Is It Possible to Be Punished By Google For Getting Too Many Links?
-
Hello,
My team and I have been trying to get high-quality back-links by seeking other sites and blogs. We were ranking really well and then all of a sudden, our rankings dropped dramatically.
We were only using backlinks and good ones at that, yet, our rankings have dropped. Is it possible for google to punish us for getting too many too fast? If not, what could be some of the other problems?
-
Yes, some time google gives plenty to your site when you made harm backlinks. Learn more here about it.
-
Thank you all for your responses.
Over the course of the last few weeks, my site has continued to further be slipping in rankings locally.
My question is, where do I start to detect the issue and regain my previous rankings?
-
We're in the middle of Google's May 2020 Core Update that still takes a few days to finish rolling out. Many pages have lost a percentage of overall traffic, there's a very high chance your drop might not be link related.
Here's a few theories based on initial research + feedback from other SEOs on the update:
- Google seems to prefer bigger brands
- Freshness seems to be more important
- Check your site's usability / design / loading speed / accessibility
Links are important but there's a huge amount of other things that can affect your rankings.
-
Hi Everyone,
So I've done some investigating on search console and we don't have any manual actions against us but my search traffic is down by 33% from last week. That said, could we have been punished by google from an algorithm update?
I'd love someone's expertise to discern why we've dropped dramatically when we get high-quality backlinks and have a very low spam score and our domain authority is much higher than our competitors. Thank you.
-
Too many, as in:
- Relation to site age
- Relation to others in your industry
- Relation incremental velocity
- Relation to the quality of links
Google's seen at least 10s of thousands of websites in your industry and is aware of every site that has ever linked to other sites in your industry. It knows how fast those others have acquired links, at what age they've acquired links, how quickly they've developed links, when and why spikes in link acquisition have occurred, and what percentage of links tend to be low quality.
Think of a link as a hand shake between you and a businessperson in an industry complimentary to yours that you had a good conversation with over lunch at an industry conference. If the relationship between you and the linking site isn't at least as close as that, it's possible it may be counterproductive.
-
There's no established figure that would mean TOO MUCH, I'd aim for matching what could be natural based on the social signals Google might pick up about your site, and at what competitors of a similar size are getting in terms of backlinks.
-
Got it.
So how long does google punish you?
Should I stop getting backlinks or just slow down the rate that I'm doing it?
Will my ranking eventually go back up?
-
"Is it possible for google to punish us for getting too many too fast?"
Absolutely. Maybe you didn't read the sentence after the one you read that told you getting links to your site is good. That following sentence said.. "If you are not familiar with how google's algorithm values links, do not engage in link building and do not purchase links because there is a good chance that all of a sudden your rankings could drop dramatically at some point in the future.
Did you miss that sentence?
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
-
In order for Google to recognize a hyper-link on your website, does it have to be written in a specific java script?
Does it have to read as the following script? KBB 2018 Best Buy Overall Winner
Link Building | | Greg_Barnhardt0 -
How do I get rid of sites that backlink with lots of irrelevant or spammy links to our website?
This site http://herwigphoto.com/bs/ and other like it have thousands of similar links containing the word adidas We are not in the sports shoes business, therefore the links are irrelevant and many and can hurt our rankings, correct? | Page Title/URL of Linking Page | Link Anchor Text | Page Authority | Domain Authority |
Link Building | | Madlena
| Christopher Herwig Photographer » Soviet Bus Stopshttp://herwigphoto.com/bs/ | adidas Yeezy Boost 750 Grey For Sale | 48 | 47 | Below are some links to our geographics.com website that have URLs that are not ours. They will redirect to our homepage. How do we remove these links and how do we deal with the websites that send such links to us? There are thousands of inbound links to our website with anchor text containing irrelevant keywords such as these: yeezy-750-boost-light-grey-cheap or adidas-yeezy-boost-750-light-grey-sale; pirate black sale, etc Page Title/URL of Linking Page Page Authority LRDs Total External Links HTTP Status http://www.geographics.com/new/yeezy-750-boost-light-grey-cheap.html 46 120 1800 -- http://www.geographics.com/new/yeezy-350-pirate-black-sale.html 44 106 1829 -- http://www.geographics.com/new/yeezy-750-boost-gum-brown-sale.html 42 114 181 -- --- --- --- ---0 -
Getting links on old blog posts
There's 100 of blogs with posts that link to my competitors, but don't link to my site.They are mostly lists. Eg: "The best Sites to get blue widgets" I was thinking about getting in touch with these blogs, and asking them to take a look at my site, to see if perhaps they would add it to the list. In fact, I started doing it and I got some links already. Now I am starting to worry that Google could consider these links as unnatural, because, you know, the algos are not exactly perfect. Anyway, the links are important for the exposure anyway. I've two questions: 1. Is there any chance I'll be penalized? 2. May I get a SEO benefit from this links?
Link Building | | elefantes0 -
Indirect Link Earning via dofollow Links In News Articles
Hello, MOZ SEO Gurus. I've been trying to think some deep thoughts on safe, effective link earning for news publishing sites, and wanted to run this up the flagpole and see if you salute. Our site is a biotech news service -- we pump out copious amounts of news content each day, which works well for driving traffic. That being said, we also want to rank some optimized landing pages as well. Take, for example, this page, which we'd like to rank for "secondary progressive MS" and related keywords: http://bionews-tx.com/secondary-progressive-ms/ Now, as far as I'm concerned, shopping this page around to MS influencers isn't easy. I can go to Foundational websites, blogs, etc., and say, "hey, we have this info page on SPMS, and I thought that you might find it helpful/want to link to it." But chances are, the MS influencers already have their own proprietary content on SPMS, and there isn't much value to linking to it. Therefore, I think that we'll get few link earning conversions on the effort. However, what if I take our Secondary Progressive MS landing page, and I link to it in a corresponding article about SPMS research, as I did here: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2014/01/30/secondary-progressive-ms-natalizumab-clinical-trial/ Then, I go to the drug developer who is at the center of this story and say to them, "hey, we recently covered your drug in the news, and I thought you might want to link to it." Then, we get a link from an MS drug developer to the news article, which in turn has a prominent anchor text, dofollow internal link to the landing page for SPMS. If the link from the drug developer is dofollow, then we flow page rank juice from the drug developer page to our news page to our landing page. To me, it's much easier to earn safe links this way than to try and shop the landing page itself. That being said, if we get a dofollow link on the news piece, we only get a diminished portion of page rank going to the landing page. Is this strategy viable? Is the indirect flow of page rank from a linking site to a news article to a landing page even worth it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Link Building | | bionewstx2 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Do "Sponsored Posts" links get discounted by google?
Do "Sponsored Posts" links get discounted by google? A feture post that is tagged by the site as "featured' or "sponsored" are they discounted as paid links by google?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
How Many Outbound Links Should I Maintain
I continue to get link exchange invitations. Apart from the fact that the links I connect to should be relevant, is there an ideal no. of outbound links that I should maintain - or maybe a ratio or something? Should I even consider their page ranks - and do I have that right when mine is not that high (the last question may be stupid but I still want know). Thanks.
Link Building | | haekel0 -
What are the most valuable links a new website can get?
When you are starting an SEO project for a new website (or an old one with few or worthless links) where to you start? What are your basic "get the link building started" link sources?
Link Building | | DGSEO0