How to Write a Successful Google Reconsideration Request

• We own a site that has triggered a Google manual action, specifically, an unnatural links notice. We believe this was the result of some poor link building done by our SEO company. I think we've managed to reverse most of the damage but would appreciate some guidance on the reconsideration request we apparently need to submit. What tips can you give us?

Answer: First off, congratulations on doing what most site owners fail to do these days: ask for help.

In your case, you've most likely received the Unnatural Links to your Site - Impacts Links manual notice. A copy of that notice can be found below.

This notice is the most common penalty that you may experience on your site or a client's site. Google has noted artificial, deceptive, manipulative and thus "unnatural" links into your site. Google doesn't want to put any trust in these links but is willing to give you the "benefit of the doubt" and has taken targeted action against these links because they may be outside of your control.

Full information on the penalty can be found here including a video from Matt Cutts explaining the penalty and how it should be approached.

For the sake of this answer, we are assuming you've already managed to identify the suspect links and have either removed them or formatted and submitted a disavow file containing those that still remain. Once you've done that, you can start putting together a reconsideration request.

Fortunately, Google recently made substantial progress in improving the transparency of the Manual Penalty process in 2015. They