New SEC rules require CEO-workforce pay ratio disclosure

WASHINGTON — Companies will have to provide investors with a ratio showing how the median pay of their workforce squares with their chief executive officers' compensation, according to new rules adopted by U.S. securities regulators on Wednesday.

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Nevada's Fernley leads nation in house flipping

The Northern Nevada town, near where electric car maker Tesla is building its $5 billion battery factory, ranked No. 1 in the nation for home flips in the second quarter, according to California research firm RealtyTrac.

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Nation’s jobless rate jumps to 6.3%

AUSTRALIA’S jobless rate jumped to 6.3 per cent in July despite the creation of tens of thousands of new positions, official data showed today.

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New luxury Vegas meeting venue isn't on the Strip — PHOTOS

Las Vegas' newest venue for small conferences, corporate retreats, weddings and parties isn't in a Strip resort.

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Website, mobile app malfunctions plague Allegiant Air

Officials at Allegiant Air were appealing for customer patience Wednesday as the Las Vegas-based airline's website and mobile booking app malfunctioned, frustrating passengers trying to check in for flights.

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Penn National closer to Tropicana Las Vegas buy

Nevada gaming regulators granted preliminary approval Wednesday for Penn National Gaming to acquire the Tropicana Las Vegas for $360 million.

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World Market Center hosts huge industry show — PHOTOS

The World Market Center's Las Vegas Summer Market is running this week. The event, billed as the most comprehensive furniture, home decor and gift market in the western United States, runs through Thursday at the 5 million square-foot venue, according to organizers.

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Media boss guilty of drink driving

‘HE SMELLED strongly of intoxicating liquor’. The media executive who complained of chest pains when police went to breath test him by police has been found guilty of drink driving.

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Nevada Tesla battery plant 'on track' for 2016 startup

Tesla CTO J.B. Straubel says the Nevada battery plant is "on track" for production startup in early 2016.

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Commercial real estate developers go back on the bus

A trade group that represents commercial real estate developers is bringing back a big program it cut during the recession.

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Whoa — Donald Trump Earns His Money in Some Unexpected Ways

No matter what you think of Donald’s politics, personality or hairstyle, there’s one thing we can all agree on: The name Trump makes you think of dollar signs.

Now that he’s running for president, Donald Trump has to be upfront about finances by reporting through the Federal Election Commission.

Trump’s public financial disclosure report, released last week, doesn’t explain dollar-for-dollar how much The Donald is worth; instead, it provides ranges of earnings rather than hard numbers. This is typical, but makes it somewhat more difficult to pin down the mogul’s moneymakers.

However, the report does reveal several of the entrepreneur’s surprising income streams. Heidi Moore at Mashable dug into the filing to find out some of the most unusual ways Donald Trump makes money.

Book Royalties: Not a Sure Bet

After you sell your book idea or manuscript and cash your advance check, as many published authors can tell you, you’re not likely to make money again. Royalty checks are like unicorns.

Trump has seen both sides of the publishing coin, his financial report reveals — did you know he’s written 15 books?

2011’s Time to Get Tough earned him between $50,000 and $100,000 in royalties last year. And his first book, The Art of the Deal (1987) earned between $15,000 and $50,000.

But 10 of his other titles earned less than $200 in royalties last year.

Still, earning close to six figures on a book that’s been out for four years is a pretty great payoff. And if Trump stays in the GOP race for the long haul, he’s likely to see a surge in book sales.

Speaking Engagements: Sign Us Up

“People are paying a lot of money to hear Trump speak — generous, since he does it a lot, very loudly and frequently for free,” Moore commented regarding Trump’s disclosed speaking engagements.

But while you’re likely to hear Trump spouting off the moment you turn on your TV — and we’re not even talking about Apprentice reruns — business professionals seem keen to compensate Trump for his time.

A speaking engagement before the International Council of Shopping Centers in December 2014 paid $50,000, and a speech before the National Multifamily Housing Council in April 2015 paid $100,000.

It seems easy to stand up and speak in front of executives, but Trump’s decades of experience (plus all those business advice books) have prepared him to take on those speaking engagements. Unfortunately, you’re not likely to command the same price to speak at your local Chamber of Commerce.

Visit Mashable to catch Moore’s roundup of Trump’s income streams. An accompanying report by Mashable colleague Brian Ries includes an embedded document of the entire financial disclosure report.

Your Turn: Are you surprised by the ways The Donald makes money?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Lisa Rowan is a writer, editor and podcaster based in Washington, DC.

The post Whoa — Donald Trump Earns His Money in Some Unexpected Ways appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Facebook Launches Periscope Rival, But Only For Celebrities

Facebook limits new live-streaming video feature to public figures.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Eldorado Resorts grows profits, but revenues decline

Reno-based Eldorado Resorts grew its profits in the second quarter, but saw overall revenue decline slightly.

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10 Things You Should Never Buy Online

There are some things you should never buy online. See the list of items that are just too good to be true.

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10 Things You Should Never Buy Online

There are some things you should never buy online. See the list of items that are just too good to be true.

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Marketing Day: Facebook Pages Update, Twitter’s Bulk Editing Tool & More

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Obama warns against blocking Iran nuclear deal

President Barack Obama defended the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday against a furious lobbying effort by political opponents and Israel and said abandoning the agreement would open up the prospect of war.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1gasWkV

Suspected gunman in Nashville theater shooting dead, police say

Police have confirmed that a movie theater shooting outside of Nashville, Tennessee, has left one suspect dead. The man reportedly entered a screening of "Mad Max: Fury Road" carrying a gun and hatchet, and began to attack the audience

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YouTube Eliminates 301+ Standard To Check For Spam – Now Counts Video Views In Real-Time

The new process is drawing much praise from the creator community.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Facebook Gives Pages The Ability To Respond To Comments Privately

In an effort to make customer support more efficient, Facebook updates messaging tools for Pages.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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In Your 30s? Watch Out for These 5 Common Money Mistakes

By the time you’re in your 30s, you have more than a decade of experience at being an adult.

Despite that experience, a lot of us make the same financial mistakes.

