How many backlinks are too many?

[jeffreyhuan]

I have read from many sources that if I create too many backlinks in a short period of time it can do harm to search engine ranking and result in excessive backlink penalty. If this is true, how many backlinks per day are appropriate for a six month website?

[Dimian]

have you been building backlinks up to this point, or are you just now starting?

[Nscnikhil]

I don't think if it is true or not because i haven't heard this anywhere.Many seo experts says that the more backlinks you have the more higher you will rank in search enignes.Yeah but if you're purchasing these backlinks from some place then it can really harm you.

[jeffreyhuan]

Originally Posted by Dimian

have you been building backlinks up to this point, or are you just now starting?

I haven't done much link building before. I am just starting to work on this.

[pagunston]

Originally Posted by monikadhiman

Yes if create more back links in a short time it will treat as a spam so i will recommend you to create 100 back links in a day.

How do you create that many in one day? Do you literally look for 100 different bloggs, then make 100 different comments?

[Michel Modo]

I think dozens is all right.

[tomako]

I comment on a blog and it produces over 4000 links in one shot with my main keyword, now I'm at page 74 which is the last page for my main keyword search, and feeling so bad.

[Anang Andriana]

I can recommend you to create backlink normally for your first semester, about 5-10 backlinks per day is enough for new site. You can add more backlinks after 3-6 months, I ever create too many backlinks on my site and it make my site is suspended by Google :'-(

[tomako]

Originally Posted by Anang Andriana

I can recommend you to create backlink normally for your first semester, about 5-10 backlinks per day is enough for new site. You can add more backlinks after 3-6 months, I ever create too many backlinks on my site and it make my site is suspended by Google :'-(

Hope I heard this before, now it is too late

[seoxcell]

If your website is a social network, it will get thousands of lower quality links when compared to a news website with a breaking story, which will get much higher quality sites linking to them. Both are completely natural, but the sources of the links are completely different, and will be built at different speeds.

[Xeract]

Age is one factor when deciding on the number of links, but how many links has it already got? If it's already got 1000s of links then you can build more to it safely than if it's only for 10.

[Arushi]

Yes it's alright, There are high chances to penalize from google, if your doing more then 50 direct links for a page, it's going to harm full.

[Ben K]

I think rather than the number it is the pattern of building links may cause you in trouble. If you get links naturally , the number wont be any problem . For example if you publish an interesting article that gets huge attention in blogger and social sites . You can expect a huge number of links . In that case it wont cause you any trouble.

[Chris Webb]

1. A site with very few backlinks and/or popularity getting a massive influx of links clearly looks suspect.
2. That said, Google know you can't control who links to you so won't "automatically" penalise you (unless it's a really stupid amount of low quality links)
3. What will happen is if you start to rank high for valuable keywords, Google will look at your content (even with humans) and decide whether your content is the best result they can present to searchers. If it's spammy content full of ads, bye bye search rankings. If it's top notch, quality content, you shouldn't have anything to worry about

[blogworker]

well, i think it not depends on how many backlinks you build, but the quality of your backlink. if the quality is high, and also you can build many, i think it is ok.
But, i think in short times to build too many is impossible with high quality. what search engine focus is quality, and then quantity.

[Global Warrior]

Hi

Take a look at this



The number 1 site has 2 backlinks (BLP). The number 11 site has more than 16,000.

This is an image taken from a free SEO pdf that im writing. The image is a screen capture of market samurai. This clearly shows that other SEO techniques are more important than backlinks. It also shows that quality backlinks are more important that quantity. Look at the number of backlinks to sites positioned 2-10. Not many, but they are all quality.

You can waste a whole lot of time and effort on a backlink campaign and still not get ranked.

So to answer your question, they guy in position 1 has 2 backlinks, so presumably 3 wouldn't make a difference.

All the best

GW

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Global Warrior

Hi

Take a look at this



The number 1 site has 2 backlinks (BLP). The number 11 site has more than 16,000.

