Hi I have a website and I am a victim of bad links, I agree I did many myself in 2011, yet I do want to be found once again after Penguin. So I am curious if I were to change my Domain name and just basically repost my site with a new domain, will this basically look like a new site to the search engines thus I don't have to worry about the bad links that I have while I get the other domain cleaned up? I mean I went from top 5 on page one to page 12. But I have NO manual penalty. Its just an algorithm issue. Just looking for your thoughts on this strategy. Thanks
Hey Colochris, a whopping No. The best and safest way to handle bad links (especially when you are a victim of a malicious attack) is to disavow your links. The simplest way to do it is to upload a list of the bad links to Google's Disavow Links Tool. It's simple, I'll show you how to do it in a second. But first, please read the following important warning by Google: "This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you." ...and this is how you do it: Create a full list of the bad links that point to your site. Create a .txt file encoded in UTF-8 and list the links. If you want to remove all the links from a specific domain (e.g. "evil-links.com") simply write the following line:domain:evil-links.com(make sure you use www only when appropriate)You can add comments for Google's spam team - just make sure it begins with "#".For example:#I've contacted this site asking to remove the links several times, but they refused to write back Then upload the list to the Disavow Links Tool page (sorry, I can't add a link for some reason). Then, simply wait. This may take up to several weeks. Okay - this was part one. Part two is very simple - don't stop working on your site. Push on through, create more great stuff and help people, and get good links by helping and getting the recognition I'm sure your site deserves. Good luck! And by no means ever give up. I prey your site gets back on its feet as soon as possible, and that whoever it is who created those links for you gets what he deserves
To answer your question, probably. If you start a new site with a new domain it should be seen as a new site by the search engines. I suppose it's possible that if you put all the same content on the new site and register the new site under the same Google Webmaster Tools account, that Google may associate the two, but I haven't seen anyone say that's happened to them. I'm not saying starting over the best option, just answering your question. In regards to Bakemacake's response. If you've received a manual penalty, disavowing isn't enough. Google wants you to put some effort into getting the spammy links removed. So, you may need to do more than just submit a disavow file. As to whether removing links and using the disavow tool is the best option, it just depends on how bad the problem is. If have thousands of links and almost all of them are spammy, then it may not be worth the time/expense cleaning it up. In either case, Bakemacake is right that you need to also grow out the issue. Whether it's with a new site or the old, produce quality, remarkable content and connect with people.
Clean up the other site. There are many algo changes that may have effected your site aside from bad backlinks. You need to find out ALL the issues before it can be fixed. Just disavowing links alone may do little to nothing.
Disavow is the way to go, if it doesn't work do not redirect the old website, use the content on a new domain and on the old site use the canonical tag but don't 301 the url or you might simply redirect the penalty.