Whether it’s getting married before discussing finances or buying a bigger home than you can afford, many people in their 30s let emotions rule their spending decisions, setting themselves up for financial problems in the future.

British Columbia newspaper The Province recently ran an advice column listing five money mistakes people often make in their 30s. If you’re thinking about marriage, buying a house or retirement, here are the mistakes to avoid.

5 Money Mistakes People Make in Their 30s

The Province identified five common money errors:

1. Getting Married Without Discussing Finances

It’s hard to imagine getting married without talking about shared finances, but as we reported earlier, four out of 10 couples don’t even know how much money their spouse earns.

So if you’re planning on tying the knot, make sure you have the money talk first. If you need help, we’ve got a guide.

2. Racking Up Debt

Don’t spend your 30s spending more than you earn. Learn how to live within your means and get out of debt.

3. Buying Too Much House

You might have your eye on that dream house, but make sure you can afford it.

Many young people don’t realize the true cost of homeownership and find themselves in financial trouble after they’ve crossed that threshold.

4. Not Saving Enough

If you’re in your 30s, retirement is roughly 30 years away. Use a retirement calculator to figure out how much you need to be saving, and start putting that money into a retirement account.

You should also set up an emergency fund, because emergencies will happen!

5. Counting on an Inheritance

Don’t expect a family inheritance to solve your financial problems. People are living longer, which means more money spent on retirement and healthcare and less left over to pass down to future generations.

How to Avoid These Mistakes

Start small. If you’re spending more than you earn, it’s time to make a budget and cut expenses. Then focus on building savings — including retirement savings — and paying down debt.

When it’s time to buy a home, make sure your mortgage and homeowner costs fit within your budget. If you already made the mistake of overbuying, you can save a lot of money by downsizing your home.

Lastly, start communicating about financial needs and goals: with your spouse, with your parents and with anyone else who might be involved in your financial life.

Want to know more? Read the full story at The Province.

Your Turn: What was the biggest money mistake you made in your 30s?

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer focusing on personal finance and personal stories. Her work has appeared in The Billfold, The Toast, Yearbook Office, The Write Life and Boing Boing.

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The Best 529 Plans in America

You don’t have to live or attend school in Virginia to take advantage of one of the nation’s best 529 college savings plans. Photo: University of Virginia via Facebook

Saving for college is overwhelming for even the most meticulous financial planners, but the best 529 plans can help you reach your goals. Simply put, a 529 plan is a special account that lets you save up for your child’s college costs and other educational expenses. You act as custodian of the account, keeping complete control, while your child — or anyone else you designate — is the beneficiary.

While 529s have both pros and cons, experts still recommend them for most families. The Treasury Department found in 2009 that 529s amounted to nearly 40% more in college savings for the wealthiest families, and a still-sizeable 22% bump for families of more modest means.

To give you a more concrete idea of how much a 529 plan could help if you were very disciplined, let’s say you want to cover $215,000 in college costs for your lucky newborn. According to this SavingforCollege.com calculator, contributing $465 a month to a 529 plan will get you there, assuming a yearly 4% increase in college costs and a reasonable 6% annual return.

When it’s all said and done, you’ll have made more than $117,000 in contributions, but you’ll also have earned nearly $98,000 with that money.

If those kind of numbers sound appealing, keep reading. We’ll cover the basic pros and cons of 529 plans and discuss where to find the best 529 plan for you.

529 Plans: Pros and Cons

Using a 529 plan has several advantages. Here are three of the biggest:

Tax benefits

While you fund a 529 plan with after-tax dollars (unlike, say, pre-tax 401(k) contributions), your earnings won’t be subject to federal income tax when you withdraw them later — much like a Roth IRA. Many states also offer tax deductions or credits at the state level, too, though these vary by plan.

Flexibility

There aren’t a lot of restrictions on who can contribute to a 529 plan. You can live in any state and make any amount of money — there are no residency or income requirements. And annual contribution limits tend to be high enough that most of us would never have to worry about hitting them.

You can switch 529s up to once a year by rolling over the balance without paying any sort of penalty, and you can also change the plan beneficiary if you need to. You can also contribute to a 529 on anyone’s behalf — not just your child’s.

Minimal impact on financial aid

When parents contribute to a 529 on their child’s behalf, the account is classified as a parental asset for financial aid purposes, just like most other kinds of savings. That won’t have as much of a negative impact on other financial aid as parental income or the student’s own assets.

Of course, there are also some potential downsides to 529 plans, too:

Early-withdrawal penalties

Much like some IRAs, you’ll owe income tax and a steep 10% early-withdrawal penalty on earnings if you try to tap your 529 early. (If you aren’t a disciplined saver, this could be a pro — a 529 plan should never function as a general savings account and you should dip in early only as a last resort.)

Limited investment choices

While many parents feel simplicity is an advantage of 529s, perhaps you’re a more seasoned investor who likes to pick and choose individual stocks. In that case, you might find your portfolio choices limiting, or in the case of prepaid 529 plans, nonexistent. The number of times you can change investment options and allocations may also be very low.

One alternative open to more sophisticated investors is to use a Roth IRA, which offers many more investment choices, including individual stocks or even options. Roth IRA contributions and earnings can be withdrawn tax- and penalty-free after five years if used for qualified educational purposes. However, Roth IRAs carry stricter income and contribution limits, and this approach takes discipline — you shouldn’t be raiding your retirement savings to pay for college.

No guarantee of returns

Unless you choose a prepaid 529 plan (more on these later), you are taking on risk just like any other investor. While some plans allow you to dial down the risk as your child gets closer to college age, there are still no guarantees.

Where Should I Open a 529 Plan?

Most states offer their own 529 plans with tax breaks meant to keep your money in your own state. However, that doesn’t preclude you from using another state’s plan, especially if there is little or no tax incentive offered in your own state.

Aside from tax benefits, another thing you’ll want to keep an eye on is fees. Many of the best 529 plans, particularly state-sponsored ones, keep fees reasonable. However, fees of up to almost 3% of your plan’s assets aren’t unheard of. Paying fees that high may mean any tax benefits are cancelled out.