This is an image taken from a free SEO pdf that im writing. The image is a screen capture of market samurai. This clearly shows that other SEO techniques are more important than backlinks. It also shows that quality backlinks are more important that quantity. Look at the number of backlinks to sites positioned 2-10. Not many, but they are all quality.

You can waste a whole lot of time and effort on a backlink campaign and still not get ranked.

So to answer your question, they guy in position 1 has 2 backlinks, so presumably 3 wouldn't make a difference.

All the best

GW

It doesn't show that at all.

The data is flawed - those tools don't accurately report links.

You're going to get yourself confused if you make assumptions like that.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by jeffreyhuan

I have read from many sources that if I create too many backlinks in a short period of time it can do harm to search engine ranking and result in excessive backlink penalty. If this is true, how many backlinks per day are appropriate for a six month website?

This is not true.

There's NO PROBLEM at all with getting lots of links quickly.

How do I know? Because I build thousands of links a day and have NEVER had any sites penalised for this (and I've done this on over 1000 sites).

So - what is the problem that people are talking about when they're making you think this is a problem? That's the real question here.

The actual problem that you're seeing the result of is......

BAD LINKING!!!!

It's not that getting lots of links is a problem - do you think if you had a little minisite selling a book you wrote that if you went of Oprah and she recommended it and you got thousands of people linking to it that Google would suddenly penalise you? No.

It's when you use spamming tools and mass linking techniques that are focused on abusing other people's websites and blogs.

So, if you get 5000 links from a press release being published - not a problem.

If you get 5000 links from spamming people's referrer logs - That could be a problem.

If you're blasting out blog comments, forum sigs, web2.0 profiles - that could be a problem.

The people that are telling you that getting links fast is a problem are just telling you that they're using poor link building techniques.

There are lots of ways to get links in huge numbers without any problem and there are lots of ways to get huge numbers of links and have problems.

The trick for you is to stop looking for the push-button free/cheap methods and start thinking about where your market is and what effective strategies there are that are not about tricking Google or trying to ride on the back of other people's sites, or mass creating low value links so that you need a hundred thousand links just to get any real juice.

Google are not stupid and they're getting better and better and locking out people who just blast links out using tools with no consideration for the impact on the search results.

Even if you have a crap one-page site and do manage to get it to the top of Googles results by spamming linking - it only takes one person/competitor to report it for Google to check out where your links come from and slap you when they see it's all from social bookmarking, or all from .edu links, or web2.0 profiles.

It's easy to get masses of links without having a problem - you just need to not be lazy and think a bit of push button link building is a long term strategy.

Andy

[Global Warrior]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

It doesn't show that at all.

The data is flawed - those tools don't accurately report links.

You're going to get yourself confused if you make assumptions like that.

Hi Andy

As i said this is a part of a much longer pdf on SEO with many examples of on page and off page SEO techniques....... so you are right, with regards to just one image shown without the benefit of the whole analysis.

The point i was trying to show here is that quality is far superior to quantity but as in all things to do with the www, practitioners seem destined to go for quantity because its easier than going for quality. But regardless, backlinking on its own is a waste of time (in most cases and certainly in money making niches). Backlinking (read QAULITY BACKLINKING) needs to be part of an overall strategy.

Content remains king. Quality backlinks, if you can get them, to a spammy site isnt going to get you ranked highly.

All the best

GW

[MattVit]

It's no longer about backlinks.

With the Google Panda update (and, really, a little before it too), it's about a few GOOD links on authority sites, and reciprocal links with well-ranked sites.

Setting up a hundred or so backlinks is like digging to China with a fork - you'll be digging to achieve your goal 'till you die of old age.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Global Warrior

But regardless, backlinking on its own is a waste of time (in most cases and certainly in money making niches). Backlinking (read QAULITY BACKLINKING) needs to be part of an overall strategy.

Well - I disagree with the first bit and agree with the second bit.

Backlinking on its own WILL get you ranked - regardless of whether you have any relevant content on your site or not.

You do NOT need ANY SEO on-page in order to bag the top spot in Google.

That's a fact.

However, I do agree that it would be stupid to only rely on links when you can help yourself a lot by putting focus on effectively creating your content and page seo.

