Was this a mistake?

[seoslick]

Hey guys,

To be brief, I had this site rank on the first page of google UK. It was a new site, approximately 3 weeks old, in spot #10. I primarily wrote articles, used web 2.0 properties and social bookmarking.

I was getting a little tired with manual link building so I decided to buy a forum profile backlinking pyramid package of 300 first layer links and 3000 second layer links. These backlinks main sites have high PR rankings, but the actual forum pages have low PR or n/a.

I then had the first layer forum profiles indexed by google over two days. I'm currently indexing the second layer forum profiles.

My home page is now ranked #216 (the link I used for the backlinking package) whereas another indexed page on the site is ranked #38 (did not use for backlinking package).

Did I make a mistake in

1) buying this low PR forum profile backlinks package?
2) indexing too many forum profiles in such a short period of time?

If the answer is yes to both questions, wouldn't this be too easy for anyone to drop any of their competitors rankings by doing what I did to my own site?

If I did index too many forum profiles too quickly, what is a recommended daily number for 1st layer and 2nd layer forum profile backlinks? 10? 20?

I'm really disappointed in trying to take shortcuts, especially since what I was doing seemed to be working and I was getting clicks!

Thanks all.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Have you considered that Google is smart enough to look at your incoming links and see that they are all coming from the same type of sites?

If that doesn't send up a red flag it should.

And Page Rank is Page Rank... the PR of the pages your not linked from is irrelevant to your goal in terms of obtaining link juice from a site.

Footprints can kill you and usually can not be undone.

And yes if there were hard set fast rules that always took place you would find companies intentionally sabotaging other competitors buy buying profile links. But that doesn't seem to happen.

If only we all knew the magic perfect mix then we could all game the system.

Sometimes linking is more ART than SCIENCE. But one thing always wins, focusing on links that generate traffic in and of themselves.

[seoslick]

Yes, I knew that was a risk in buying a forum profile backlinking package. I heard people having mixed results. Some having great success and some having not so great success.

I guess when you have 30 backlinks via articles, web 2.0 and social bookmarks along with 300+ forum profiles, then that combination doesn't work.

Totally my fault for trying shortcuts and I've learned my lesson. As for backlinking being an art vs science, I would have to agree. Still looking to master this art.

[chimehost]

I have noticed something interesting with Google. One of our client registered a new domain, published content on it and built 0 backlinks. Sitemap was created and submitted to Google. When looking at stats, we noticed spiders visiting the site and around 90% of pages are indexed in Google.

So the point is looking natural is the best way to go when it comes to search engines. Google dance is common and it's hard to say how Google will respond to building links at a fast pace anymore especially after the latest Google updates. If you are already on first page, your goal should have been focused on obtaining high quality backlinks. Avoid getting links from sites that are already spammed or easy to spam.