If manual spam actions have been imposed by Google's spam team due to non-compliance with Google-compliant search engine optimization, resulting in parts of a domain or the entire domain receiving lower rankings, the backlink profile of the affected domain should be analyzed carefully and with due consideration.
Across-the-board measures and wholesale removals affecting entire groups of domains are more likely to result in the domain ranking significantly worse after the cleanup and removal of the manual spam actions than it did before the penalty. Using reliable SEO tools and the corresponding individual analysis, harmful backlinks should be identified one by one and the associated pages or domains gradually added to the Disavow list. Having backlinks removed individually instead of adding them to the Disavow list generally requires an enormous amount of effort, which is often disproportionate to the benefit.
Based on experience, several attempts are usually required before a request for reconsideration of the penalized domain is approved. The assistance now provided by the Google Spam Team Germany to search engine optimizers is particularly welcome. If a request for reconsideration of the affected website is rejected, it is accompanied by several specific example pages that are flagged by the spam team, making the search for harmful backlinks much easier.