Here’s a list of which states offer tax benefits for residents who invest in their 529s, culled from investment research firm Morningstar:

State	Tax deduction (Single/Joint)	Tax benefits for out-of-state plans?
Alabama	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
Arizona	up to $2,000/$4,000	Yes
Arkansas	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
Colorado	up to $350,000/$350,000	No
Connecticut	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
Georgia	up to $2,000/$2,000	No
Idaho	up to $4,000/$8,000	No
Illinois	up to $10,000/$20,000	No
Iowa	up to $3,098/$6,196	No
Kansas	up to $3,000/$6,000	Yes
Louisiana	up to $2,400/$4,800	No
Maine	up to $250/$250	Yes
Maryland	up to $2,500/$2,500	No
Michigan	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
Mississippi	up to $10,000/$20,000	No
Missouri	up to $8,000/$16,000	Yes
Montana	up to $3,000/$6,000	Yes
Nebraska	up to $10,000/$10,000	No
New York	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
North Dakota	up to $5,000/$10,000	No
Ohio	up to $2,000/$2,000	No
Oklahoma	up to $10,000/$20,000	No
Oregon	up to $2,225/$4,530	No
Pennsylvania	up to $14,000/$28,000	Yes
Rhode Island	up to $500/$1,000	No
South Carolina	up to $318,000/$318,000	No
Vermont	up to $250/$5,000	No
Virginia	up to $4,000/$4,000	No
Washington, D.C.	up to $4,000/$8,000	No
West Virginia	up to $265,620/$265,620	No
Wisconsin	up to $3,050/$6,100	No

 

The following states offer 529 plans with no tax breaks (some because there is no state income tax): Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. Washington state and Wyoming do not offer 529s.

What if my state’s 529 doesn’t offer tax breaks, or my state doesn’t have a 529?

Remember, you can shop around regardless of your state’s 529 benefits, or lack thereof. Some states, reflected in the table above, even offer tax benefits regardless of whether you choose an in-state plan or go with another state’s.

If you decide not to go with your own state’s plan and need a bit of help choosing the best 529 for you, you’ll find five of the best 529 plans in the nation below. All earn high marks from sources including Kiplinger, Morningstar, and Savingforcollege.com. None of these plans have residency requirements for plan custodians or beneficiaries, so you can live anywhere and still take advantage:

Maryland College Investment Program

Maryland’s College Investment Program is one of Morningstar’s four gold-rated plans. Administered by T. Rowe Price, this plan has a range of quality funds, according to Kiplinger. It’s also a particularly good pick for those who want to be a little more aggressive with a heavier investment in stocks. You’ll have one age-based and seven static plan options.

Nevada Vanguard 529 College Savings Plan

This Nevada plan is another one of Morningstar’s four gold-rated options. It earns particular raves for keeping costs low and utilizing a broad range of strong Vanguard index funds. You’ll have three age-based and 19 static plan options.

New York 529 College Savings Program: Direct Plan

New York’s 529 plan offers an appealing blend of low fees and age-based portfolios that let you make aggressive, moderate, or conservative investments based on your child’s age, according to Kiplinger. It’s also the third-best plan on SavingforCollege.com’s 10-year investment performance list. You’ll have three age-based and 13 static plan options.

Utah Educational Savings Plan

Utah’s 529 plan, also known as USEP, wins raves from Kiplinger as an excellent pick for seasoned investors because it is more customizable than many other options. It has the second-best 10-year investment performance of any state’s plan, according to an analysis by Savingforcollege.com. You’ll have five age-based and nine static plan options, according to Morningstar.

Virginia CollegeAmerica

A strong all-around performer, the Virginia CollegeAmerica plan gets high marks from SavingforCollege.com as a particularly good pick for low fees and strong investment performance. Its best feature, however, is that it is among your least-expensive picks for an actively managed plan, according to Morningstar. This plan is also the biggest in the U.S. with $47 billion in assets. You’ll have one age-based and a whopping 31 static plan options.

Should I buy a 529 direct from a state or through a financial advisor?

Just as you can buy a 529 directly through a state, financial advisors also offer these plans, such as the Virginia CollegeAmerica 529 profiled above. Going through an expert certainly has a lot of appeal if you want additional guidance on what to choose, or want to use a more aggressive approach to managing your 529. However, you’ll typically pay heftier fees for advisor-managed accounts.

If you have a long-standing relationship with a particular financial advisor or like to keep all of your investment accounts at one brokerage for simplicity’s sake, it might make sense to open a 529 with them. Many state plans are managed by big-name firms, including the following:

• Ascensus: Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Dakota
• Fidelity: Arizona, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire
• Merrill Lynch: Maine
• TIAA-CREF: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, Vermont, Wisconsin
• T. Rowe Price: Alaska, Maryland
• Vanguard: Iowa

Should I Consider a Prepaid 529?

There are two main types of 529 plans: Investment plans and prepaid tuition plans. Investment plans, otherwise known as college savings plans, are far more common and are the kind of 529 we’ve discussed thus far: You simply make after-tax contributions to an investment account, then withdraw these contributions and their earnings tax-free for qualified educational expenses when the time comes.

With a prepaid plan, you’re actually buying a portion of school tuition in advance, locking in current prices. This basically works as a hedge against any future tuition increases. Since skyrocketing college costs show little sign of slowing down, it seems like an attractive option, especially if you want an especially conservative way to put away money for an older child who only has a few years until college.

Unfortunately, prepaid plans are a bit harder to come by these days. In 2014, there were only 11 open to new enrollees, largely because tuition spikes at state schools have made the plans harder to fund.

There are a couple other major cons of these plans:

• First, they’re usually only a good pick for in-state public schools. (If your child decides not to go to an in-state school, you can still get your money out of the prepaid 529; however, it won’t go nearly as far. Exactly how far will depend on the plan’s rules, but the interest you earn will likely be minimal compared to investment plans.)
• Second, prepaid plans sometimes have stricter rules about qualified expenses than investment 529s. Some may cover only tuition and fees, and not room, board, books, or other related costs.

