With the demise of many popular private blog networks (too many to name) you might find yourself the unlucky recipient of a “unnatural link building” message in your Google Webmaster Tools.

It is probably one of the most threatening messages you can possibly receive and I wouldn’t blame you if you jumped out of your chair and started to freak out. It is a very serious message, but this article will aim to put your mind at ease.

First thing is first, this message is more than likely an algorithm flag that has been tripped by Google detecting that a large number of your backlinks are being deindexed.

Don’t get me wrong lots of backlinks will fall off over the years as your site progresses but when it happens on a rapid rate Google has now integrated a system which will act as a warning message to Webmasters. Awhile back, I was reading Matt Cutts blog and he stated that they have integrated an automatic messaging system, which warns Webmasters of unnatural backlink building. So please don’t panic.

Now, there are number of things that you need to do in order to handle the situation properly. DO NOT submit your site for re-inclusion because 9 times out 10 this will mean the death of your website or it will take Google 2-3 months before they can actually get around to checking your sites profile to make sure there isn’t any funny business going on.

If you did resubmit your site to Google you would be under manual review and I have read countless horror stories about websites never coming back and many of them didn’t realize the severity of submitting your site to Google for re-inclusion. Please don’t overreact and send them a message. Just ignore it like nothing happen.

Your Caught – You Used Private Blog Networks

Next, do not go into your “private blog networks” such as Buildmyrank.com and delete all of your post. This is one of the worst things you can do. In fact, I would highly encourage that you act as if nothing happen and don’t over react as I believe if you do Google finds you guilty. That is just my personal assumption on that, so please take it with a grain of salt. Other SEO’s might argue with me on that.

Depending on the number of links you acquired from these private blog networks is going to determine what happens to your site in the next couple of weeks. Bare in mind that these links will drop off naturally seeing how the private blog network you used gets sniffed out.

Rankings Drop – Yes or No?

Let’s say that you used private blog networks as your main backlink building strategy. Then you can bet that in a couple weeks your rankings are going to drop drastically as Google will devalue your backlinks from these networks. Keep in mind that authority and aged domains can get away with much more spammy backlinks as they are an authority and Google won’t act so rashly on them.

Fixing Your Wrong

Now that you have learned your lesson with private networks you can take the necessary actions to fix these problems it might have caused to you. One thing that strikes me odd is last week I was reading some post on The Warrior Forum and people are panicking. People now want to move onto another private network once there favorite blog network gets hit by Google.

DO NOT keep using this strategy for building backlinks. In fact, take it as a lesson learned and learn from your mistakes. You are going to now need to build quality links from quality sites. You need to increase your backlink profile and it’s not going to be easy to repair any losses in rankings that your might have incurred. In order to do this you can do a number of things:

Guest Post – One of the best methods of building links. You can use Myblogguest.com to find related authority sites in your niche. Furthermore, you can use a number of Google modifiers such as “your keyword” (or something related and “”+guest post”.

Majestic SEO – Another great method is to use Majestic SEO and run a report on all the sites in the top 10 results of Google for your keyword. For best results do research on their root domain and not an internal page. This will provide you with thousands of relevant sites to link prospect.

Alexa – Another great option is to go to Alexa.com and do research on all the top ten sites in Google for your keyword. Click on “referring domains” and try to get links from the same sites that are linking to them.

Think of it this way you are building relationships with other webmasters in your niche. Asking for referrals and other sites they might own once you get a handful of connections is always a plus. Many webmasters own hundreds or even thousands of sites. Try not to come off as a spammer and actually take the time to write them. Short and sweet, but keep it personal if you can for the best results.

In conclusion, if you have been hit with the “unnatural backlinks detected” message take it as a warning to change your ways. True, it might have worked for a couple of years, but Google is at war with private blog networks and you would be foolish to keep trying them. Realize that you were participating in shady backlink building and you need to change your tactics.

Also, feel free to integrate social signals into your strategies as Google has been hinting at this for years. Know that SEO is always changing and you need to stay current with what works and what doesn’t work. In due time you will be able to recover from participating on private blog networks, but it is going to take some hard work to get your rankings back.

Image Credit: Stuart Miles