The Danger of Using Automated Backlinking Tools?

[pks1967]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

You've added new info about your site to the index - google's algo is assessing where those changes should make you rank. [ is my theory ]

#11 site ... was it NEW? How old?

I built the site six years ago.

Update: I'm not even in the top 400 for the three word keyword term I used to have #11 for. I'm not too worried though, as I think I'll see it again in another few days or so. If not, I've got other websites to promote. I'm sitll in google's index though. I'm number one for my own domain name.


Brad

[xops]

I know what you're going through. This happens to me all the time. I don't mean sometimes, I mean every time. Like clockwork, I can pay someone to build me 100 or 200 links by any method you can imagine and every single time my site drops several pages or drops out for several days. It has always come back though.

Some of my sites are five and six years old, if that really does matter. If I just let them sit, they maintain their same rank in google. As soon as I send a lot of backlinks to them, boom, they drop like a rock. Maybe it's because I just leave the sites sit and then every now and then, drop a bunch of links on them. I don't know. People keep saying that if the site is old, you can send lots of links without a problem. I have found this not true, at least in my case.

If 1,000 people tell me it's not true, I have my own personal experience to go by. I don't know why it happens, but it does. Others may not have it happen to them, so they are 100% certain that I am wrong, just like I believe them to be mistaken.

How could it happen to someone all the time and others none of the time. I sure wish I knew

That's what makes SEO so hard. It seems that so many people have different results with different methods. Is google and it's spiders really as smart or as dumb as some think? Who knows.

I have an established site 2-1/2 years old. My personal experience has been the same as pks1967. I keep reading on WF that it's not supposed to happen but my experience says otherwise.

Usually my rank changes come in increments of 30, so for instance my site will be at 28, then 58 then 88 after building backlinks. Then over time, usually a month if I don't do anything, it will jump back to where it was. I've been keeping a daily log to see what might be causing the wild rank fluctuations. I'm convinced that whenever I try to build backlinks, I trigger some kind of automatic G penalty. Maybe it's niche related?

I've got some newer sites that I'm starting to experiment with cause sudden drops like I described above directly affect the income from my established site.

[itsallwhite]

I haven't tried the auto-backlinking tools, but almost did and from reading this glad i didnt. but i while back I used an SEO company to do some major link building on a site of mine - it got down from the top 20 to the top 200 and stayed their for about two weeks, then it can back to number 9 and has stayed their since.

With Google et all you need patience (alot of it) and some luck! hope your rankings return ASAP

[firstdandy]

Maybe sometime It's just google dance. Have You check again recently? Sorry I guess It's quite old thread.

[pks1967]

Originally Posted by xops

I have an established site 2-1/2 years old. My personal experience has been the same as pks1967. I keep reading on WF that it's not supposed to happen but my experience says otherwise.

Usually my rank changes come in increments of 30, so for instance my site will be at 28, then 58 then 88 after building backlinks. Then over time, usually a month if I don't do anything, it will jump back to where it was. I've been keeping a daily log to see what might be causing the wild rank fluctuations. I'm convinced that whenever I try to build backlinks, I trigger some kind of automatic G penalty. Maybe it's niche related?

I've got some newer sites that I'm starting to experiment with cause sudden drops like I described above directly affect the income from my established site.

It might be niche related. Maybe google has different rules for different types of sites. Maybe "acai berry" is treated differently than "toy trains". Who knows.

Brad

[KateD]

Originally Posted by firstdandy

Maybe sometime It's just google dance. Have You check again recently? Sorry I guess It's quite old thread.

Hi...

Yes, I do believe that it was just the Google dance.

However, my niche blog NEVER got back to its original position of #11. It did get to position #12 for a couple of days, but then moved on from there.

Right now the niche blog is ranked #274.

I haven't touched the blog at all. But again, it NEVER got back to its original spot.

KateD

[halfpoint]

Originally Posted by KateD

I haven't touched the blog at all. But again, it NEVER got back to its original spot.

And maybe that's why? If you don't continue to build links to how do you expect it to get back to where it was?

It could simply mean that in the interim when you haven't been doing anything with it all of your competition has been and as such, in Google's eyes your site isn't as popular as it was.

Keep being consistent in your link building and it will go back to where it was, and probably ranking even higher.

[pks1967]

Wow, I just sunk another one of my sites. Here's a little update for the people following this thread.

Site #1. Six years old. Usually around the bottom of page one or the top of page two for a three word keyword phrase. Now totally gone for over a week. Still in the google index though.

