Help needed with a Google penalty

[buzzman]

Hi all,

I really need some SEO advice on 2 great domains which I have for the NL market. The domains are onlineroulette(dot)nl and online blackjack(dot).nl and I managed somehow to get them penalized by Google last november 2009. They now rank between page 4 & 7 for the keywords in their url since that time...

My feel is that are either in the sandbox (live aug 2009) or penalized, problably the last. I have changed all the inbound links plus anchors, internal linking structure, keywords density etc etc in the last months but to no avail.

Right now I really don't have a clue anymore what to do. Is there anything still wrong my sites which needs to be fixed or should I just wait (and wait) untill the penalty gets lifted?

Many thanks in advance for your advice!

[bonusbeast]

From what I have read on other webmaster forums is it will just take some time for the panalty(Google Prefers it not be called this) to be removed. In the meantime, just stay away from any of the practices that got you there in the first place.

[praxis]

Add google analytics to your sites and pay attention to the alerts messages as well as any suggestions. This will also make you look better with the Google bots.

[Buddy.]

Buzzman

Had a similar problem myself. Very frustrating, particularly if you have a site with good content.

You can get out of this but you need to do the following:

1. Reduce the factors that are likely to have triggered the penalty (it sounds as if you have done this already)

2. Submit a reconsideration request for the site via Google Webmaster Tools.
Ensure you identify the factors that you believe may have caused the problem and the corresponding corrective action that you have taken.

Google will get back to you at some stage (a couple of weeks usually) and will let you know that they are looking at the request.

Give it another couple of weeks before you can expect any impact (should your request be successful).

From my personal experience it's not worth waiting for the site to automatically drop out of any filter. I waited over 3 months and didn't see any changes. I then did a reconsideration request which did the job.

Good luck.

[Simmo!]

I have changed all the inbound links plus anchors...

Two thoughts here. Are the inbound links from other sites you own? If so, Google may have realised this and devalued them. Secondly, have you varied the anchor texts? If they are all the same it might produce an un-natural backlink profile, ditto the above effect. You want a smattering of keyword anchors, anchors on similar phrases and even the odd "click here" etc to make it more natural in my experience.