Is there any Penalty for building in bound inks too quickly?
-
I was speaking with someone today who was spreading out their link building because they were afraid that getting too many too quickly would incur penalties from Google and Bing. Is this a real thing? I have always been under the impression that if they are high quality links and directories that there was no limit to how many you could add other than the limited availability of the high quality links and directories themselves. I would appreciate some input on this.
-
As Marie and Gary have said, there are a lot of legitimate reasons why a site would acquire a high number of new inbound links naturally. Even if those sorts of links prompted Google to manually have a look at the backlink profile, this sort of activity isn't going to hurt.
What Google is looking for with backlink acquisition is unnatural patterns, so if you were to add 1,000 links to a backlink profile of (say) 1,500 links, with no discernible media attention, content creation or seasonality, you'd be breaking a pattern of link acquisition (or the lack thereof) and possibly trigger attention. Google is incredibly good at pattern recognition, for obvious reasons. If a pattern changes, there has to be a reason for the change. If they determine that the change was manipulative an unnatural, that's where you run into trouble.
Echoing what others have said about link building using directories - I can't endorse that as a link building tactic at all. Get listed where appropriate for reasons other than SEO (are you a local hairdresser in Everett, WA? Getting listed on a site about service providers in Everett is absolutely fine). The sort of directory-based link building that was common and fairly useful for "volume" in ~2009 is no longer a good idea. You'll show up on sites like these without effort (people seeking to fill out directories they run), and shouldn't worry too much about those sorts of links, but it's not advisable to seek them yourself.
-
I think that there's a common belief that if a site suddenly got an influx of links that it could trigger a manual review. But I'm not sure that I agree. Someone asked John Mueller about this in a hangout. It's at about 41:39: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj1PNkDtYKs&feature=c4-overview&list=UUthrUiuJUtFSXBUp48D8bAA
He mentioned that there are lots of reasons for a site to suddenly attract a large number of links so that really isn't something to worry about.
I think that there's absolutely nothing to worry about if a site is attracting links in large amounts and rapidly. But, if you are building them, then I would argue that they're unnatural. Sure, there are some directories that are probably acceptable to Google. But, if you're saying that you're creating links in a large enough scale that it could look suspicious then they're probably bad links that are going to affect you the next time that Penguin refreshes. This includes widescale guest posting as well. Just throwing that out there as some people are still under the impression that they can write hundreds of articles and get them posted on other people's sites and call that "White hat content marketing".
I personally don't think that the creation of a large number of links all at once would open a site up for a manual review as I can't see how that would scale. But, I could be wrong. I don't think anyone really knows the answer to that question.
-
You could raise suspicion, but some sites go viral and build links naturally very quickly.
what I would suggest is that if you are building links quickly, they are probably crappy links. If you can get a link easily its probably worthless.
-
Building links in high quality directories is not natural and should be nofollowed as you are building them yourself.
Having a great news story and lots of people picking it up and linking to you as a result will not end in a penalty even if it is millions of links.
But batches of links that Google already deems as average quality or maybe even low quality will trigger an alert rather quickly.
If you are going to go down the route you are going, then the only way you will get away with it is with a large diversity of themes. If they are all directories and articles the pattern will be very clear even for a robot and will trip a filter or even a penalty.
-
Building too many directory links could definitely get you penalised, even if you build them up gradually. If the links are organic like from a decent linkbait or infographic then you will probably be OK, in fact you will probably see a nice boost in your rankings after about 3-4 weeks in my experience.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
Should I build internal links to my homepage?
Ive done a lot of internal linking before but its always been for other inner pages but now I need to do it for a websites homepage but this got me thinking if its even worth doing and should I be doing it at all? For the first question I was thinking that surely the homepage has more authority than any of my inner pages so how would internal links from inner pages help and for the second question Ive read a few posts like this Kissmetrics one here where it says you shouldnt do it. There are two types of links you should avoid using in your content: Homepage. Most sites have too many links to the homepage as it is. You would rather strengthen internal pages to boost the overall SEO of your site, rather than simply point more links at the homepage. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/commandments-of-internal-linking/ thoughts?
Link Building | | linklander0 -
How to Recover From a Google Penguin Penalty?
My web site is hit by penguin penalty and got the mail from Google to my web master tool saying. "Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Link Building | | tinyinnovative
As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to xxxxx.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.
Recommended action
Use the Links to Your Site feature in Webmaster Tools to download a list of links to your site.
Ensure that unnatural links pointing to your site are removed.
When these changes are made, and you are satisfied that links to your site follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines, submit a reconsideration request. If you're unable to remove links pointing to your site, please provide as much detail as possible in your reconsideration request.For an updated list of manual actions currently applied to your site, visit the Manual Actions page. If no manual actions are listed, there is no longer a need to file a reconsideration request."0 -
India and Link Building
A client of mine has decided to work all Link Building through an India team that she's used for a few years. The problem that I'm having with this situation is that the link building list below contains quite a few 0/10 PR websites, spam websites, and websites that have no direct relation to the client's industry. Am I wrong in thinking that link building should be done to high PR, authoritative sites that are related the the client's industry? The link below will take you to the Google Doc that contains all links built for this client. I would love it if someone could take a look at that list and tell me what they think. Is this recipe for disaster or great link building? https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4a0JOKKFu0SUFZRbFRBNUZJekE Thank you so much!!!
Link Building | | Linwright0 -
Press Relases as Link Building is valid?
Dear Mates, We are looking for increase our Domain Authority, so we was submitting our site to BOW, Yahoo Directory and we want to know if Press Releases sites (paid press) are too good to do the inversion. What sites are recommended, we think could be very usefull build a list of the real top PR sites (Paid and Free) Thank you for your time
Link Building | | SharewarePros0 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Where did the link building section go?
Used to be a section on link building before the redesign. Where did it go?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Link building tools/sites
I am looking for a way to share my content in multiple locations to build back links without having to upload one at a time per location. For example- if i write an article and i upload it to ezine articles and then post it over on my blog- it will then post over on my twitter and facebook and linked in. However- how i can also get this article with back links into shared sites, bookmark sites, and other locations online to help build my inbound marketing for back links. I'm trying to find a way to save time while building out the links.
Link Building | | LauraThomas0