Because of these big limitations, investment plans are a better pick for the majority of investors. However, if you’re still intrigued by the idea of a prepaid plan, be sure to check out our related post on the Massachusetts U.Plan and several other popular prepaid options. It includes the unique Private College 529 Plan, which guarantees tuition at nearly 300 private schools across the country.

The Best 529 Plan is One You’ll Stick With

Regardless of where you put your money, the best 529 plan is one you’ll contribute to regularly and keep your hands off of until your child is off to college. Any tax benefits you receive are a nice bonus.

If you want to learn more about 529 plans and saving for college, check out some of The Simple Dollar’s previous articles: Six Common Myths About 529 College Savings Plans, Choosing a 529 Plan, Saving for College With More Than One Kid, or How to Save for Your Child’s College Education.

And if your 529 savings won’t foot the entire bill, take a look at the Best Student Loans in 2015, a comprehensive primer on all kinds of federal and private student loans.

The post The Best 529 Plans in America appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Mobile Marketing Platform Leanplum Lands $11.6M Series B Funding

Investment follows launch of platform for creating "hyper-personalized" mobile marketing campaigns.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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High-end private Vegas Stirling Club is back on the market

A high-end private club that fell on hard times in the recession is back on the market, two years after it last sold.

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Twitter Introduces Bulk Editing Tool For Managing Ad Campaigns

New "ads editor" enables advertisers to create and adjust campaigns using spreadsheets.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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If You’ve Bought Potatoes in the Last 11 Years, You’re Eligible for Free Money

Last month, I told you about seven class-action settlements you might qualify for.

Now, I’ll share seven more opportunities to get your hands on free stuff, from free children’s products to a payment of up to $500. All it takes is a few minutes to file a claim or update your address and see if you’re eligible.

If you made made a call to Howard Johnson’s reservations number, purchased a Peg Perego children’s riding vehicle or even if you simply bought fresh potatoes, you could claim free products or a cash payment. Let’s find out more now!

1. Howard Johnson Call Recording

Did you make a call to Howard Johnson’s reservation line while you were in California between Feb. 28, 2011 and March 23, 2012? If so, you may be able to file a claim and receive $140 or more from a class action settlement.

The settlement resolves a class-action lawsuit that alleges HoJo recorded phone calls without informing the caller, in violation of California law. The deadline to file a claim is Sept. 5, 2015. Find out more here.

2. Bank of America/Countrywide Lien Release

Are you a Georgia homeowner who recently paid off your mortgage?

Bank of America and Countrywide have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging they failed to provide homeowners who paid off their mortgages in full with a message of “satisfaction” or transfer of the lien within the timeframe required by Georgia law.

If you owned previously mortgaged property on Feb. 27, 2007 or April 1, 2015 and didn’t receive the required lien release documentation on time, you may be eligible to claim up to $500 from this class-action settlement.

You have to submit your claim by Aug. 24, 2015. Learn more.

3. Peg Perego Children’s Riding Vehicles

If you purchased a children’s riding vehicle made by Peg Perego with a label indicating it was “Made in the USA,” you may be able to claim free products from a class-action settlement!

The settlement resolves allegations Peg Perego included the “Made in the USA” label on its products even though they didn’t meet the standards required by law. If you submit a claim by Sept. 28, 2015, you could receive a free children’s safety vest, which is valued at $20.

To qualify for this settlement, you must have purchased the children’s riding vehicle between Aug. 11, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2014. Find out more.

4. Nationwide Anti-Theft Device Discount

Pennsylvanians who use Nationwide for their auto insurance may be entitled to cash benefits from a class-action settlement.

Allegedly, the insurance company failed to provide policyholders with an anti-theft device discount, even though they had passive anti-theft systems installed in their vehicles by the manufacturers.

Eligible policyholders will automatically receive a payment, which is estimated to be about 6% of the amount paid for the insurance premium. However, you must make sure your current address is on file, and return an address verification form by Sept. 30, 2015. Learn more here.

5. Fresh Potatoes

If you purchased fresh potatoes, did you know you could be able to claim cash from a class-action settlement?

The settlement resolves allegations of a price-fixing conspiracy in the potato industry.

To be eligible for benefits, you must have purchased fresh potatoes for your own use (not for resale) from retailers in Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont or Wisconsin between Oct. 14, 2004 and April 10, 2015. The deadline to file a claim is Oct. 16, 2015. Learn more.

6. ExamSoft Bar Exam

If you took the July 2014 Bar Exam and were affected by a program glitch with the ExamSoft testing software, you could claim up to $90 from a class-action settlement.

The settlement resolves allegations that test takers were unable to upload their answers and were therefore unable to complete the Bar Exam due to the program glitch.

The deadline to file a claim hasn’t been set yet, but it will likely be in November 2015. Make sure you don’t miss out! Find out more.

7. American Psychological Association Fees

Current and former members of the American Psychological Association (APA) who paid practice assessment fees to the American Psychological Association Practice Organization (APAPO) may be entitled to a full refund of the  fees.

These organizations allegedly misled members into believing these dues were required for APA membership, even though they were only actually required for APAPO membership. The deadline to file a claim is Oct. 12, 2015. Learn more.

If you think you qualify for any of these class-action settlements, don’t hesitate to file a claim!

Your Turn: Have you received money from any of these class-action settlements? Will you submit a claim?

Anne Bucher is the Managing Editor of TopClassActions.com.

The post If You’ve Bought Potatoes in the Last 11 Years, You’re Eligible for Free Money appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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California's Rocky Fire rages for 7th day

California's biggest and fiercest wildfire of the year grew larger as it raged for a seventh day through drought-parched land north of Napa Valley wine country after jumping a highway.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1IXpmI7

7 Ways to Deal With Financial Anxiety Before Retirement

Here’s how to overcome the fear of outliving your savings.

Source U.S. News - Money http://ift.tt/1OQwLqU

The Step-by-Step Guide to Fixing Any Google Penalty

Google penalties aren’t new, but they’re still a huge concern for SEOs.

