Ah the most recent dreaded message of Google Webmasters – “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to … enter your website address here”. When you receive this message you're essentially notified that Google believes you are gaming the SERP results with use of highly optimized backlinks. As a result, Google will slap on a penalty to your website that will take approximately 3 to 5 weeks and will kill your ranking for the keywords they believe you have been building links for.
Now I am not going to say that you should've used white hat techniques or black hat for that matter and I am not going to say which is better. But what I will say is that I have seen Google penalize websites with the Unnatural links message on both white or black hat method using websites. So there is no point starting a flame war as to what is best.
The reason for this penalty is very simple, links to the website, bought or organic, are too optimized for a specific keyword(s) and Google is noticing an above average amount of these highly keyword optimized backlinks to your website. In most cases Google is seeing an extremely large ratio of your backlinks consisting of these keyword specific backlinks and thus they believe you are using an unnatural way to control and add your backlinks.
If you think like Google, Google wants to find a website that is the main hub of information for specific areas of the internet and they determine what website is the main hub by checking the backlinks to a website. If a website has more contextual backlinks coming to it and also has other links pointing to it from other websites in their niche, then Google believes this website to be the main hub, or the authority website.
Google knows that a backlink will not say a specific keyword in every hyperlink, most likely a natural backlink to a website will consist of Click here to view this website or if you want more information go to – … The natural backlink will not say the specific keywords such as – Webmaster SEO Advice. Google does know that some backlinks may provide exact keywords, but they do not believe that the majority of your backlinks will say this exact phrase every time and if the majority of the backlinks to a website say these exact keywords, then Google decides there is something not right about the website.
So that is the short explanation of what the message means, now how you get out of Google penalty box is quite simple. You can either go and delete all these backlinks that are overly optimized and then ask for Google to reconsider… which I highly recommend “Against”. The other option is to create backlinks that are natural looking backlinks that use relevant wording to your website. So if you wish to create backlinks or buy backlinks, you would want to consider using hyperlink such as, Beginning Webmaster SEO, Click here for SEO Advice, SEO for Webmasters, etc… But don't use exact keyword phrases and don't use keywords that your website is currently highly optimized for.
After you have created enough natural looking backlinks to your website, Google will remove your penalty. Now I am not sure of the ratio for highly optimized backlinks to natural backlinks before Google gives a penalty, but my advice is to build at least half your current backlinks in a natural looking fashion to get your website out of the penalty situation.
I have been able to get websites out of the penalty in about 2 to 4 weeks but some have taken as long as 8 to 10 weeks before Google decided the website is kosher.
If you have any questions or suggestions you would like to add to this article, please leave a comment below.