It is predicted that the future link building scam offers will promise to take care linking issues for sites, for them to regain its position in Google.

However, not all of them will be scam. It is not impossible to get rid of sufficient spammy links from the website and make it eligible again for Google.

Prior of starting the pain-sticking process of eliminating all bad links, you should understand that there are numerous other reasons as well which caused your site to drop in the rankings. Your website’s links are not always directly related to the ranking of your site and ranking penalty or removal are not always caused by Google warning messages.

These unnatural links are not newly discovered by Google, it’s just Google has decided to notify you about them.

Obviously, Google will not reveal you the precise URLs they suspect of being unnatural. Google doesn’t want to warn link networks that they were spotted until all suspicious links are found.
Below are just seven situations that could change the ranking of your website:

1. Competitor sites have obtained extra valid high trust link for the superiority of their content

This is certainly the most pleasant situation, as there is no cheating involved and your competitor has higher quality content.

In order to regain your former rankings you can:
– find other high trust links for your website’s content;
– publish quality content to attract more links;
– cheat and eventually get into trouble.

2. Google’s Algorithmic Signals Were Updated

Google’s algorithm is updated quite frequently adjust the way pages, text, links are scored.

Maybe you’ve had Rank No.4 when something unique was considered very important. However, your site will drop if the signal strength for that particular signal is modified by Google.

3. A Valid Website Pointing to Your Website Has Been Closed Down

Websites and web pages sometimes are shut down for various reasons. Trusted websites make no exception. Links from website that are closed down are not taken in consideration by Google.

4. You Played Fair, but Your Competitor Cheated and Has Obtained a Higher Ranking

This can be extremely disturbing, especially if you are convinced that your competitor’s link building tactics are based on cheating and it is obvious that has low quality content. Should you just wait and let Google to discover and drop the bad links? In most cases, this is the best idea, as bad links are frequently detected by Google.

5. Google Decreased the Value of Sites Pointing to your Site and Which Helped You Achieve a Higher Ranking

This is not very easy to explain and for that we have to go back in time when Google decided to bring down the value of directory links.

Such directory links were not actual bad links. The submittal of a website to several directories to get a higher ranking was not cheating at all. However, eventually Google had enough of these link directories which only existed to monetize the link building rush and started to simply ignore links from low quality link directories. These directories did not exist anymore for Google. Even if you had over 200 links from directories, from the time Google decided not to consider anymore, your site lost all credits provided by those links.

That was not a penalty, it was just the consequence of Google’s decision not to give importance to those questionable quality directories.

6. You Used Spammy Linking Tactics and Got Caught

If you purchased anchor text links with high Pagerank or took part in link network and your website has been compromised, that’s it, you have to face the consequences. But, you should try to clean your sites from such links.

7. Your Website Has Been Attacked by Malicious Negative SEO

Although, this seldom occurs, it does happen sometimes. There are people who claim they have done nothing wrong and they are only victims of negative SEO attacks.

However, the negative effect on your ranking should not last for long, but you should in all cases contact Google about your particular case.

These are only seven possible situations that can affect the rank of your website. Several others can also be responsible for it.

It is often recommended not do anything till you see a change in your rankings. A letter about unnatural links from Google doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will be penalized.