Recovered From Manual Penalty, But Not Back In SERPs

[alvanorichie]

Hello,
We recovered from Google's manual penalty in January 2014. Afterwards, we changed our site design, fixed our content, fixed java scripting, disavowed bad links, increased our social presence, tried to engage customers in blog content, etc. But we still couldn't get our domain name back on SERPs. (It wont show our site even on first page if I search "keyword" on Google.com)
What should we do to bring our domain name back on the SERP?
What About Sandbox? What we need to do to get out our domain name from sand box?

Any comments or thoughts will be really appreciated

Best.


P.S: It was manual link penalty

[edited by: not2easy at 2:17 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2014]
[edit reason] specific terms replaced with "keyword" [/edit]

[GreyBeard123]

The "keyword"

Is that your site name, or your site's main keyword?

[edited by: not2easy at 2:19 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2014]
[edit reason] replaced specific term [/edit]

[alvanorichie]

Its our site`s main keyword. Not a brand name though.

[TheMadScientist]

Its our site`s main keyword. Not a brand name though.

I would worry more about the brand name than the "main keyword" personally -- There are numerous reports of having a penalty lifted and sites not only staying in the same place, but also dropping farther in the rankings.

My best advice is to build the brand, get people to search for the brand-name and worry about "keywords" you would like to rank for some other time, especially if you're after longevity.

[GreyBeard123]

Normally I will speculate and say that you lost rankings due to the fact that you removed/disavowed all the links that gave you good rankings...

But...

You state that you’ve recovered from a manual link penalty...

Why then was it necessarily for you to disavowed links thereafter?

[Shai]

Unfortunately, the days of recovering from a manual penalty and regaining all previous rankings are long gone. What you are describing is much more the norm these days. What you will find though, is that now, new links will help the site climb up the rankings where's before the penalty was lifted, no matter how many links you manage to get for the site, the rankings would remain abysmal.

In short, what you are experiencing is normal. Find/source/bait a few quality links and watch your rankings react in a much better manner.