preventing it from ranking.

For example:

I personally thought I had a penalty on an INTERNAL page until someone pointed out that I had accidentally noindex tagged my HOME page. Well, after removing the noindex tag on the homepage, the internal page started ranking again.

[Zennya]

Greetings Planet13,

*smiling* I love your response, and I do slap my hand against my forehead for even venturing into this situation to be honest. I also think he will not appreciate the hard work it has taken or will take. He is kind of a instant gratification guy to be honest.

I have looked for technical problems on the site, and well its all been redone and cleaned up. All seems very good there. I do believe by how Google is acting it is targeting the keyword phrases, the SEO guys all targeted. No I have not turned them in...

I do have an attachment to the site, I am the one who originally took him from brick and mortar to the WWW. And for over 6 years he was number one across the board. Do to hard work, good original content and I was extremely picky with links. Then I left. It has not been right since.

I have all the documents from the last SEO firm, they did send us everything from content post, to packet feeds to link wheel etc. Most of it has been dropped by Google, but a large percentage still exist. Yet it is a tangle web of a mess.

I am not sure he has the patience or I at this point. I have read a few post on OOP and I also told him this could take a long time. True some never overcomes it.

I do appreciate your frankness, and the possibility of walking away seems like it may just be. It is what it is.

Thank you so much, and good to meet you.

Sincerely Zennya