Building backlinks: how fast is too fast?

[MichaelsWeb]

Originally Posted by apatters

Of course we all know that building backlinks with the right link text is a huge part of SEO.

But I often hear that if you build too many backlinks too quickly, especially if they all have the same link text, you can get your site sandboxed by Google.

Does anyone have any experiences that confirm or refute that?

Thanks!

Don't worry about it - there is no set number for what is too fast. I never had a problem.

[HCLee]

I don't think anyone will be sure 100% what really happened even if we assumed there has been a penalty imposed. One of the options is to fix the problem and send a reconsideration request to Google. Since we don't know exactly what caused it, you have to read the Google Guidelines and see that you are in full compliance with everything or fix those you're not.

[apatters]

Again, having built thousands of links for a long year since my original post the "link velocity" idea is the only theory in this thread that MIGHT have any validity. Everything else is superstition.

I have definitely noticed that if I stop building links my SERPs tend to drop. This may have something to do with the "link velocity" concept described above, but I think it's more likely that some links are just disappearing.

For instance with article marketing, most article marketing sites will have a "Recent Articles" page with higher PR than your actual article. For the first few days your article will be listed on this page and I think that may increase the authority of both the article and everything it links to. When your article falls off of that page, its overall authority decreases.

Either way a whitehat's strategy should be the same: regularly build as many links as possible. And don't do anything to ruin the quality of Google's index unless you want to get penalized in a manual review (very rare in the SERPs, but they do happen).

That's it.

[oscarkool]

It doesn't matter how fast or how slow you build backlinks, there are no penalties unless you're obviously linkfarming and google catches you.

The reason that sandboxing is a myth is because if it were true, you could get 10 of your marketing friends to gang up on the 1st position site and throw 10k+ PR0 scuttle and pligg backlinks with bookmarking demon. If this worked, everyone would be doing it. But it doesn't work which is why no one does it.

Obviously, if you stop building links, your rankings will fall as your competitors build links.

[reapr]

Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat

Just because you get a lot of links in one day doesn't mean Google finds them all that same day. You might spend all week being careful to only get 10 links per day, then on the 7th day, Google finds and credits you with all 70 links in one day.

I really get a kick out of people who say you should only get one-two links per day to stay safe. That is a joke. Better hope you never submit a press release that gets picked up, or write a good ezinearticle article that a bunch of folks decide to use. If so, you're screwed, lol.

Exactly ... that is why I have never been too concerned about too many links at once. I have not seen a google slap from links on any of my sites. I just make sure I have links from many sources with different PR.

I should add I may notice on one day google only picks up a few links and another it picks up 50.

[edwatki]

IN my experience google usually impose a "ranking penalty". This is a drop of around 30 placed in the SERPS. Google will cancel this penalty depending on many factors but a important one is how much you spend on PPC.

Go-Compare in the UK were banned for about 1 week but soon let back in.

[Sixer]

thanks for creating this thread. its a nice informative thread

[steven_h]

Originally Posted by oscarkool

The reason that sandboxing is a myth is because if it were true, you could get 10 of your marketing friends to gang up on the 1st position site and throw 10k+ PR0 scuttle and pligg backlinks with bookmarking demon. If this worked, everyone would be doing it. But it doesn't work which is why no one does it.

Actually, this has been a Black Hat trick that is used, not to put a site in the sandbox, but to kick down their serp by adding a bunch of low value and spammy backlinks. The sandbox is really just an effect designed to hold back newer sites from buying their way up the ladder. Everything else is pretty much a myth.

I agree with Michaelsweb and a bit of what others have expressed in this thread. It doesn't matter how many links you get as long as they aren't on FFA, link farms, black listed sites... etc. As long as you use a little common sense in linkbuilding such as changing the anchor text around and often, rather than having the same keyword over and over, do your linking on reputable sites, then you can pretty much add as many backlinks as you can stand to. One caveat here, I'd probably take into consideration how long the site has been online, how many backlinks it currently has and then throttle up to full speed accordingly, rather than going from 0-60 in 2 seconds. IMHO

[daisy172]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

Hello

Thanks for that link.

I am sure I have received a penalty. Maybe it was caused by the link velocity factor.

I have a keyword phrase that is very long tail (6 words) and I was on the page 1 for Google easily for that phrase.

I was also on the first page of Google for other terms, but ALL OF THEM have disappeared!

ALL OF THEM!

So that means I must have received some sort of penalty, because even the low competition long tail keyword listings have disappeared!

My question is:
1. What do you do when you are penalized?
2. How to get out of the penalty?
3. How long does it take to get out on average?

Thanks again.

It might have been an anchor text penalty - you need to vary your anchor text - if every single link to your site has the same anchor text, a flag goes up. I believe that people on SEOMoz tested and said that if more than 75% of your links had the same anchor text, you started to drop down the rankings.

Build some more links, but throw in some variations - target a related anchor text, add some click heres, have a few links with just the url.

[Isaiah Jackson]

Originally Posted by sideserver

apatters,

The question of "how fast is too fast" depends a lot on your link-building velocity - meaning how consistent your link building efforts are. If googlebot detects that one day your site suddenly has 5000 new backlinks and the next day nothing, then obviously something is suspect.

On the other hand, if you have 5000 links coming in one day, 6000 the next, and then 7000, (sometimes the case with viral news stories) then its perfectly acceptable.

So the take home message is, be consistent in link building.

Hope this helps.

David

so how do you build backlinks quickly