Backlinking and Going In Reverse

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I would like to propose a question on backlinking and why certain scenarios happen rather than whats expected.

I have been working with several of my sites that are working with fairly competitive keywords (<=70,000). The sites are semi mature 1-2 years old. I have always been from the start of my marketing a articles guy for my traffic. Never even focused with it to retain backlinks. Just to drive traffic with keyword rich titles and content.

Well my question comes from the fact that I have started trying to build authority backlinks to these sites in the past 3 months. My sites have since then moved backwards in the se's from where they were before I started. Meaning my slow building backlinks have causes my sites to go backwards rather than the expectation of going forward. Granted I will get one day where the site will jump forward a couple of spots ahead where it use to be but I would give it less than a day that it would be right back and more than likely further back. The content on these sites is still updated the same as it were before, so nothing really changed with the onsite optimization.

So what does one look at when their backlinking efforts are doing the opposite of what they expected (going in reverse)?

Thanks in advance

Adam
#search engine optimization #backlinking #reverse
  • Are you looking at what your competition may be doing as well?

    If they are adding links faster than you - might that be it?
    • [1] reply
    • Hey Steve,

      Could be? But what makes there link building more qualified to be put in front of me? I casually add links (around 10-15 a day) of quality backlinks, but this is all I know, from what I have gained from others as the most "effective" way to building backlinks. So even if I spy my competitors and they are building "faster", then is what I am doing wrong? There's really no variable to change unless I add more links a day which I have come to see that most say that is a negative thing to do.

      Thanks for your feedback and more is welcome.

      Adam

  • Yes, if you are in a competitive niche then other people may be pushing their sites harder than what you are.

    Just ensure you are building your links daily, (a few a day, each day). What sort of places are you getting your links from and are you using the same anchor text each time?
    • [1] reply
    • Hey Andy,

      How do I define if the cause is a site "pushing their site harder" than what I am doing? Adding more links per day?

      I am adding links daily and I am trying to stay in the bounds of being natural. I am pretty novice at linkbuilding but as you stated I am adding a few a day.

      Mainly blogs that relate to the general niche of my sites and the main domain atleast carries a PR3 or above. Also high pr user profile backlinks.

      Thanks again for the reply. More is welcome.

      Adam
      • [1] reply
  • Hey Adam, me too hveing few sites and I too do some link buildings, but never felt such a case so far....... However, you have to ensure that you are having permant quality links. Specially some blog comemntings. That will be more helpful......
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Amenda, I dont think that Blog Comments can give you permanent links, they could be quality links but not permanent. Thats because most of the blog owners are moderating they blog comments in order to prevent spam and PR bleed. Even if it is approved once you cannot be sure for how long will your link will be in the comment.
      • [1] reply
  • This might help??

    GoogleRankings.com Website Diagnostics Panel
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I would need to know the "Whole Story" to detect what went wrong. I know that in my case I started competing for the keywords Wedding Planning & Wedding Favors about 3 months ago, and just this week did I show up on the first page for my site 1weddingsource.com. Never once did I really drop off the first 10 pages during my campaign. During the Google Dance when you are about to move up a few positions, I notice that you fall behind about 3-6 positions first only then to advance 1 or 2 days later.

    Wedding Planning

    wedding planning - Google Search

    Wedding Favors

    wedding favors - Google Search
  • This is typically what I do for my link building strategy:

    Register domain. Digg domain to get it indexed. Once indexed use angela's / paul's backlinks about 5-15 times per day anchored with the keyword the domain is targeting.

    Usually I will be on the first page *very* quickly, like within the first week. I keep building links daily, 5-15 links per day max, using angela's / paul's / steve's backlink packages.

    Usually by week 2 my site falls off page 1 to somewhere between page 5-10. I keep building links as usual. During the first few months it jumps around page 1-10 - however it only jumps around when I start building backlinks. If I stop the backlinks it usually settles back to its original spot on page 1.

    I also notice that this RARELY happens with articles. If I build links to say one of my ezinearticles - it rarely jumps around and usually hits the first page within the first couple weeks, and stays that way.

    I've done this with SEVERAL domains and SEVERAL articles, it always comes up with the same result.
  • If you stray from Google's ideal linking pattern which includes a large percentage of deep links, I can imagine that there may be some "penalty". When I build links, I just build deep links mostly (about 95%). If your site link structure and anchor texts are good, the juice will flow and your own anchors will help promote your main page.
  • It is highly unlikely that all your competition has got their act togther over the last month to out rank you. You say you have multiple sites, Do they share the same or similar content as through my own trials this often causes moves backwards when sites interlink with duplicate content. Just a suggestion
  • Hi Adam,

    The single most important factor in SEO is relevance. One of the ways that search engines determine the relevance of your web page is by the content of pages that link to your web page.

    When you build backlinks from pages that are not highly relevant to the keyword you are optimizing for, you may be effecting the relevance of your page to that keyword. The search engines are always striving to deliver the most relevant results, if the relevancy of your page becomes ambiguous you will suffer in the rankings.

