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Too many backlinks...

by Emersion
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I read a lot about SEO. And one of the things that I often read not to do is to build inbound links too quickly. Many SEO "experts" say that you must build your links to appear natural (slowly), otherwise your site will be blacklisted by Google and completely removed from their search engines.

Here is my problem with that. Wouldn't that give me the power to blacklist all of my competitors sites? Why waste my time naturally building links to my own site when I can just throw a whole bunch of links to my competitors...so many that they'll get blacklisted. Sure, that would be a very dirty trick. But people would do it if it was possible.

I just can't imagine that Google would give anyone the power to blacklist someone else's site. Which leads me to believe that you can build as many inbound links to your own site, as quickly as you want, and you will be rewarded for it - not punished.

Has anybody ever had experience otherwise? Has anyone on here actually been blacklisted for linking too quickly?
#backlinks
  • Profile picture of the author patJ
    I've never experienced that my sites get blacklisted by google. But new sites can get slapped for a while, but keep building links and it should go back to normal. With established sites it usually don't matter much.
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  • Profile picture of the author Big JP
    Everyone has their own opinion, like many other things. I just go with the flow when it comes to backlinks, and do what I can when I can, I have never had any problems such as de-indexed sites etc. and have spent a few days in a row to gather backlinks for some of my competitive niche sites.

    JP
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  • Profile picture of the author Colton
    Such a guessing game.
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    • Profile picture of the author Emersion
      Originally Posted by Colton View Post

      Such a guessing game.
      I think that pretty much sums it up. Experienced SEO people have a pretty good idea of what it takes to get good backlinks, but nobody really KNOWS.

      Just like the 'relevancy' issue. I've heard a lot of people say how the incoming links must be relevant. And others say it doesn't matter. From my experience, I agree with Jazbo...I think too much emphasis is put on relevancy. But I do think the quality of each incoming link is very important (PR ranking, .edu/.gov sites, etc.)

      But my main point is that "too many links" is balogna. I could be wrong, but think about news sites and other popular sites that get thousands of backlinks in a single day. I can't imagine you can be punished for that.

      Thanks for your input.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cathy Henry
    I think the key to good back links is relevancy not so much quantity. Google will not give any relevancy to a back link if it is on a totally unrelated website. So if you are going to be puting in time building backlinks make sure they are on sites within your own niche, have a good page rank, aren't no follow links and are not spam. If you keep that in mind then I doubt you will get penalized for the quantity.
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    • Profile picture of the author jazbo
      Sorry but the relevancy thing is a "red herring" that people fall for and it simply is a load of old nonsense TBH.

      Proof?

      This is what Rand Fishkin wrote a few days ago on his blog on seomoz.org - Rand and SEOMOZ are ackowledged as one of the foremost SEO companies in the world:

      "To be totally honest, I don't think the content relationship (relevancy) or matching subject matter has much of an impact in the algo right now. Off-topic links, so long as they're from powerful, trustworthy sources, seem to help just as much as those with topical matches.


      It may seem weird, but I know I'm far from the only SEO to have observed this phenomenon."


      Relevancy shmelancy. Just build varied links.






      Originally Posted by Cathy Henry View Post

      I think the key to good back links is relevancy not so much quantity. Google will not give any relevancy to a back link if it is on a totally unrelated website. So if you are going to be puting in time building backlinks make sure they are on sites within your own niche, have a good page rank, aren't no follow links and are not spam. If you keep that in mind then I doubt you will get penalized for the quantity.
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      • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
        Originally Posted by jazbo View Post

        Sorry but the relevancy thing is a "red herring" that people fall for and it simply is a load of old nonsense TBH.

        Proof?

        This is what Rand Fishkin wrote a few days ago on his blog on seomoz.org - Rand and SEOMOZ are ackowledged as one of the foremost SEO companies in the world:

        "To be totally honest, I don't think the content relationship (relevancy) or matching subject matter has much of an impact in the algo right now. Off-topic links, so long as they're from powerful, trustworthy sources, seem to help just as much as those with topical matches.


        It may seem weird, but I know I'm far from the only SEO to have observed this phenomenon."


        Relevancy shmelancy. Just build varied links.
        Yep. This is exactly right. Here is what I tell people:
        That is another myth that gets passed around a lot. Sure, it's good to have relevant links and Google recommends it, but links that are not "relevant" also count.

        The Drudge Report was put on the "map" the day he broke the news that
        President Clinton was having an...er, indiscretion with a young intern named Monica Lewinsky. THOUSANDS (maybe even HUNDREDS of thousands) of sites linked to him that day. Many of them were not in his "niche".

        About eight months ago I challenged my Physical Therapist (I have an old ankle injury) that I could get him on Page One of Google for his keywords. He was at the bottom of Page 6. I did his links one night and then went to bed. The next day I got up and checked and he was NUMBER ONE in Google for ALL his keywords. Not one of the sites I added his link to was "relevant" for Physical Therapy or even Health and Wellness. Yet they still worked that well that fast. And his site is STILL in the number one position; this many months later.


        You often see "Yellow Page" sites linking to major businesses. Now, you and I, being humans, can understand why a site like that might link to a business'website, but do you really think a Search Engine's algorithm can make that determination? What if there was a "community portal" site that linked to all the businesses in the area? What about directories? What "niche" are they in? Search Engines do not and cannot determine whether all the sites linking to other sites "make sense" (relevant) or not.

