Building backlinks: how fast is too fast?

[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!

[fragin_bastich]

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the "sandbox" (which as far as I can tell is a fictional idea that somehow spread like my herpes!) BUT... When looking at seo, and especially backlinks here are a few factors...and hopefully an answer:

-Anchor text
-Referring Site
-Number of other links on referring page
-Authority of referring site
-relevancy
-etc

So with those factors in mind, I've found that 5000 links in two days all saying "buy viagra" and all from site directories and articles IS too many and deserves a slap.

BUT...

5000 links in two days with varying anchor text, and coming from relevant pages that aren't themselves blacklisted and a wide VARIETY of them (blog post and comments, social bookmarking sites, news, press releases, articles, video sites, social networks, directories, etc) is NOT too many.

So the point is...it depends.

[crystalq]

fragin_bastich is right too many from 1 place is too much
but have links coming back from many other places
is a good thing, actually google incourages webmasters
to do this, go to Google and read the webmasters guide lines

[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

[askloz]

Personally I feel people these days FOCUS too much on how many links they should get in a day, a week, a month, a year, how old the page is, etc...

Just be natural, think natural, take into consideration how old the site is, etc, the rest will come to play..

In my experience, top rankings don't come over night... it's like fine wine (for some phrases), as time passes, traffic increases... I have a LOT of sites that don't do too well for a month or so, but as I move on to other sites I create, the others start to generate more traffic...

so, time is the perfect healer here.

[Angela V. Edwards]

If you use linkbait, you may have a rash of natural backlinks. However, usually the backlink strategy will be consistent. Thousands in one day isn't really "natural" unless linkbait was used. However, that sort of jump in backlinks isn't going to happen every day.

Instead of worrying about how many to add, I'd focus on getting quality backlinks. Backlinks from sites with PR of 8, 9, or 10. Those are great for SEO.

[James Schramko]

I don't agree with everything in this thread from my own experiments and some experiments of those I trust.

It has been observed by some SEO's that too many high PR links can harm you - it would be unnatural.

Too many links with the SAME anchor text usually causes your site to not appear anymore until you get more variety.

It does not take a long time to rank for some words. It can take a matter of hours for a new site to rank for low - medium competition phrases.

If you over-optimize your title, description, H1 and body text you will usually appear fast then disapear until you get less density. It is too contrived.

These are from my own experiments so you may get different findings.

[Simplweb]

I have a related, more subtle question....

How long does it take to get pagerank from links?

I have links, and are listed for narrow search terms, but the site still does not have any pagerank.....

Added Note:
I estimate I have 1,200 backlinks from 3 sites I got in <24 hours. I do not seem to have been slapped.

[fragin_bastich]

Originally Posted by xentech

Just from this small post alone you have shown yourself to have such a ridiculously weak knowledge of SEO and link-building, this is unbelievable... Seriously mate if you have poor knowledge on a subject don't spread it around to noobs who will lap it all up. Who taught you this? They deserve a slap. Getting 5k links in two-days will definitely get you banned unless your site is over 7 years old with a high trust authority with Google, and even then you really are pushing it. 2500 links a day are you mad?

Don't play with me boy... You really think that even big G is too stupid to know when those links are spammable or when they are legitimate? The piont was not the specific number (it was just an arbitrary high number that he will never reach anyway). The point was the difference between dropping an obscenely high number of links in directories vs. getting an equeally high number of links from varying sources, etc.

Just because you're links are too obvious for G NOT to disregard them sure doesn't mean that anybody getting more links than you is going to get banned, just look at the plethera of sites online that get pounded by links day in and day out from all over the web...how many links do ya think you'd get from a digg front page story for example? (the answer is LOTS) And you think that every site that hit's that get's banned...NO, because of the type, variation, and source of those links! G knows when you've been naughty, and they know when you've been nice...get it!

Now go play with your toy cars...and pr10.com sucks, 6 year old rubbish

[fragin_bastich]

Originally Posted by Simplweb

I have a related, more subtle question....

How long does it take to get pagerank from links?

I have links, and are listed for narrow search terms, but the site still does not have any pagerank.....

Added Note:
I estimate I have 1,200 backlinks from 3 sites I got in <24 hours. I do not seem to have been slapped.

Google only updates page rank every few months...although I'm not fully up to date on my page rank as I haven't bothered with it in a bit.

[Simplweb]

I thought it was more continuous now?

