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
-
How long does it take my links to get indexed by Google?
How long does it take my links to get indexed by Google? Also Is it possible to get my links indexed faster?
Link Building | | EugeneMot0 -
Linking to press coverage, reciprocal links?
We have been generating decent online press coverage with links to our site thanks to our PR agency and I have been asked to link to the online coverage from our website in a 'press coverage' section. My question is would google consider links from our site to the online press coverage as reciprocal links? Thanks
Link Building | | gavinr
Gavin0 -
Google Disavow Tool: which kind of links do harm and which do not harm my site?
Recently a guy asked at GoogleWebmasterHelp: Should I be worried if a couple of sites that I don't want to be associated with are linking to me? In this case there have been 2 porn sites linking to his site... that clear.
Link Building | | inlinear
But my question is if for example sites like e.g. : http://www.linguee.de Linguee is one of the best dictionary sites where you can search for phrases and receive common translation examples which are very helpful. Liguee set some links to my site because they take texts usually from multilingual sites to gather examples.
A dictionary site does not have nothing to do with my business but also I don't consider that this might my harm my site? What do you think?0 -
Would notifying visitors that they can put text link ads on your site destroy you in terms of Google?
I am debating buying this product for Joomla on that note: http://www.jv-extensions.com/content/_/joomla-extensions/jv-contentlinks-r52 Would you advise for or against this purchase?
Link Building | | Uramark1 -
Value no follow links from Google Content Network
Is there a value of using Google Content Network to add no follow links to the general linkscape of a website? I notice a lot of competion higher than me on SERPs for specific keywords have these links from website with high DA. We have tested the value of having Adsense adds, but they do not convert the traffic. We might consider using them for the purposes of ranking higher on SERPs though, and would appreciate any experinces with this.
Link Building | | inet-design0 -
Getting existing text linked from magazine
Hello All, A major magazine DA98 did an article in 2007 about a project our company worked on. The specifically named our company in both the printed and online (PA53) versions of our article. Even though this article is old, I think this has HUGE potential if we can pull it off. Do you think it's possible to contact them and encourage them attach a link to our company name. Their newer articles are pretty good at doing this, but I guess in 07 it wasn't practiced by them. What's the best way to approach this and who should I go to? Webmaster? There is also a slight downside, the article does contain information about explosives, but not in a bad way. Could the search engines dislike this. I'm assuming not because of the PA and DA numbers for the magazine company. Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. dmac
Link Building | | dmac0 -
Press release site for posting article and get links, what do you think?
If find sites like: http://eon.businesswire.com/portal/site/eon/ and http://www.free-press-release.com/ where you have to pay to post article, they have very good domain autority, what is your advice on those site? eon.businesswire.com/ is asking 225$ for a lifetime registration but they have a DA of 91, is this a good investement for building incoming links and increasing DA? Thank you, Jean
Link Building | | BigBlaze2050 -
Linking to Google Place page??
I'm wondering if anybody has tried and had success in improving search rankings by creating links to Google Place pages. What say you?
Link Building | | bdiddy0