Site #2. Five years old. Usually between position 8 and 15 for a two word keyword phrase for quite a while now. Now, nowhere to be found, but still indexed.

I have not done anything to these sites except: Buy thousands of backlinks to them over the last couple of weeks. That's it. Nothing else.

I don't really care if it's called the google dance, sandbox or whatever. It does happen. I don't see how people can say it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't happen to them and just some of us. Why would that be. I have no idea.

All I do know is that in the past, my sites have always come back in a week or two when I've done smaller amounts of backlinking on my own. but I've never added this many backlinks at one time before. Maybe it'll be a lot longer this time. I sure hope not.

Here's the kicker, I still have several thousand backlinks I've ordered pointing to these two sites that are just being worked on.

I think from now on, I'll just be pointing the links to my web 2.0 sites that point to these sites. I've heard that this will work. I've already ordered several thousand links to some ezine articles and web 2.0 sites I have.

Oh well, live and learn. I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully, when my sites do show up again, they'll be in a higher position than they used to be.

Even though I've been doing IM for quite a few years full time, I've still got more to learn about SEO. I used to get all my traffic from adwords until google put the screws to me, like they did to so many of us affiliates.

The only option I have is to just throw a lot of hours and hard work at the problem and learn all I can on the Warriors Forum.

Good luck everyone. I hope you are doing better than I am. Which should be pretty easy to do, at this point.


Brad

[4morereferrals]

Brad,

I dont think anyone is saying it doesnt happen. I think they're saying it does ... but not because you used some evil automation that google doesnt like.

The thread initially discussed automated linking as a DANGER.

Is a PR release an evil automated backlinking strategy? A good one with the right efforts can and often times does "automatically" generate 1,000's of backlinks over nite. Is there some sort of evil nefarious activity associated with the content syndication networks of large news syndicates?

Anyhow ... it does happen often. Maybe its best to get that over and out of the way sooner rather than later?

I think your idea of using web 2 like properties to shield your site[s] and direct/focus the link juice and pr that 1,000's of links can generate is a good idea.

You add a level of complexity to your site portfolio and hte need to backlink far more urls - but having 10-20 other pages with PR of 3-5 all pointing to your main $$$ page is a good thing.

If you threw 2,000 questionable or even good links divided in 4ths at 8 pages :

250 Vox

250 wordpress.com

250 livejournal

250 blogger

250 multiply

and so on ....

instead of your money page directly, - those 8 pages could be PR2-4 at next pr update. If you repeated that a few times with new sites to link from they might bump a PR point or two at the next update.

Put 1 or two links out to your $$$ pages from these Vox/Blogger/LiveJ sites and and to a trusted high authority other domain - Bing perhaps. So now you have 8 PR3-4 sites solidly propping up your $$$ pages.

Rinse - repeat with another 8 solid web 2.0 domains ... [ theres tons of em do a search here ]

Originally Posted by pks1967

Wow, I just sunk another one of my sites. Here's a little update for the people following this thread.

Site #1. Six years old. Usually around the bottom of page one or the top of page two for a three word keyword phrase. Now totally gone for over a week. Still in the google index though.

Site #2. Five years old. Usually between position 8 and 15 for a two word keyword phrase for quite a while now. Now, nowhere to be found, but still indexed.

I have not done anything to these sites except: Buy thousands of backlinks to them over the last couple of weeks. That's it. Nothing else.

I don't really care if it's called the google dance, sandbox or whatever. It does happen. I don't see how people can say it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't happen to them and just some of us. Why would that be. I have no idea.

All I do know is that in the past, my sites have always come back in a week or two when I've done smaller amounts of backlinking on my own. but I've never added this many backlinks at one time before. Maybe it'll be a lot longer this time. I sure hope not.

Here's the kicker, I still have several thousand backlinks I've ordered pointing to these two sites that are just being worked on.

I think from now on, I'll just be pointing the links to my web 2.0 sites that point to these sites. I've heard that this will work. I've already ordered several thousand links to some ezine articles and web 2.0 sites I have.

Oh well, live and learn. I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully, when my sites do show up again, they'll be in a higher position than they used to be.

Even though I've been doing IM for quite a few years full time, I've still got more to learn about SEO. I used to get all my traffic from adwords until google put the screws to me, like they did to so many of us affiliates.

The only option I have is to just throw a lot of hours and hard work at the problem and learn all I can on the Warriors Forum.

Good luck everyone. I hope you are doing better than I am. Which should be pretty easy to do, at this point.