[apatters]

I can vouch that PR definitely changes more than once every few months, on a site I'm actively building backlinks for I see the PR of one of my pages change every few days.

As usual I think I've underestimated the scale of what people are doing here; the question in my mind when I posted this was really "if I go from creating five to ten backlinks per day to my site and they mostly all have the same link text, is Google going to sniff it out and slap me?"

It sounds like the answer is: highly unlikely. 10 links per day is a drop in the ocean.

I have a hard time figuring out how you would create more than that anyway, unless you were doing something blackhat.

[flashgordon]

I'd say any more then what a normal person or site could generate on its own would be too many links in a day. Remember, although it is spiders crawling the web, they are programmed by humans. So, they look for things that appear natural. Diversity is natural. Slow but steady is natural. Anchor text variation is natural. Etc.

[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.

[scene4u]

It is important not to build too many links to fast because it is so obvious to the search engines. If you are using an automated package try to use it briefly rather than generate thousands of links in a day.

[ahefner33]

Originally Posted by blackhatcat

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.

That's what I think. How can you control if you put a really good piece out there that contains your link and everyone wants to publish it on their site? Wouldn't make much sense for them to penalize you for something you couldn't control unless you did not market at all or put a restriction on your marketing piece as to how many people can re-publish it :P

[hello21]

thank you for this information

[Hafsoh]

What is more important in building link is link quality and relevancy, build links makes sense to mix up the anchor text and descriptions so that you are relevant for different keywords and do not make your link profile looking too unnatural

[Jenie0109]

Originally Posted by apatters

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.

That is the long definition of..spam...

[aboutalhah]

Don't worry about this, just get links.

They won't be all indexed at the same time...

Franck

[Red_Virus]

well it all depends on your niche, so if you are in a niche like business loans then you just need to get each and every link possible.

[esericsu]

The fact is no matter how many links you build in one day, you should always use different anchor texts from different ip addresses. Don't use the same text too often. It will trigger google alarm.

[marketing1012]

as all said can depend on the niche, the variations of how you are back linking, so just be cautious and do what others have suggested,
keep it up and goodluck.

[dataprovier]

The main thing in building links is that you do need to build links at good pace. Now if you build links its good but in case if you build links then you are sure to get banned by Google as this is considered as spam. So you need to keep things at good pace..

[wezzley]

I like to think that if a person hand builds links & does not go crazy overboard, like not sleeping for days while link building you should be fine.

If you get an automated program or script of some sort to spam out links, you run a high risk of getting in trouble.


I could be wrong but this is how I like to think about it.

[MichaelB23]

You will not get sandboxed, no matter what! Think about it, if you can get sandboxed that easily then you can just as easily screw over your competition. I don't believe there is a limit for too fast, but persay 100,000 links a day would definitely put in some question, but 1,000 ish a day shouldn't matter.

Also keep in mind, some or most of these links won't get indexed right away, so Google won't know that you posted 200,000 links to your site that day... Instead it will be indexed steadily and look natural.

[Derek-C-Wicks]

I have read in many places that you will be black listed if you have too many same work wordlinks. They class it the same as spam.

[jeswarrior]

Nothing on this thread is based on facts. Do the opposite of what is been said here and you'll do fine. Hammer your site with backlinks as if there were no tomorrow and you'll find great success. Google doesn't care about any of what is being said on this thread and the most they could do is devalue those links which they won't as they will do more harm than help.

Matt Cutts is a sack full of fart and black hatters have been proven him wrong again and again. Don't sweat this small stuff. Create content, backlinks, stay out of these Seo time wasting threads and forget about Google. The more you ignore Google, the more money you'll make.

[apatters]

Originally Posted by jeswarrior

Nothing on this thread is based on facts. Do the opposite of what is been said here and you'll do fine. Hammer your site with backlinks as if there were no tomorrow and you'll find great success. Google doesn't care about any of what is being said on this thread and the most they could do is devalue those links which they won't as they will do more harm than help.

Matt Cutts is a sack full of fart and black hatters have been proven him wrong again and again. Don't sweat this small stuff. Create content, backlinks, stay out of these Seo time wasting threads and forget about Google. The more you ignore Google, the more money you'll make.

Well, after a long year of SEO, PPC, and more, I have found just about everything in this quote to be correct.