The point is - it's not backlinking that's bad it's BAD backlinking that's bad.

Most people treat all linking at the same and then assume that makes it a numbers game.

Unfortunately, the fact that there are no completely reliable link checking tools, means there are also many people who do some basic research about why other sites are ranking and draw completely the wrong conclusions.

For example if you think a site is ranking with only 2 PR 3 links and it's beating sites with hundreds of PR4 links - you've almost certainly missed something. Whether it's that your reporting tool or strategy is flawed, or the site is new and is having a honeymoon period in Google before being put where it really belongs - you will get completely the wrong impression.

The only real way to know what is working is - test for yourself and see what your own results get from the strategies you can do.

This is how I know what I'm saying is true - it's been my experience from over 10 years of testing with thousands of websites and hundreds of strategies.

Things change for sure - but the rationale behind what works doesn't change.

Google care about bring the most relevant content to their searchers as quickly as possible. (and about making money from advertisers)

So - while they might decide at one point that people writing articles about a subject and linking to that site gives it value - if everyone did that to create false value - it's only natural that they would say "hold on - those maniacs are all doing that now to cheat the system - let's change the importance of those and focus on something else!".

They might decide to not give article sites such value but then say "they that video site we bought - that has a lot of users and seeing what they care about might help us determine good sites" and put more value on Youtube videos. But again - if that value gets abused - they'll move focus.

So - the issue here is not how many links you need, or whether links are effective or not - it's HOW you're getting your links and how that aligns with what carries weight any that time for the search engines.

This has always been the case and is still the case.

The only people who struggle with this stuff are the ones looking for the easy answer where they can just do one thing at the push of a button and expect it to last.

Andy

[melltonroper]

60 backlinks a day is healthy for the site!

[Global Warrior]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Well - I disagree with the first bit and agree with the second bit.

Backlinking on its own WILL get you ranked - regardless of whether you have any relevant content on your site or not.

You do NOT need ANY SEO on-page in order to bag the top spot in Google.

That's a fact

Andy

I think we're dealing with semantics here..... It will but not for any period of time that will count as being relevant.....

The only people who struggle with this stuff are the ones looking for the easy answer where they can just do one thing at the push of a button and expect it to last.

That Sir, is spot on!!!

GW

[PaulSch]

The usual rubbish.

If you could do damage by backlinking then everyone would be building backlinks to their competitors´sites.
Backlinking is something over which (in theory) you have no control and the search engines know this.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Global Warrior

I think we're dealing with semantics here..... It will but not for any period of time that will count as being relevant.....

That Sir, is spot on!!!

GW

BZZZZ!!! Wrong.

But hey, I have no reason to try and convince you that my experience is any more valid than yours, so I'll leave it at that.

[GoodnightSweetRatRace]

Backlinks are way over rated.

On page SEO, and Interaction are way more powerful.

[jeffreyhuan]

Originally Posted by Xeract

Age is one factor when deciding on the number of links, but how many links has it already got? If it's already got 1000s of links then you can build more to it safely than if it's only for 10.

Currently it has got 120 backlinks according to Google Webmaster Tools. I'd better keep it only 10 backlinks per day for now. Right?

[topquality]

Backlinks are always important for a website. so in my opinion there is no number of it. You can create as many as you can.

[jonsen]

backlinks are always important for a website, to increase the page rank. There is no limit to get the backlinks . You can gather as many as you can.

[DennisXHopper]

depends how old the site is, if its a 10 year old site already established then you may find it wont get sandboxed as a legitimate viral marketing tactic may gather thousands of links in a short space of time

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by PaulSch

The usual rubbish.

If you could do damage by backlinking then everyone would be building backlinks to their competitors´sites.
Backlinking is something over which (in theory) you have no control and the search engines know this.

Backlinking is something you have no control over? LOL. It's one of the most widely discussed topics online. Obviously people have plenty of control over their backlinks.

Why can't Google decide YOU placed a lot of backlinks with exact anchor text to your website and penalize you?

[PaulSch]

Originally Posted by mosthost

Backlinking is something you have no control over? LOL. It's one of the most widely discussed topics online. Obviously people have plenty of control over their backlinks.