Brad

[pks1967]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Brad,

I dont think anyone is saying it doesnt happen. I think they're saying it does ... but not because you used some evil automation that google doesnt like.

The thread initially discussed automated linking as a DANGER.

Is a PR release an evil automated backlinking strategy? A good one with the right efforts can and often times does "automatically" generate 1,000's of backlinks over nite. Is there some sort of evil nefarious activity associated with the content syndication networks of large news syndicates?

Anyhow ... it does happen often. Maybe its best to get that over and out of the way sooner rather than later?

I think your idea of using web 2 like properties to shield your site[s] and direct/focus the link juice and pr that 1,000's of links can generate is a good idea.

You add a level of complexity to your site portfolio and hte need to backlink far more urls - but having 10-20 other pages with PR of 3-5 all pointing to your main $$$ page is a good thing.

If you threw 2,000 questionable or even good links divided in 4ths at 8 pages :

250 Vox

250 wordpress.com

250 livejournal

250 blogger

250 multiply

and so on ....

instead of your money page directly, - those 8 pages could be PR2-4 at next pr update. If you repeated that a few times with new sites to link from they might bump a PR point or two at the next update.

Put 1 or two links out to your $$$ pages from these Vox/Blogger/LiveJ sites and and to a trusted high authority other domain - Bing perhaps. So now you have 8 PR3-4 sites solidly propping up your $$$ pages.

Rinse - repeat with another 8 solid web 2.0 domains ... [ theres tons of em do a search here ]

No, I'm not saying any automated system is bad. I just bought a nice 125 site press release in the WSO area to a different site. That didn't hurt my ranking for that site at all.

I'm just saying that when I blasted thousands of links to my own website, I experienced the problem with my other two sites. Things are going bad for me lately and I really can't afford to have any of my links gone from google for too long of a time. The only other traffic I am getting are from several articles I wrote. Which is very good targeted traffic.

I think the links to the web 2.0 sites will work out OK for me. I'm going to ping them all and wait and see what happens.

P.S. I don't understand what you meant about Bing. Could you expand on that a bit.

Thanks for your reply,

Brad

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by pks1967

P.S. I don't understand what you meant about Bing. Could you expand on that a bit.

Thanks for your reply,

Brad

Sure thing ...

If the only outbound links coming off your 8 web 2.0 properties are solely to your $$$ pages - that may not be optimum. There is a theory that seemed plausible ... i have no scientific data and stats to back it up - but ... it indicated that if you also have an outbound link to a highly trusted authority domain on the same pages as your outbound links to your $$$ pages ... it puts the links to your $$$ pages in a "good neighborhood" context.

You wouldnt want to dilute the link power / juice etc with too many other outbound links - so I said maybe you link to Bing.com or cnn.com or some big name high powered authority site?

[pks1967]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Sure thing ...

If the only outbound links coming off your 8 web 2.0 properties are solely to your $$$ pages - that may not be optimum. There is a theory that seemed plausible ... i have no scientific data and stats to back it up - but ... it indicated that if you also have an outbound link to a highly trusted authority domain on the same pages as your outbound links to your $$$ pages ... it puts the links to your $$$ pages in a "good neighborhood" context.

You wouldnt want to dilute the link power / juice etc with too many other outbound links - so I said maybe you link to Bing.com or cnn.com or some big name high powered authority site?

Thanks. Might it be best to link to a trusted site in my own niche. I have an article posted on an authority site in my niche. Maybe I could link to that article. Then I can have the link to the trusted site but I still might get something out of it.

Brad

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Is a PR release an evil automated backlinking strategy? A good one with the right efforts can and often times does "automatically" generate 1,000's of backlinks over nite. Is there some sort of evil nefarious activity associated with the content syndication networks of large news syndicates?

Horse of an entirely different color. The potential problem with automation tools is not necessarily the automation itself but the kind of sites you must target to get that automation.

Eg. Forum backlinks, blog commenting etc.

It takes no Harvard degree to figure out that 2000 backlinks from forum profiles with nothing else is link spam in google's eyes. Same goes for 700 comment links from wordpress blogs. Total automation leaves LARGE footprints for Google and anyone else to see.

Theres enough of these observation every week for me to take them seriously. There are too many variables in SEO to claim that these don't show a danger in automating low quality links. However it may very well not be the links by themselves but the site itself and the quality score of the page since its also apparent it doesn't affect everyone. (I'm sure you are right too in regard to QDF. Thats part of the equation as well.)