    Using relevant keywords in the anchor text of your backlinks can mitigate the negative effect of links from irrelevant pages, however there seems to be a delay in the time it takes before the SE builds trust in that new anchor text.

    By focusing exclusively on backlinks from highly relevant pages, you will avoid much of the disruptive effect that new backlinks have on the perceived relevancy of your page towards your targeted keyword.

    Why not give that a try and report back to this forum the results of those efforts?
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Nice post Don - thanks.

      A quick relevancy question for you. I struggle getting my head around what relevancy means to the folks making the case FOR relevancy in the context of backlinking strategy.

      Is it the site/domains overall relevancy to my site or just the text surrounding my links on the page [not the anchor text ] - for example.

      If I post a blog article about AIG Insurance's demise on a site that wants my content but is focused on Pet Grooming ... The text of my article/blog post is is relevant to my site and thats the text surround my link on hte pet grooming site. But is my link diminished in value because google knows the algorithmically that the site is a Pet Grooming site and not an Insurance related site? Yet my article and anchor text are all fully relevant?

      Further on the topic of relevance ... how do we explain the connundrum that Angela Edwards sites and strategy presents to the relavancy argument. Keyword Angela on NASA's site - relevance? Not much I suspect. Keyword backlinks relevant to The Guardian UK site or Gourmet.com or 1,000 other sites? Yet ... she ranks for backlinks which is a pretty competitive looking search term.

      I consistently hear/read "relevance" is vital, but yet there is little further defining of what the poster actually means by relevance. I am not discounting relevance, I just want to get my head around what exactly the context is ...

      Thanks in advance for civil indulgence to my query, and for your valued information.

      best,

      Steve

      • [1] reply
  • You've changed the equation by backlinking. That probably accounts for the ping-pong action in the SERPs. Give it a rest (the backlinking) for a week or so. See if your site settles into one position. That's the quick way to tell if the backlinking is the cause. Personally, I'd ignore the daily shifts and just plug away at the backlinking.

    John
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • I agree with this as well. Pretty sure most everyone concludes that increased backlinking with sites / links that arent bad apples will sort itself out in the end.

      However that radical and frequency ofgoogle dancing does seem rather odd and extreme. Based upon your follow up comments, does NOT appear to be merely competitors outpacing your backlink efforts.

      Which I had the silver bullet to answer this mystery with.

      I'll be watching for your future reports on it. Best of success!

    • Hi John,

      This is exactly what happen. I quit for a couple days and they stopped jumping. Actually moved up a couple spots.
  • It happens to a lot of people. Used to be called the "Google Dance". It seems like Google is very sensitive to changes in the link structure of a site, both internally and externally. We have had entire blogs disappear from the index due to mass changes to internal linking, only to reappear several days or weeks later. We just keep building our backlinks on a schedule and don't worry about it. We stop for a month or so to give things time to settle. Works for us!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I don't know, it all just seems like a bunch of "speculation" to me. And I HIGHLY doubt every single one of my competitors decided to start working on their sites on the same day and jumped ahead of me at the same time. It just doesn't seem feasible.

    I'm starting to see, with more and more experience at this, that in the end your site ends up where it deserves to be - regardless if it jumps 20pages every other day back and forth for the first few months. I have some older sites that are several years old, and I've noticed they don't hop around that much.

    I also notice a lot of the big authority sites in certain niches hardly move, and if they do it's maybe 1-2 ranks (not 10 pages). Seems like website age plays the biggest issue in preventing the "google dance" on your website.
  • I can't tell you why Google does what it does. But I can tell you what to do about it.

    Blackhatters use "parasite" hosting, others call them Web 2.0 sites, like Blogger, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc.

    Go out and build 5-7 of these parasite sites. Put legit, kinda good, unique content on each. On a couple, be super agressive when it comes to linking. Others, a little less aggressive and very gentle on one or two.

    See what happens. Not only is this a good experiment, if you get any positive results for your parasite sites, THEN link to your money page(s).

    Plus, you can also grab multiple top positions using different parasite hosts.



    This helps insulate your money page, but still passes on the link juice from your linking efforts.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • That's funny because I'm actually doing just that. Not with parasites though, with my own hosted blogs.

      So far the results are all over the map, and no real patterns are forming.
      • [1] reply
    • Tip O' the Hat to Kurt on this ...

      In process to see what amount of backlinks it actually takes for google grenade a squidoo lense.

      • [1] reply
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    Backlinking and Going In Reverse

    I would like to propose a question on backlinking and why certain scenarios happen rather than whats expected. I have been working with several of my sites that are working with fairly competitive keywords (<=70,000). The sites are semi mature 1-2 years old. I have always been from the start of my marketing a articles guy for my traffic. Never even focused with it to retain backlinks. Just to drive traffic with keyword rich titles and content.