I've never really pushed the boundaries of what felt "legitimate," doing thousands of spammy irrelevant backlinks a day or anything, but I've certainly ramped up my backlink building dramatically, and 99% of the nonsense spewed by people on public forums like this one is wrong and misleading and will only make you second guess your plan instead of taking more action and getting richer.

To be sure there are a few legitimate gems of value, and probably many people who have good intentions but a poor understanding of what they're talking about.

But with that said... it's generally better to just stop reading the forums, and get back to work.

Like I'm going to do now.

[AlexTampa]

Originally Posted by apatters

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.

Its not sandboxed, its a phrase based penalty

[nossie]

there is nothing as "to fast" or "to slow". Just keep building links so there wont be any strange spikes in the long run.

If you build 100 links a day, keep doing it every day...

if you build 1000 links a day, keep doing it every day...

If you start and build 1000 links and just quit with linkbuilding after 2 weeks: you get sandboxed.

[Joe118]

I agree with Nossie. There is empirical evidence to strongly support what he's saying:

If you do this over a few days, every day you search for 'buy viagra online' you see different results and lots of these results are actually profiles (forum profiles, website profiles, etc.). What's going on here is that pharma spammers are using automated tools to create lots of links at once that point to such a profile. The profile gets a huge boost and then gets sandboxed.

Pharma spammers have adapted and realised that this is actually behavior that is perfectly suited to their marketing efforts. What they do is they have a lot of profiles on e.g. hundreds of forums and as soon as one bites the dust they backlink to the next one and boost it. Often once the profile gets boosted, traffic comes in, and the webmaster notices, investigates, and deletes the profile. So the profile is not going to be useful for more than a few days at most anyways

It's a perfect case of unintended consequences of google's algorithm.

[4morereferrals]

Pimple on a gnat's arse ....

Originally Posted by apatters

I can vouch that PR definitely changes more than once every few months, on a site I'm actively building backlinks for I see the PR of one of my pages change every few days.

As usual I think I've underestimated the scale of what people are doing here; the question in my mind when I posted this was really "if I go from creating five to ten backlinks per day to my site and they mostly all have the same link text, is Google going to sniff it out and slap me?"

It sounds like the answer is: highly unlikely. 10 links per day is a drop in the ocean.

I have a hard time figuring out how you would create more than that anyway, unless you were doing something BlueFart.

[Kurt]

If you're afraid of building links too fast, but are able to get links fast, the solution is to create more sites, blogs, lenses, profiles, etc. Spread your links out over each of them and point them to your money pages.

I'm not saying you can't build links fast. Only that if you're worried, there is something you can do about it.

The main point is simply: How many links has google indexed and out of all of those, howmany are your's? Go get some links.

[majidmaskat]

can you use article martketing for top search optimastion, without no backlinks

[JECKELLL]

It depends on where you obtain your links from, if you are submitting to free directories then its not a big worry, because the time in which different directories add the link to their index varies HUGELY

[majidmaskat]

ezine articles, ?

[Peter Adamson]

Put yourself in Google's mind and ask yourself what looks natural. If you are promoting something seasonal or riding a wave then a large number of links at once may be natural. Celbrity news is a good example. If they smudge their lipstick or something and everyone is talking about it, links will naturally occur very quickly pointing to whatever gossip is out there. The same principle applies to some business news, product releases etc.

Someone mentioned press releases further up this thread. There are many legitimate reasons for a site getting large numbers of links overnight. But *most* sites do not fall under this category. Choose your link velocity, and maintain it, or increase it slightly over time. Never stop, or you will disappear.

[Foockle]

Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards

If you use linkbait, you may have a rash of natural backlinks. However, usually the backlink strategy will be consistent. Thousands in one day isn't really "natural" unless linkbait was used. However, that sort of jump in backlinks isn't going to happen every day.

Instead of worrying about how many to add, I'd focus on getting quality backlinks. Backlinks from sites with PR of 8, 9, or 10. Those are great for SEO.

HAhha "PR of 8, 9, or 10" ... dreams , dreams ... Call Google and ask them to post your link on their home page

[Jenie0109]

well if your site is new....the usual optimization for you to rank up will take about 2-3 months

[Amfire]

What is the source of this information?