For example with the recent adwords banning its pretty clear Google is very active with their quality algorithm applied to landing pages. Lets say you do those 2000 backlinks in a week using forum links and then your site comes up heavy for affiliate links and /or what would be considered low quality for an adwords page. Could that trigger an effect that some of us with better pages or more diversity not see.

200 plus factors if you believe Google. One size probably doesn't fit all scenarios.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

t ... it indicated that if you also have an outbound link to a highly trusted authority domain on the same pages as your outbound links to your $$$ pages ... it puts the links to your $$$ pages in a "good neighborhood" context.

Good suggestion. Out bound links do in fact affect SEO

[Kevin Reynolds]

Thanks Steve,
Great information for those of us just coming up to speed on backlinks.

I bought Backlink Goldmine to try it and learn more. At $.7, it is crazy...at $7 is is still an amazing deal.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Kevin Reynolds

Thanks Steve,
Great information for those of us just coming up to speed on backlinks.

I bought Backlink Goldmine to try it and learn more. At $.7, it is crazy...at $7 is is still an amazing deal.

Hey there Kevin,

Thank you .. drop me a line if you need any help ...

[mikkosant]

The secret is mixing automation tools so that you can decrease your footprint in google's eyes. Backlink diversity is crucial.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by millerstacy10

We have all made this mistake. I need to send some of my automation hungry students to this thread.

We wont make the mistake of letting a scammer off scott-free.

Originally Posted by Brad Gosse

We have all made this mistake. I need to send some of my automation hungry students to this thread.

I was #1-2 for a term that got me 250k daily visitors and I bought a text link and everything went south for a whole year

[resiymarko]

All you have to do is point them to an authority site with backlinks and it won't construct any dissimilarity to your own site at all... in fact it will help it rank higher and higher!

[ScrapeBoss]

Of course there are dangers in using automated backlinking tools. However, the results you get depend on the way you build those backlinks. I like to use ordinary blogger blogs and web 2.0 for the backlinking software. I then link those ones to my main site. That way, my footprints are hidden from the search engines.

[MrDack]

Newbie point of view here but just looking at this logically; if an automated and relatively cheap process can quickly knock a site off page #1, why isn't this common practice for eliminating competitors?

Forget about the ethics, this is business.

It's not something I'd be comfortable doing but I find I had to believe that big G's evolving algorithm could be so easily tricked into penalizing a given site based upon a surge in low quality links.
If this were true, then surely it would be more effective (in cost & results) if competitors concentrated on ‘taking each other out’ rather than trying to out rank each other?

[claritytech123]

Automated submission is not good and it will decrease your search ranking and your site could be penalize on search engines. So try to do manual or quality submissions.

Thanks.

[johnpaul]

it happened to me also ... site disappear ... i thought its sandboxed ... then later after few days it came back ... but ranked BADLY

[nik0]

I just did a test with a 1 month old domain that has a 1000 pages (thin affiliate site), blasted it with 100.000 comments, 100.000 xrumer links, 1000 AMR articles (2000 links), 1000 bookmarks, 1000 rss feeds, 1000 pings/meta-index files. All spreaded over 1000 pages. Site is completely de-indexed now

[nik0]

What does work for one page / keyphrase:

- 50 posts to BMR or High PR society
- 20 manually made web2.0 property's
- 25 social bookmarks
- ping / meta index
- 10 comments at high PR pages with max 100 Outbound links
- 30 articles to highest PR sites using AMR

I use this to rank easy/low competition keywords to page 1 or 2 within 1-2 weeks. (based on terribly spun / unreadable content for the articles / web2.0's, now doing new tests with well spun / solid readable content).

[LarryW]

While this is an old thread, I found it very useful... I am taking away how important it is to have a diverse source of backlinks. And how to link instead to a Web 2.0 site that has content linking to my main site.

Not clear if the automatically generated backlinks were sent to too many random sites, in unrelated niches? Not mentioned (until just now) was very much about CONTENT being posted, and continued to be posted.

[jinx1221]

Things are becoming more and more obvious to google, and Panda is catching these. Its not easy to teach an inherantly dumb machine to do what a human can do with intuition. Anyways, it can now spot poor content, unnatural links (not just quantity wise), etc. You have to be ahead of the game now, not by trying to mass produce links by the thousands, but slowly adding contextual links within high quality content where you can. Slow and steady wins the race!

[bosnis]

Can I ask what you are all using to check the movements of your rankings?
Is Market Samurai the best for this??

[Maraun]

Rank Tracker is good.