It’s scary to think that organic search traffic can be virtually wiped out overnight. You could go from wildly profitable to just getting by—if you get hit by a penalty.

In case you’re brand new to SEO, here’s the short version of what penalties are:

If you violate Google’s guidelines (and get caught), Google will slap your site with a penalty so that all your search engine rankings decline dramatically (often 50+ spots each).

Despite your best efforts to comply with Google’s guidelines and recommendations, you may still get hit with a penalty.

Some penalties can be caused by factors completely out of your control such as negative SEO attacks.

And they’re pretty common: Matt Cutts has said that over 400,000 manual penalties are doled out every month.

Regardless of what triggered the penalty, and whether it’s for a personal site or a client’s, you need to be able to diagnose what caused it and fix it. In most cases, you can get almost all of your search traffic back in the short-term. 

Before we get started, I want to reiterate the devastating effect of being penalized.

Google is by far the biggest search engine, responsible for 68.3 percent of searches. To get an idea of the size of the search engine, consider this: it handled over 12.6 billion searches in October 2014.

To put it simply: Google represents a huge source of potential organic traffic.

But the quality of that traffic is what always amazes me. Fifty-seven percent of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation.

In addition, typical outbound marketing leads have a 1.7% conversion rate. But organic search leads? They have an amazing 14.6% close rate.

If you’re ready to get rid of any penalties holding back your organic search traffic or you’d just like to prepare for future problems, let’s get started.

Step 1: The 2 types of penalties (and how to tell which one you have)

One potential challenge is determining which penalty (or penalties) are affecting your site.

Sometimes it’s really easy, but sometimes it takes some digging, which I’ll show you in a second.

The first thing you need to know is that a traffic drop does not always mean you were penalized.

In many cases, traffic drops can be caused by technical issues:

• server issues
• robots.txt blocking access
• crawling issues
• improper redirects

In addition, a traffic drop can be caused by other factors. For example, if you’re in a seasonal niche, traffic will vary dramatically depending on the time of the year.

Traffic drops can also be caused by algorithm changes or changes in the SERP layout. These are typically small changes, but if Google adds a big carousel to your main keywords search results, it can have a fairly big effect on your search traffic.

There are many things that can indicate a penalty on a site:

• page rank (PR) goes to zero—if you’re fixing a really old site since PR is no longer updated
• traffic drops on individual pages
• traffic drops on specific keywords
• a big traffic drop overall
• a significant number of pages get de-indexed
• an entire site gets de-indexed

Penalties come in all shapes and sizes, so there isn’t exactly one definitive sign of a penalty.

As I said at the start of this section, there are two main types of penalties, and they need to be treated differently.

Penalty type #1 – Manual: Google employs manual quality raters. It’s impossible for the current algorithms to detect all types of guideline violations accurately. Sites can be flagged as potential guideline violators and then evaluated by the quality raters.

If the quality rater sees something fishy going on, they can give you a penalty.

The good news is that unless you’re doing something shady on purpose, you’re not very likely to ever face a manual penalty. For example, not long ago, there were mass manual penalties given to sites that obviously tried to use private blog networks (PBNs) to boost rankings.

The other good thing is that Google is pretty transparent about these penalties.

To check for any manual penalties, log into Google Search Console (SC, formerly Webmaster Tools).

You can see a penalty in two places. When you get penalized, you will usually get a message about it.

Click on “All Messages” in your main account dashboard (to see messages for all sites), or click on “Messages” on the side menu for any individual site.

Alternatively, you can look in the “Search Traffic > Manual Actions” section of the menu. Hopefully, it says you have no penalties, but you might see something like this:

There are many different types of manual penalties. Some will be site-wide, while others may only affect specific pages.

Note that if you’re investigating an old penalty, it’s possible for the penalty to have expired. All manual penalties expire at one point or another although some last much longer than others.

If the penalty expires, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you fixed the issue (although you might have). If you haven’t, you’ll likely get hit again if you ever have another manual review.

Ideally, the only message you will see in that section is “No manual webspam actions found.”

Penalty type #2 – Algorithmic: If you think you have a penalty but you can’t see any manual actions in SC, it’s probably an algorithmic penalty. Essentially, Google creates different algorithms to detect spam and other violations, and when it finds something, it penalizes the site.

The annoying part about these penalties is that you don’t get a nice clear message in SC or anywhere else. You’ll need to do a bit of investigating to figure out what your penalty was caused by.

To recognize which algorithm(s) “hit” your site, you need to match the date when you saw the penalty occur (sharp traffic drop or index issue) with the date when Google ran one of its algorithms.

If you continuously monitor your site’s search engine health, you’ll have a much easier time with this because you’ll know that the current algorithm that every SEO news site is talking about is the one affecting you.

If the penalty occurred in the past, don’t worry—you can still figure it out.

The first step is to identify when the penalty hit you. For this, you’ll want to use SC, Google Analytics (GA), or both.

If it’s a traffic issue, GA is the easiest. If it’s an indexing issue, you’ll need SC.

For a traffic issue, log into GA, and select a wide date range in your default audience overview panel. The day you were hit by the penalty should be pretty obvious:

Mark down the date for later.

If it’s an indexing issue, go to “Google Index > Index Status” in SC, and see where the drop occurred.

In this case, you’ll likely have to record a date range of when the indexing issue began since it’s not usually as clear as traffic drops.

Now, you have two options to identify which algorithm caused your penalty.

The first is the manual option. Go to Moz’s algorithm calendar to see when past algorithms were run. Find the date that you had written down for your traffic drop and see which algorithms occurred before or on that date (sometimes it takes a few days for an algorithm to fully run).

In most cases, you can be pretty confident that you’ve identified the algorithm that caused your penalty.

The other option is to use a tool such as the Panguin Tool. To use it, you have to log in with your GA account. It will then line up a graph of your traffic with lines that indicate when algorithms were run:

If you’re a visual person, this might be easier.

Now that you know whether your penalty is manual or algorithmic (and which one in particular), your next step is to understand what the penalty was for.

Each algorithm targets a different type of violation. So if you understand the algorithm that affected you, you’ll know which violation you need to fix.