Originally Posted by Jenie0109

well if your site is new....the usual optimization for you to rank up will take about 2-3 months

[Kimberly4562]

Originally Posted by fragin_bastich

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the "sandbox" (which as far as I can tell is a fictional idea that somehow spread like my herpes!) BUT... When looking at seo, and especially backlinks here are a few factors...and hopefully an answer:

-Anchor text
-Referring Site
-Number of other links on referring page
-Authority of referring site
-relevancy
-etc

So with those factors in mind, I've found that 5000 links in two days all saying "buy viagra" and all from site directories and articles IS too many and deserves a slap.

BUT...

5000 links in two days with varying anchor text, and coming from relevant pages that aren't themselves blacklisted and a wide VARIETY of them (blog post and comments, social bookmarking sites, news, press releases, articles, video sites, social networks, directories, etc) is NOT too many.

So the point is...it depends.

Ooohh, be careful with back links, you can look like spam. But it is hard to tell what the limit is, because different sites can delete you for one, and others will let you post tons, so just kind of feel the waters.
Once I posted a link to my blog after talking to this girl on a forum and I got deleted. I sent an email explaining how it was relevant to the girl's hard time and I just wanted to help her, I was not spam or an advertisement. I was frusterated because this lady was really mean about it in her reply.
I am not sure where I was going with that, just a relevant story(:

[Kimberly4562]

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

Ooooh, nice advice. Consistency is key(:

[Kael41]

Consistency is good, but also where they are coming from is the key as well. I can mass submit 1000 links today, but i can guarantee that the places where my link will be found will be 75% crap. But a backlink is a backlink, right? The other thing as well is that I could send out the links today, but google will NOT see all 1000 immediately. It takes time for some sites to approve or open the link to the world, so google will NOT see 1000 links attributed back to my site the next day.

I know people harp on that, and if that were the case, whitehatters and blackhatters would stop doing it (mass submissions). The truth of the matter is, the places that approve and display your link far outweigh how many are being shown back to you in a short amount of time.

[dino_rhino]

Originally Posted by Kimberly4562

Ooooh, nice advice. Consistency is key(:

but the problem sometimes is keeping your consistency.

[askloz]

especially if you're lazy like me, thank god for automated scripts

Originally Posted by dino_rhino

but the problem sometimes is keeping your consistency.

[jacksonlin]

What do you do if you have been penalized?

A lot of people have been saying there is no penalty. I disagree.

I have a site (a new site) that was ranked on page 1 for Google for multiple search terms. Suddenly one day - BOOOM everything all disappeared!

The reason?

I realized my submissions to unique article wizard a day (50 links a day per page) ran out. They submitted each page to 800 sites, at 50 submissions a day. Then suddenly, it hit the 800 site mark and I got no more links.

Then all of a sudden my ranks disappeared!

So I have to disagree... there is a penalty!

My question is...

What do you do after you have been hit by the Google penalty?

I did a search in google for: "mydomainname.com" and it's still there.

Just the rankings are not. So I know I have not been de-indexed...

But, what should I do to make sure I get my rankings again?

Do I just wait it out? If so, how long do I need to wait? =[

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by jacksonlin

What do you do if you have been penalized?

A lot of people have been saying there is no penalty. I disagree.

I have a site (a new site) that was ranked on page 1 for Google for multiple search terms. Suddenly one day - BOOOM everything all disappeared!

The reason?

I realized my submissions to unique article wizard a day (50 links a day per page) ran out. They submitted each page to 800 sites, at 50 submissions a day. Then suddenly, it hit the 800 site mark and I got no more links.

Then all of a sudden my ranks disappeared!

So I have to disagree... there is a penalty!

My question is...

What do you do after you have been hit by the Google penalty?

I did a search in google for: "mydomainname.com" and it's still there.

Just the rankings are not. So I know I have not been de-indexed...

But, what should I do to make sure I get my rankings again?

Do I just wait it out? If so, how long do I need to wait? =[

Are you sure this is a penalty or a factor of a theory known as "link velocity"?

Read about link velocity here:
Link Velocity - Advanced SEO Concept?

[HCLee]

It's important to grow your links gradually and consistently. Any sudden growth makes Google suspicious. Truly, the best way to have traffic on your blog or site is having great content that your readers will enjoy, recommend, and then come back again and again.

What makes people like your blog? It’s the fact that your content has value and is infused by your personality as an author.

[jacksonlin]

Originally Posted by Kurt

Are you sure this is a penalty or a factor of a theory known as "link velocity"?

Read about link velocity here:
Link Velocity - Advanced SEO Concept?

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.