Google's Pure Spam Manual Action: Matt Cutts on How to Fix it

　　Recently, Google has released a series of videos which are designed to discuss various kinds of web spam and to help website owners to resolve spam issues that have been recognized on their websites. In addition, series of videos discuss about what kind of manual spam action your website has been affected and what are the necessary steps that you have to consider to fix the issues before sending a reconsideration request to Google?
　　Moreover, Google added a new feature in GWT called as "Manual Action" which helps webmasters to check whether Google has taken a manual action against their site.

Pure Spam

When website implements egregious types of spam actions such as cloaking, scraping, throwaway domains then those sites comes under pure spam. If you get message to manual action from Google, then it is the more difficult to come out of it.
　　
　　 Before, sending your reconsideration request to Google, you need to ensure that website is clean and clear out of spam. While you’re working on link profile to clean up all spam links, you need to remove the links which violate Google quality guidelines.
　　
　　    Matt Cutts stated that, it is eminent for webmasters who are working to clean up pure spam issues need to prepare document everything they do. Be more cautious before filing a reconsideration request.

Spam Definitions from Google and What You Can Do About It

Clocking/ Sneaky Redirects

Google considers website as spam, when site uses cloaking technique i.e., presenting different content to users and search engines) or redirecting users to different page. This method is regarded as violation of Google's webmaster quality guidelines because as it provides distinct results to users. When you caught by Google, remove cloaking, unorthodox redirect and give a re-inclusion try.

What to do?

Before taking action, check Google's webmaster guidelines on cloaking and sneaky redirects.

• Later, follow few steps to come out of this kind of spam technique.
• Make use of fetch as Google page in GWT to fetch affected area pages.
• Evaluate the content fetched by the Google as well as content seen by the human user when visiting your site.
• If the content varies, remove the part of your site that is presenting different to Google and users.
• Later, check your website URLs that redirect users to other pages. Find those URLs and remove the part of URLs that generate these redirects. For this, you need to look over source code.

Note: You can find these types of redirects in JavaScript or in .htaccess file.

Hidden text/ Keyword Stuffing

　　Hidden text is a content that appears only to search engines rather than a user. Website owners use different strategies such as hiding text with CSS, or writing information in white text on a white background. Those all strategies are generally done to boost up their website ranking.
　　 On the other hand, keyword stuffing refers to excessive use of keywords like adding multiple keywords to alt tags, in titles and descriptions. Do site audit to find stuffing and hidden text and then submit a re-inclusion.

What to do?

Same as in Cloaking technique, use fetch as Google tool to check for the content that is seen by crawlers but isn't visible to users.
Remove such kind of keywords within the text.

Thin Content With Little or No Added Value

　　If you find this message on the manual action viewer, it means Google has identified that your site consists of low quality or shallow pages which don't provide user with relevant content.　　

What to do?

　　Check for the irrelevant and thin content on your site.
　　In addition, check doorway pages and auto generated content and adds depth, unique content which adds high value and relevancy.

Hacked Site

　　Few pages of your site may have been hacked by a third party. So, webmasters have to take immediate action and should fix it. Hackers modify or upload the files which in turn appear as spam in your index.

What to do?

Make use of security software to prevent such kind of spam techniques.

Unnatural links to your site

Google identifies a pattern of unnatural and manipulative links linking to your site such as buying links or participating in link schemes techniques, in order to pass page ranks. As a result, it gives manual spam action to your site. 

What to do?

From GWT, download list of links to your site, and arrange them in proper order.
Later, Contact website owner and ask him to remove your links.
Use rel=nofollow attribute to prevent from passing page rank.
Last, use disavow tool to clean up left links which were unable to get removed.

User generated Spam

　　Google sends a message to manual action in GWT if it finds user-generated content. This kind of spam can be seen in forum and guest pages. Best thing is to clean up the spam and implement methods such as community flagging, verified registrations to prevent such kind of spam technique.

Penalties Addressed Now What?

　　After modifying the necessary changes and addressing your penalties, you can submit reconsideration request to Google. Before that, think about few things before submitting.

• Make sure that you have placed all the things in the reconsideration request and all the files such as document and send the link to web spam team.
• Make sure that you have made necessary changes to fix the issues.

　　After submitting reconsideration request, if you haven't got any message be patient and check for a message in Google webmaster tools.