Step 2:  Understand your penalty

Now I’m going to outline all the most common penalties that affect sites. Note that there may be others affecting you—it’s just pretty rare.

Let’s start with the most common manual penalties.

Unnatural links: Google uses the backlinks pointing to your site as a measure of its quality. Of course, Google only wants to count “natural” backlinks that were created without your involvement.

There’s a little bit of a grey area when it comes to the question what is or isn’t an “unnatural” link, but if your link looks like a paid link or part of a link scheme, Google won’t like it.

Unnatural link actions come in a few different forms.

First, you may see “Unnatural links to your site—impacts links.” This manual action isn’t actually a penalty. If Google determines that some links aren’t legitimate, it may discount their linking value altogether and give you this message. No action on your part is required although you may want to look into why you’re attracting shady links.

Second, you might just see “Unnatural links to your site.” This is the bad one. Essentially, Google has seen that these unnatural links make up such a big part of your link profile that it labeled your site as untrusted. This penalty will affect your traffic.

This is why negative SEO can be effective. If someone sends a ton of spammy links to a small website, that changes the site’s link profile a lot. But if they send them to a site like Quick Sprout, it won’t have much of an effect. That’s why Quick Sprout hasn’t gotten a penalty like this even though others have pointed unnatural links to the site.

Finally, you can also get a manual action for having “Unnatural links from your site.” This refers to the links on your site—the links in your content. If you’re linking out a ton using suspicious exact anchor text or have site-wide links to spammy sites (among other things), you could get hit with this.

This penalty also needs to be fixed. Sometimes it will be a site-wide penalty, but it will often be placed on just a few pages if it’s a localized issue.

Thin/Duplicate content: Google’s primary goal is to help users find what they’re looking for. If the first page in your search query returns pages of regurgitated information, essentially saying the same thing, you’d feel frustrated.

This is bad for the searcher, so Google actively tries to reduce the amount of thin or duplicate content that shows up in search results. These pages are defined as producing “little or no added value.” It includes:

• automatically generated content
• thin affiliate pages
• content from other sources. e.g., scraped content or low-quality guest posts
• doorway pages

This manual action shows up as “Thin content with little or no added value” in SC.

This penalty can have varying levels of impact on your search traffic. Usually it reduces a site’s traffic by 5-50% (a big deal) depending on the severity of the issue.

Spam: There are also a few manual actions related to spam. Spam can mean a wide variety of things. It includes excessive or malicious cloaking, scraping content, automatically generated content, and more.

It’s rare to get the “pure spam” penalty unless you created a spam site on purpose. At this point you’re probably better off starting from scratch.

However, other spam penalties can also hurt your traffic and aren’t necessarily your fault. For example, the “User-generated spam” message refers to things like spam in comments or forum profiles. These can be cleaned up with a bit of work, and your traffic will go back to normal.

Another manual action is “Spammy freehosts.” Spammers typically use cheap or free web hosts. If a host primarily hosts spam sites, Google may penalize all sites on that web host. If you picked the wrong host, you’ll need to find a new one.

Those are the most common manual actions taken on websites.

Now, let’s get into the algorithmic penalties, which cause a ton of trouble for website owners.

The Panda algorithm: The Panda update was first released in 2011. It made a huge impact on the search results. Since then, it’s been released about once per month, although the frequency has gone down over time.

You have to remember that Google keeps its algorithms as secret as possible. For Panda, webmasters were told that it was an algorithm that looked at content quality. It was intended to prevent low-quality, or “shallow,” content from appearing in search results.

The problem with that is knowing what low-quality content is. Google has a list of over 20 open-ended questions that help you determine that:

Which isn’t very helpful…

SEOs, journalists, and others have since analyzed the updates to learn more about Panda and make it a bit less vague.

It turns out that Panda actually penalizes sites for a variety of reasons:

• poorly written content
• “shallow” content (too brief or short to be valuable)
• substantial duplicate content (either copied from elsewhere on site or another site)
• content that adds no real value

Content farms composed of hundreds of thousands of short, brief keywords focused around long-tail keywords got hit the worst initially.

The surprising part of Panda is that even if you have issues only on one part of your site, the entire site could be penalized. Panda penalties can also be quite severe. Some sites lost virtually all organic search traffic overnight.

Google was granted a patent for Panda in 2014, which cleared up things further. It’s pretty bland and technical, but essentially what it says is that Google creates a site-wide modification factor based on quality factors (listed above), inbound links, and brand searches.

If a site doesn’t meet a certain score, the modification factor is applied to the entire site. This is why the entire site can be affected even if there is only a small number of low quality pages.

The Penguin algorithm: The other groundbreaking algorithm, aside from Panda, is Penguin.

It works in a similar way, run every once in a while. The first version was released in 2012, affecting over 3% of queries (huge).

It hit the offending sites really hard:

Unlike Panda, which is about content quality, Penguin is mainly about a site’s backlinks. The algorithm was designed to find unnatural link patterns.

There are many different unnatural link patterns that could get your site into trouble. Here are the main potential backlink factors:

• link velocity - a site should naturally gain links over time. It’s rare for a site to have a sudden large influx of links and then a drop off to very few (common with spam).
• link quality - a natural site will have a mix of high and low quality backlinks. An unnatural site could have a strangely high number of low quality links or a strangely high proportion of very high quality links.
• link diversity - if 90% of your backlink profile comes from blog comments, it’s unnatural. Similarly, backlinks should have varied anchor text. If all links have the same anchor text, you’re likely trying to manipulate the search engine to rank for that phrase.

Note that Penguin is a page-specific penalty. If you get hit by it, it may affect your overall traffic (because those strong pages no longer pass authority), but your other pages still have an opportunity to rank.

In some cases, Penguin can find unnatural links and will discount their value without penalizing you. If you only experienced a small traffic drop after an update, this is likely what happened. The devalued links were helping you rank before, but now they don’t count for anything.

You should also know that Penguin is a massive algorithm. In the past, it’s taken more than a few weeks to run it fully. If your traffic dropped weeks after a Penguin update started, it could still be what penalized your site.