        The search engines would have to know what is "relevant" and that will take a LOT of human interaction. A site for parents might link to a veterinarian's website because the site has a warning about a certain flea medication being poisonous to children, Yellow Pages websites might link to businesses in the area, the Fire Department's website might link to the PUD (Electric Company) because of a warning about electrical sparks, the Food Bank might link to the local High School because of a huge food drive the kids did...see what I mean? To determine "relevance" would take CONSTANT human interaction on all the TRILLION webpages on the Internet. Many Web 2.0 sites' only "relevance" to anybody is the 'community factor' that they provide. Theme-wise, many of those sites aren't "relevant" to most niches.


        If you leave out great sites because they are not "relevant" to your niche,
        you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I'd use them all.
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  • Profile picture of the author SurviveUnemployment
    Getting a bunch of backlinks quickly can help you if they are organic links from related sites or social networking sites. In other words, if you go viral, Google won't penalize you for it.

    Spamming your links everywhere might be a different story. I don't know.
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  • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
    I think people read too much about SEO.

    Lots of backlinks,
    Lots of traffic ( traffic begets traffic)
    Lots of relevant keywords ( but not too many)
    Update your site occasionally

    And that should do it. But truthfully, I believe that good luck
    can play a role as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Louise Green
    Originally Posted by Emersion View Post

    Wouldn't that give me the power to blacklist all of my competitors sites? Why waste my time naturally building links to my own site when I can just throw a whole bunch of links to my competitors...so many that they'll get blacklisted.
    There's an easier way of taking out the competition, but using the method you mentioned unless the site you want to attack is new then the results are going to be very unpredictable. It might harm them or it might help them.. depending on the age of the domain and about 200 other factors, it's almost impossible to know what your efforts would achieve.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnhoefer
    I am a newbee at this so take this for what its worth...

    I believe the experts when they say relevancy is not of primary importance. However, when I look down the line at changes that might be made within the Google Algo, is it not a good assumption that this may change? I don't want to wake up one morning and find I have fallen off a cliff and am on page 47 (not that I am on page 1 now, but I will be).

    Also, I am starting SEO for our insurance agency, so it is not difficult to find relevant sites to get links and ones with high PR to boot, so maybe this is a bigger issue for others in smaller niches.

    I am using the 80/20 rule on link building. 80% of my links will come from relevant sites. The other 20% can be from anywhere. If I find a PR7+ site to put a dofollow link with anchor text, why pass it up? Especially if the majority of my links are relevant, I can afford any muddling of the google water it may create now or later.

    I just follow common sense and then act on it!
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    • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
      Originally Posted by johnhoefer View Post

      I am a newbee at this so take this for what its worth...

      I believe the experts when they say relevancy is not of primary importance. However, when I look down the line at changes that might be made within the Google Algo, is it not a good assumption that this may change? I don't want to wake up one morning and find I have fallen off a cliff and am on page 47 (not that I am on page 1 now, but I will be).

      Also, I am starting SEO for our insurance agency, so it is not difficult to find relevant sites to get links and ones with high PR to boot, so maybe this is a bigger issue for others in smaller niches.

      I am using the 80/20 rule on link building. 80% of my links will come from relevant sites. The other 20% can be from anywhere. If I find a PR7+ site to put a dofollow link with anchor text, why pass it up? Especially if the majority of my links are relevant, I can afford any muddling of the google water it may create now or later.

      I just follow common sense and then act on it!

      But what would be "relevant"? Only other insurance sites? Would Yellow Pages be relevant? Directories? If so, why...as they are not matched by theme to your site. What about blog entries where folks talk about how great your insurance is? I see TONS of blogs listed among the backlinks for Major Authority Sites.

      I see what you're saying, but Google could do pretty much ANYTHING to their algorithm someday in the future and I'm seeing way too many gun-shy webmasters basing their entire businesses around what Google "might" someday do.

      Google does continuously improve its algorithm, but this is a 5 BILLION dollar per year business right now, based on the model that they've been using. Google isn't going to drastically change its algorithm overnight and risk flushing that kind of money down the toilet. HUGE changes in algorithm could cost them their entire business and the Google executives are well aware of that.

      Not to mention that incoming links cannot hurt your site:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cllu7g4Rmms
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      • Profile picture of the author FriendlyRob
        Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards View Post

        But what would be "relevant"? Only other insurance sites? Would Yellow Pages be relevant? Directories? If so, why...as they are not matched by theme to your site. What about blog entries where folks talk about how great your insurance is? I see TONS of blogs listed among the backlinks for Major Authority Sites.
        I agree, I don't see relevance being an issue.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnhoefer
    Thanks for the reply. I am certainly open to your ideas considering it has the possibility to make things easier for me with better results. I am especially considering it when I am on other peoples blogs or forums that are not related to insurance, but there are posts or threads on insurance. So I will put comments or posts on those sites. Also, I check the page rank of all the sites I check out, if its over PR5 and its not a spammy site, I am all over it.

    Also Angela, I have subscribed to your link service and i will be purchasing some backdated lists from you later on as well. I want to rule my local market on insurance terms and rule the national market on some good commercial insurance keywords as well. So I will be a posting machine. This is an excellent forum where I am learning information that is going to transform my 2nd generation family business and I couldn't be more excited.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Backlinks are backliks are backlinks. If they are indeed backlinks.

      You cannot backlink too much nor too fast.

      While you're worrying about too many backlinks, your competition
      is backlinking. Quickly. Fast. Tons.

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author wordgeist
    I agree back links is the key, specially if the back link comes from a good PR site
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