Can too many high PR links can hurt SEO
-
I recently accuired about 10 PR 4- 5 for my website after getting mostly PR 1-2 for the past 6 months.
After a couple of day my rankings not only didn't go up, but actually went down really drasticly for many keyphrases that i used to rank at the top 3.
Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down?
Or maybe i should even those out with some low PR link?
-
I am often amazed at the rankings that can be obtained from only a few good links.
-
Absolutely. You're spending time doing low quality links and you're spending time getting high quality links. One of these two is a valuable investment of your time, the other one isn't. Perhaps it's time to stop link building and work on content a bit?
-
I agree... I think that google is looking at your overall "link profile". If that profile is made up completely of link drops on blogs, low-value directory submissions and links that look like they are "paid"... then your rankings are on risky ground.
I would rather have a dozen good natural links than 1200 low-value links from spamming and automatic directory submissions.
-
Your risk is not in PR itself but in your link building style. I would avoid buying links from known link sellers, blogrolls that go out to totally irrelevant topics, paid editorials etc. Natural link growth is characterised by both high and low quality links at the same time and in different proportions.
Having only high PR links that look like they were purchased can hurt you if you get manually reviewed by a member of Google search quality team.
-
I'm pretty new to all the SEO process (about 6 months..)
EGOL, you understood the situation
I also forgot to mention that those links had a link in a post and a blogroll link..
When i checked it out with yahoo site explorer i found out that those blogroll link are from EACH PAGE of the site which makes a one link in a site to hundreds, even thousands of links from every page that site has!
Should i try and delete those links?
-
If you have a great blog post or new article that is successful at Reddit, Slashdot and other community sites you could naturally get a lot of high PR links in a single day.
However, when I read your post I see..... "Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down?".... That statement sounds like you might be getting unnatural links which to Google could be seen as manipluative - and run the risk of being devalued. That will be a loss in the time required to acquire them and possibly the cost if they are purchased.
So, maybe your better question should be... "Will this high PR links be a long term asset to my site?"..... vs... will they be a spend that brings zero value.
-
As long as these links are acquired in a natural and valid way, I wouldn't worry too much about them.
If you had acquired a couple hundred links in a short time, when your website had only ten before, that looks unnatural, which isn't good. If you already have thousands of valid backlinks, a couple hundred extra won't hurt you as this fits the natural pattern. Besides, PageRank isn't a great metric to base any decision on these days anyway as it seems (http://www.finishjoomla.com/blog/33/why-pagerank-lost-its-value-for-seo/).
In regards to the rankings: I personally think these are either natural swings or there is more at play than just a handful of new and naturally acquired backlinks.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Do links like this really help for SEO?
I was doing research with Moz's Link Explorer and one of our competitors had almost 50 links coming from sites like this. Mostly nofollow but we all know that today the nofollow can still help. My question is this: Will links like these help in any shape or matter. The reason I am asking is because Link Explorer is finding them, so I am sure Google will find them as well. Examples of sites: http://www.microlinkinc.com, http://www.cmolink.com The sites that I found via analyzing had DA 35-40 I don't want to share all urls but you get the point. Basically these sites are free keyword analyzing sites, once you put in a keyword they will bring up to 20 sites that rank for that keyword. And my research suggests that these pages stay and are crawl-able since Moz has crawled them. For example Moz says: date first seen 09/12/2018 so almost 6 months has passed but that result that was searched I am assuming has stayed. Would it make sense to search on such sites keywords that you know you are ranking for and then your site would be listed below and stay there for Google to crawl and another nofollow link in our link basket. Is my thinking correct or is it waste of time. Frankly it would take 2sec to run a search for each keyword. Any feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Davit
Link Building | | Davit19850 -
★Does syndication of a news features from high Profile site like TechCrunch have a negative SEO impact?
As a co-founder of a startup that is weekly featured on high page rank news sites such as TechCrunch, The Next Web, TreeHugger , Yahoo News etc. These types of write ups are "SEO Gold" as they are high page rank sites with high relevancy to our sector and with unique good quality anchor text and copy. However... Within hours of each post going live the content and links are syndicated either via RSS or scraped and appear as duplicate content on in some cases 100's of very low quality and low relevancy content aggregation sites. To give you an example here are just two of the sites that are now appearing as linking domains due to this syndicated content and the links included in the article. Examples : Eco Market, The “Etsy For Eco,” Rebrands, Revamps, Raises & Prepares A U.S. Launch Sarah Perez | Technology | Page 4 The above are just a couple of examples amongst 100's that result from each feature. I would like to hear you opinion on if these links would be considered natural and you feel I should not take action or if you think these need removing by contacting the webmasters or disavowing the links? I am sure I cant be alone in having this problem and look forward to hearing you advice and tips
Link Building | | LiamPatterson0 -
Multiple Links from High Ranking Site Vs. Links from Multiple Domains - What's More Important?
I understand it is important to get links from many quality domains. Currently, I do have links from top domains (PR, Trust) and it I can get more from (high rank) pages on these same domains. Would it be better to focus on expanding my reach (find additional domains to link from) or to continue to build links from the current domains I have a connection with? What is weighted more? I realize doing both is important, but trying to figure out how to best use my time. Thanks! David
Link Building | | DWill0 -
Advisable to pay for a link from a highly reputed site in same domain?
Is it okay to pay for a link if the site is a very highly reputed (PR4) one in the same domain as your site? Thanks
Link Building | | EricMoore0 -
Can anyone provide any useful insights on how they use latest news items to help with SEO?
Hello, I have heard about SEO's and PR types riding off the back of latest news items that can be tied to the products or services they are trying to promote. Recently I read about how an SEO had distastefully written an article using the name of a famous singer who had sadly passed away and used this event as an opportunity to write about a small business models 😞 Can anyone provide any useful AND ethical insights on how they use latest news items to help with SEO?
Link Building | | Wallander0 -
Do VigLink links get indexed, and then pass SEO juice to the merchant?
You can find the service at viglink.com, they do dynamic linking to anchor text for participating publishers on a cost-per-click basis. Less interested here in the conversion quality and more interested in the broad SEO value. Any ideas?
Link Building | | SimpliSafe0 -
Link Building PR versus topic
Regarding link building, what counts the most in terms of PR and relevance(topic). Is it whether, the link comes from a domain/page with high domain/page rank or that the link come from a domain with similar/relevant content? I know, we should always aim to get links from domains with both relevance and good page rank. But which is most important? For example: If we have a web site about swiss made watches. Should i focus on getting links from other domains with information about swiss made watches. Or can i achieve just as good link juice, by getting links from un-related web sites with high PR? We will of course get more qualified traffic from related domains. But from a pure search ranking, what plays the biggest factor?
Link Building | | petersen0 -
What link building techniques do you teach to new hires with no SEO experience?
Right now I train my interns and new hires on 5 techniques: 1. Appropriate blog commenting the right way 2. Saving social bookmarks 3. Submitting a website to a directory 4. Publishing articles with links 5. How to build up, maintain and use a Twitter/Facebook/Digg/StumbleUpon profile for SEO Are there some other lower level link building tactics you have tried to teach interns or new hires?
Link Building | | DanDeceuster0