Why can't Google decide YOU placed a lot of backlinks with exact anchor text to your website and penalize you?

Okay, of course it´s widely discussed and most of the discussions are just plain wrong.
Sure you can buy packages etc. and all your anchor text etc. will show up as something you may have placed but, and it´s a huge but, if you put up a post/page and it goes viral you have absolutely no control over who links to your page and there is nothing you can do to stop it - even if you wanted to.

[Webbatron]

I don't know too much about this, but surely Google can tell the average quality of the links. So if you get a load in a short period of time; like for a launch of a product, and they can see those links are all/ a large quantity from relevant sites, of varying page rank say, to the "target site" then they understand that it is a natural link "explosion" where as if you get a load of links from a variety of sites that Google would not automatically recognise would want to link to your website, it thinks it is a pile of trash SEO attempt and ignores them?

I am massively new to SEO so don't shoot me down if I am way of the mark here

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by PaulSch

The usual rubbish.

If you could do damage by backlinking then everyone would be building backlinks to their competitors´sites.
Backlinking is something over which (in theory) you have no control and the search engines know this.

I knew there would be at least one person in this thread that would bring that old argument. Do some research - Beginning in May sites began receiving notices of penalties due to bad INCOMING links. It was all over the search engine news sites and several people here at WF , webmaster world and backlinksforum received them and lost ranking. They began setting this up in January after they got some really bad press in regard to the JC Penney link spam debacle.

Google Sending Notifications Of Unnatural Links Pointing To Your Site

People have had to clear their links as best they could and requests reconsideration from Google to recover from penalties

You cannot tank your competitors sites if he/she has good links but if they do not you can in facttank sites because all they have is junk.

This is no theory - its fact. We have had multiple people here receive the notices and lose rankings

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I knew there would be at least one person in this thread that would bring that old argument. Do some research - Beginning in May sites began receiving notices of penalties due to bad INCOMING links. It was all over the search engine news sites and several people here at WF , webmaster world and backlinksforum received them and lost ranking. They began setting this up in January after they got some really bad press in regard to the JC Penney link spam debacle.

Google Sending Notifications Of Unnatural Links Pointing To Your Site

People have had to clear their links as best they could and requests reconsideration from Google to recover from penalties

You cannot tank your competitors sites if he/she has good links but if they do not you can in facttank sites because all they have is junk.

This is no theory - its fact. We have had multiple people here receive the notices and lose rankings

thin MFA sites are no match for relentless xrumer and scrapebox blasts sustained over 7-10 days. Especially if you limit the anchor text to only 2-3 phrases.

tested.

[rooze]

All this is good stuff but I can't understand why more people are not looking at the correlation between the number of website visitors and the acquisition rate of backlinks. Google can index at a phenomenal rate and it can easily see if the number of links acquired in a specific period correlates (within a certain margin of error) to the number of unique visits made to a website. The whole premise of backlinks is that it is a system of voting. For a "REAL" vote to have been cast, a REAL person must have visited your website. (I know there are exceptions to this in different link types, but if Google is looking for a system of voting, wouldn't you think it would give precedence to votes from people who have actually seen your website, and discredit votes from people who had never visited your website?). So how can you have 1000 visitors in a month and 10,000 voting visitors? - do we really think google is that stupid and naive?

If it really is a system of voting, then it must work like this -

Google has some parameter in its algorithm which determines what, given the website data, is an acceptable range of link acquisition per visitor received. Perhaps 1 link per 100 visitors would be a 'natural' rate of acquisition. If a site receives 100 backlinks per visitor.....well the only question is, how does google penalize the site. Does it just ignore the links, or does it ignore some and count others, or does it ignore everything and downgrade the website?

To think that this isn't considered in their current ranking algorithm is quite strange, IMHO.

And believe me, as more and more 'tools' become available to build links, more and more focus will be applied at google on how to filter links.

It's only numbers, math....there ain't no rocket science here. The irony is that we provide the data google needs to make these assessments freely, through our analytics accounts.