Finally, remember that Penguin is algorithmic, while those unnatural link actions in SC are manual penalties. They have nothing to do with each other, and it’s actually possible to get hit by both.

Other less common animal-themed penalties: Panda and Penguin are the two most common algorithms that cause penalties, but they are not the only ones. Google releases more than 500 algorithm updates per year; some just make more of an impact than others.

Other fairly well-known algorithm updates that may have affected your search engine traffic are:

• The Pigeon algorithm – an update that changed how Google served results for local searches
• The Payday algorithm – an update specifically targeting very spammy queries (think diet pills, gambling, etc.)
• The Mobile-Friendly update (“Mobilegeddon”) – focused on returning results that are mobile-friendly on mobile searches

Step 3: Identifying and fixing all relevant problems

You should have a good idea of why you were penalized at this point.

Some issues are easy. If you have unnatural links pointing out, reduce the number of links you have in your content, and don’t link out to too many low-authority sites. If you have spam on your site (comments, user-generated content), delete it, and stay on top of it in the future.

A few of the penalties aren’t quite as simple, and that’s what I’ll be going over now.

Fixing unnatural links (manual penalty): The “unnatural links to your site” penalty is one of the most tedious and time-consuming penalties to fix, but it needs to be done.

The first step is to find the unnatural links, which means you need a list of all the backlinks pointing to your site.

Although you can get a portion of them from SC, you’ll need to use a paid service such as Ahrefs or Majestic if you want a complete list. This is important because without a complete list, you won’t be able to fix the issue and get the penalty lifted.

Search your domain name in either backlink database tool, and click on “inbound links”:

This will bring up a list of all the backlinks they have in their databases. You can click “export” to download a CSV file (open in Excel or Google Sheets).

Now you need to figure out which links are unnatural. The problem, as you might guess, is that it’s going to be hard to go through a few hundred thousand backlinks if you have a big site.

In that case, you can use an appropriate tool to flag possible unnatural links. There are a number of such tools, e.g.,

• Link detox
• Link risk (Kerboo)
• Linkquidator

All of these work the same way. You can enter your domain or upload your list of links, and the tool will analyze them using its own secret formulas.

Although these aren’t cheap, if you’ve lost thousands of visitors (or more) from a penalty, they’re worth it.

In addition, they have other useful features to help identify penalties easier and even to make email outreach more efficient (I’ll get to why in a second), which will save you time and money:

In any case, you’ll now have a list of high risk links:

Not all of these are bad. Although these tools can catch obvious bad or good links, they’re far from 100% accurate. What they should be used for is to narrow down the best and the worst. Everything else needs to be inspected manually—yes, this will take a lot of time.

Some unnatural links are easier to spot than others. They might be unnatural if they:

• contain “SEO” words in the URL – such as “links”, “seo”, “directory”, etc.
• are forum profiles
• blog comments with anchor text other than a real name
• are a poorly written article or clearly spun
• from a site that’s very generic and doesn’t look like a real brand

Mark down all of the links that you think Google might consider unnatural. Even though this is subjective, you don’t necessarily need to be perfect to get the penalty removed.

The first and best option is to remove the links. Google expects you to make a real effort before removing any penalty.

If you have control of the linking site, remove the link—easy. This is possible if you built a ton of low-quality web 2.0 sites, used article directories, or created a private blog network.

In most cases, you won’t control the linking site, so you’ll have to ask the owner to remove it for you. If it’s a forum profile or another link that the site owner can’t control, mark it down for the second option.

You should have a list of all the links you’d like to remove in a spreadsheet. Now you need to find contact information, ideally at least the name and email address of each site owner.

You can do it all manually, visiting each site and finding a contact page or email address, or you can use a fairly inexpensive contact finding tool such as Contact Finder.

Simply enter a domain or, even better, a list of URLs into the tool:

Then it goes and tracks down multiple ways of contacting authors on that site:

If you have a ton of URLs to sort through, this will save you hours.

Finally, you need to send an email and ask the owner to remove the link (this is where that Link Detox feature is helpful). Try to craft the best email you can—you need to successfully remove at least some links if you want to get the penalty lifted:

• be polite
• try to find the person’s name
• send one email per domain (even if there are multiple links)
• keep it short

Here’s a template you could use:

Hi [name],

I’ve recently gotten a message from Google that says my website – [website name] – has unnatural links pointing towards it, which I’ve been penalized for. I’m currently trying to remove any potential unnatural links.

A link analysis tool has flagged a few links from your site to mine as potentially unnatural links:

[list_of_links_here]

I’d be grateful if you could remove the links to my site.

Please let me know if you can help me out.

Thanks,

[your name]

The second option is to submit a disavow file. This is a list of URLs or domains that you’re telling Google to ignore.

It’s pretty simple:

• you can add comments by starting a line with “#”
• when disavowing an entire domain (recommended), start the line with “domain:” and don’t include anything after the extension (no slashes or text)
• put one domain or URL per line

This will be an important part of getting the penalty removed. I’ll go into much more detail about it in the next section of this post.

Fixing thin content: If your site has a ton of 300-500 word articles that don’t add much value, you have two options:

1. rewrite them to make them valuable
2. delete them

Either option will work, so it’s up to you.

Duplicate content is also a fairly easy fix in most cases. You can either delete it or add a canonical link.

To find duplicate content on your site, start with SC.

Go to “Search appearance > HTML improvements” to see if you have any issues:

Click the number to see specific cases of duplicate content.

Alternatively, you can use a tool such as Siteliner. Enter your domain, and it will find any duplicate content, plus sort it by percent match:

Note that the free version only covers scanning of 250 URLs, so large sites will have to either upgrade or rely on SC.

Fixing a Panda penalty: It’s important to understand that both Panda and Penguin are algorithmic penalties. Even if you fix the issue, you will have to wait until the algorithm is run again to see if you were successful.

