1. 301 recovery method


The first thing I'm going to do is download backups of my most important money sites that have been hit in cPanel and I'm going to purchase new domains for these.

There has been speculation that people have been hit across all their websites that are linked together on Webmaster Tools or have the same Whois (Domains all on GoDaddy account) so I'm going to register these domains on a different registrar. I'm going to go with namecheap.

I'm going to use different whois details (My brothers name) and try to make my address with a different variation.

Next, I'm going to completely cut out using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I'm going to use a different Analytics tool (Clicky)

I'm going to upload the backup on a different host than the one I've used that got hit and then upload the entire backup. Straight away I'm going to install the Wordpress Maintenance plugin so that I work on the site in offline mode. I know a lot of you don't want to go through content again and neither do I. I'm planning to just keep everything as it is. Think about it, it's an algorithm update, not a manual update. We can think Google high and mighty but to be honest they wouldn't have a clue that we've done this. Their algorithm metrics wouldn't be able to determine what we've just done above. Don't go through the trouble of buying new content. It's really not needed, I believe people just do it for their peace of mind.

Change your URL's where ever you may have to on this new Wordpress setup etc. Get the website ready for the live public.

Now we're going to remove the content and the entire website from your domain that got hit and setup a 301 redirect to the newly setup website. Here's the 301 code I'm going to use:

Code:
 Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/
Just change if you want to use www. or not.

Put this in the .htaccess of your root folder (usually public_html) in the affected domain.

Check that it's redirecting to your new domain by visiting the website. Also try different paths like domain.com/product-review/ to make sure all pages are redirecting properly.

Setup the new domain in your rank tracker. Give it about 2 weeks or less and things should start coming back.

If this is a Penguin refresh then you should be able to go with making more money for quite a while to come. This is great on algorithmic penalties, not so great on manual penalties. You should last for a while.

However, if Penguin has now been completely rolled into the Google search algorithm, this method is likely to only last 3-4 weeks, or not work at all. Either way I'll report what happens with my sites. My guess is that it's just a refresh, but if things go well in Google's eyes, they'll likely roll it into the search algorithm sometime before or after Christmas.

2. Build completely new and improved websites of your most profitable niche's that you think you can rank in again


Pretty much self explanatory, while reaping the money benefits from the first step, you should start working on re-building your most profitable niches into an authority website again with new methods.

I would say, get the websites up, the content up, blog posts up etc and start with building some basic social media links, profiles and citation links. Don't do anything too heavy duty. Do a simple press release and leave it at that.

By this time, let the links soak in for about 2-3 months and we should know what we're dealing with by then with Google and we'll know what the best procedures will be for link building by then. This way you'll be set to start ranking again and you'll have a head start on which methods to use.

Things to note:

- Stop using Google Analytics / Webmaster Tools etc for your websites. It's just not worth it anymore taking the risk.
- Start using Clicky or another analytics program
- Stop using @gmail.com accounts for your SEO related efforts (Everyone should already be doing this)
- Give it time on the new sites that you create before heavy link building like PBN's. Let's see what we're dealing with first. Don't listen to what anyone says because no one will know.

Costs:

To do the part 1 of this recovery method, depending on how many sites you have you only need to pay for the domain and hosting. Not too much you need to spend to try get your money back right?

To do part 2, not too bad either, just need extra money on the content. Depending on how many sites you want to salvage (I want to salvage 4) you shouldn't need to spend a lot to try this. I'll probably only end up spending $1,000 on performing the above two things on the 4 sites.

Conclusion:

I'm a bit busy now planning for a wedding (Yep I got caught at the best time :P) , but I'll build more on this as I start working on recovering my sites on the coming week. Anyone feel free to add to this or correct me on any assumptions I've made.

Also....

We're in this industry guys, It's as illusive as the stock market. If you're going to get upset when something like this happens then you're in the wrong game. We need to just pick up that first brick again and rebuild the wall.

For those of you that have had enough. Start getting into PPC. If you want to know a great place to start hit me up a private message. I just never found it as interesting as SEO but the resources I've got are amazing. I'll be happy to help out.