Can a Reconsideration Request cause banning?

[SEOPanda]

We're pretty confident we have a keyword level penalty for one of our main keywords. It doesn't rank no matter what we do. Rest of the site ranks strong. PR6 site.

We wanted to check our backlinks for this keyword to ensure they are 100%, and remove any suspicious ones. Once this is done, I wanted to do a re-inclusion request. The worry here is that if we do this, Google will manually check our backlinks. If they find something fishy with a different link, can they put a penalty on our whole site?

Has anyone had any experience with something like this, where they had a re-inclusion request backfire on them?

Thanks

[Andem]

In order to do a reconsideration request and be successful, you're going to have to know exactly what they found (if anything) that was against the Webmaster Guidelines. You would normally have to outline that in the original request and detail what you've done to rectify anything which may have gotten you that penalty.

If you did spam links, then specify what you have done to fix the issue. If there are more than you have been unable to remove, outline what steps you've taken and why they were unsuccessful.

I doubt there are 'keyword penalties'. Probably Google using their flawed algorithms to determine your pages don't make the cut.

[SEOPanda]

I doubt there are 'keyword penalties'.

Matt Cutts confirmed this.

[Planet13]

Matt Cutts confirmed this.

I have to ask how you got Matt Cutts to comment directly on your site. It seems to me that this is no easy task.

I hope that you passed along to Senor Spam Man that it would be a GREAT thing if in the responses to the reconsideration requests, they added a little more of a clue as to what the violations might be related to, instead of just "your site still violates our TOS etc..."

[n00b1]

I think he meant Matt Cutts confirmed that keyword penalties exist.

[SEOPanda]

I have to ask how you got Matt Cutts to comment directly on your site. It seems to me that this is no easy task.

Never said he commented directly on my site... he said in a video that there are keyword level penalties.

But back to my original question... has anyone had any problems with other penalties when trying to do a reinclusion request?

Thanks everyone!

[MonkFish]

I have had keyword penalties before.

It is normally in relation to the anchor text distribution and that something does not look right with the link profile. It could also be that you have over optimised the content for that keyword in a "spammy" way.

[MonkFish]

On another note this is only the case if it has ranked before but was not ranking now. Otherwise it may be as suggested and you just do not have the relevance for that keyword.

[MonkFish]

But back to my original question... has anyone had any problems with other penalties when trying to do a reinclusion request?

Thanks everyone!

It can happen. If you are certain that there is nothing else on the rest of the website which could be hurting you and you have gone through your anchor text distribution and backlink profile then file the inclusion request.

I would suggest perhaps hiring an agency or a consultant to go through everything with you (extra pair of eyes help). FYI I do neither so not trying to get business :)

[mhansen]

I have had keyword penalties before.

We lost all serp traffic on one of our high value phrases last year. "kw1 kw2". In our case, we determined it was over-optimization or as some to say, an OOP penalty. We had linked extensively onsite to the section, and the page was very optimized (images, meta, titles, headings, video, alt-data, etc) for the kw1 kw2 phrase.

We scaled it back and I want to say it was a complete 5-6 months later that it finally came back into the serp's.

Regarding the reconsideration request... I have done them and it would be an absolute last resort for me now. When you submit the request, make sure EVERY website you are a part of and can be connected to, is virginal clean.

Your reputation is based on the sum of all your efforts, not the single one you bring to their attention.

Just my .02 cents.

[SEOPanda]

Otherwise it may be as suggested and you just do not have the relevance for that keyword.

This could be it as well, and would be the toughest nut to crack.