Since a Panda penalty can be triggered by many different things, here is a list of most common fixes you should implement:

• get rid of any thin or duplicate content (see above)
• create unique meta tags and titles for each page (if not done already)
• go through all articles to see if they read awkwardly: if the keyword seems forced, replace it with a synonym
• reduce or eliminate any link cloaking

Fixing a Penguin penalty: Although you’ll have to wait for the next refresh for Penguin as well, the good news is that Penguin will soon begin refreshing continuously. It’s been quite a while between the last few updates, but both major algorithms should run more often at some point in the future.

The first thing you can do (but don’t necessarily have to) is remove any unnatural links, using that tedious and time-consuming process I outlined for a manual unnatural link penalty.

There are other causes for a Penguin penalty. The bad part? You can’t do much about them.

If your link velocity is screwed up because you previously bought links or someone attacked your site, you can’t do anything to fix it. Most of these are low-quality links, so if you follow the removal and disavow steps, it might be enough to get your penalty removed.

Most SEO experts don’t spend too much time removing low-quality links after a Penguin penalty because of link decay. After about a year, most of these links will “disappear.”

The better use of time and resources is to invest into attracting more high-quality backlinks. Remember, Penguin is based on some sort of ratio between low-quality and high-quality links. While you can improve that ratio by removing low-quality links, you can also improve it by adding high-quality ones.

Due to the length of time between Penguin penalties and degree of ambiguity behind them, removing one is not easy. That being said, it is possible.

Step 4: (for manual penalties) Put your best foot forward and ask for reconsideration

If you were hit by a manual action, you can submit a reconsideration request (also called a review request). In effect, this means that you believe that you’ve taken sufficient action to fix the problem and to ensure it won’t happen again.

Once the request is sent to Google, a new manual quality rater is assigned to revisit and re-evaluate your site. If they are satisfied, the manual action will be lifted.

To submit a review request, go back into SC and find the manual action under “Search Traffic > Manual Actions.” For each manual action applied to your site, you can click the red “request a review” button to bring up a form:

This is where you’ll write and submit your reconsideration request.

Now, the actual process of submitting the request is simple. You just type in the box (or copy and paste from somewhere else), and click submit. What isn’t simple is gathering what you need to include in the reconsideration request.

You need to take the time to fill out your request correctly. A large portion of these requests are rejected, and sometimes it takes multiple requests to finally get one approved.

Part #1 – fix ALL the issues (and document them): At this point, you already know why you were penalized and what you need to do to fix the underlying issue.

The next step is to actually fix the issues and to record your progress. When you submit a reconsideration request, the manual reviewer won’t just take your word for it when you say you fixed things. You need to compile documents and spreadsheets that prove you really did what you said.

Here are a few examples of what Google suggests to include:

This is extremely important if you have a penalty for unnatural links. If your penalty is for something that’s an on-site issue, then the screenshots aren’t as important as the reviewer can see the final result.

Part #2 – Why did it happen?: If possible, explain why the issue came up in the first place. For example, if you have an unnatural links penalty, you could explain that you hired an SEO company that you trusted, but then you found out that they were building unnatural links.

Part #3 – How did you fix it?: Explain how you fixed the issue in a step-by-step procedure.

Google wants to see that you made a real effort to fix the problem yourself.

This is where it’s important to include any supporting documentation that proves your efforts. While you can’t attach a file to the request, you can include a link to a Google Doc or other online file.

Part #4 – How will you prevent it from happening again?: The final part of a reconsideration request is basically telling Google that you learned your lesson.

If you built bad links that led to the penalty, you can write a few paragraphs about your understanding of the fact that your actions were against Google’s quality guidelines and that you understand what the guidelines are for. Write to show the reviewer that you won’t try to manipulate Google in the future.

Step 5: Don’t get penalized again…

I don’t think I need to tell you how much time can be wasted fixing these penalties.

The best-case scenario is to not get penalized again. There are three main ways to drastically reduce your chances of a future penalty.

Plan #1 – Perform regular audits: It’s important to ensure that your site remains in Google’s good graces. Perform both technical SEO audits and content audits on a regular basis.

This involves:

• monitoring links – use whatever link database you want to monitor your backlinks. If you see that someone pointed 10,000 spam links towards your site, disavow them before they can cause any problems.
• check SC messages often – if your site gets hacked, you will get a message so that you can fix the issue before too much damage is done.

• check for duplicate content – use the tools outlined in the above sections to test for duplicate content. This is especially important if you own a site that allows user-generated content.
• don’t allow spammy blog comments – I love to encourage readers to comment on my posts, but you don’t want people to comment just for the sake of getting a backlink. These are typically one-line comments with a keyword in the user name. Don’t approve these.

Sometimes, penalties are out of your control, but performing audits every few weeks or months can help you spot most issues before they result in a penalty.

Plan #2 – Monitor SEO sites: Google changes its quality guidelines on an on-going basis. They evolve with the Internet. In the beginning, getting exact anchor text links was a good thing, but now such links can get you penalized.

It’s important to monitor SEO blogs and news sites to make sure you know about any big changes that could lead to being penalized in the future. It’s better to be proactive about fixing violations than trying to fix a penalty.

Quick Sprout is a good place to start, but so are SEO news sites like Search Engine Land and the Moz blog.

Plan #3 – Avoid the shortcut: Building traffic to a site isn’t easy, especially if you’re a beginner SEO/marketer. When you see someone on a forum claiming to be getting tens of thousands of visitors a month to their site with blackhat techniques, it’s tempting to use those techniques as well.

But remember that any successful site took years to build. It took me over three years to get 100,000 visitors per month to Quick Sprout. Those rare blackhat success stories don’t last—they get penalized eventually.

Conclusion

Penalties are a part of SEO, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

You need to not only understand what penalties are but also how to identify and fix them. I’ve given you five really in-depth steps that show you exactly how to do this.

If you’re a professional SEO, add penalty evaluation and removal to your arsenal.

If you’re a business owner, you can use this guide to fix any existing penalties you have and protect your site in the future. As you can see, it can take a lot of work and expertise, so if you know that you have a penalty, it may be worth hiring an SEO expert to help you out.

To wrap up, I’d like to ask you to share any stories of being penalized and how you’ve tried to fix them in the past. Please leave me a comment below with the details.

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