I earned some high-quality backlinks, but the target page's ranking is not improving. Why?
-
Within the last three months, I acquired five .EDU backlinks and two editorial links to a page ranking for a competitive keyword. After the first few links came through, the page jumped from #15 to #7. It stayed there with minor fluctuations for a couple weeks. I earned a couple more good links, and the page fell as far as #44. It has recovered a bit then, but has not returned to the first page.
It is worth noting that the .EDU links were achieved by sponsoring university programs. Could Google possibly be recognizing this as a link scheme? Are the links being earned too quickly? I don't believe it could be either, as the links reside on high quality, trustworthy sites and there wasn't a sudden major influx of them.
Thank you for your insight!
Also, I think my username tricked Moz into thinking I'm a staffer. Not the case!
-
Hey Patrick,
Thanks for your response. I have read Kristina's article before but I'm afraid now it might be a bit irrelevant with the latest Penguin update. Google should be recognizing linkbuilding efforts much faster now that Penguin operates in real-time.
-
Hi Steven
I would recommend reading through a great Moz article from Kristina Kledzik on How Long Does Link Building Take to Influence Rankings. There are some great studies in this article as well as some tips and resources to help you get a thorough process going to get the most out of the links that you acquire.
Hope this helps! Let me know, thanks!
Patrick -
Yes, all the links are followed. My domain is old and trusted, as are the domains linking back to me.
-
Hi John,
Thank you for the response. Yes, the links are indexed and followed. We have not changed anything on page. Is it possible Penguin is recognizing new link activity and it is causing fluctuations? Maybe I am being impatient and just need to wait a bit for a higher ranking to settle in.
-
Did you check to see if the links are follow or no follow? How old is the domain?
-
Hi Steven -
Great question here and one I have heard a lot over the last few years. A few questions for you:
- Are the links indexed?
- Did you make any changes to your site that may have affected your page's ranking (robots.txt, internal linking)?
In the good old days of SEO, it was quite common to see a page jump in rankings (like you seem to have seen) from building some links. I've seen it happen within a matter of hours, actually. But things have changed (probably to keep people from gaming the SERPs too hard) and sometimes it can take weeks or even months for links to have their full effect on your rankings.
So I'd check that the links are indexed and that you didn't change anything on your page to affect your rankings. Then, I'd make sure that your page is structured to meet your user's needs (eg if it's an informational query as evidenced by what else is ranking, don't have a super transactional page). Then, build more links and keep calm and carry on.
I hope that helps!
John
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
-
Reciprocal Backlinks
Hi all, We've just started looking into backlinks for our website, and we're...a bit overwhelmed to say at least. We thought the best way to start with backlinks is to reach out to our industry partners, and ask them to put a link to our website on theirs (in a blog, or a relevant page of course), as it's relevant for users. However, the question we almost always get is, can you do the same and link back to our website? How does google look at reciprocal links? We think they can be seen as a 'transaction of links' and not have as much link juice as links which aren't reciprocal. Is there any best practice for how to approach this? Thank you in advance. Diana
Link Building | | dianacatrinoi0 -
1000's Backlinks from ONE Root Domain - Positive or negative?
One of my website's link is placed over a comment. This website has a "recent comments" section in the footer which is hence appearing on all the websites pages. All tools including - Google Search Console, Majestic and MOZ are showing 45000+ links from that root domain. Questions: Are these links harmful to my rankings? Should I get all those links disavowed? Should I disavow the root domain or leave the link that lies on the home page? What if there are up to 10 links coming from a domain? is that harmful too? Apart from disavowing, is there any other option to get this fixed? If at all this counts as an issue... Thanks in advance!!
Link Building | | Ishrat-Khan0 -
What is the importance of root domains linking to your website in Google's rankings? I notice our competition has a much higher number on keywords I'm analyzing. Thank you!
I've noticed our competition has a much higher number of "root domains" linking to their page than we do. Is this simply a result of more websites linking to them? How long does it normally take to build up these numbers/rankings? (I'm assuming it's a concerted effort, which I'll be researching.) Thank you!
Link Building | | mjfinet0 -
Total Exact Match Anchor Text Percentage or a Few High Quality Exact Match Backlinks, which is better?
Hello, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am trying to rank a web page for a competitive regional search term. Upon inspecting all the competitors’ backlinks they appear to using an overly high exact match anchor text to rank on the first page for this keyword. Somewhere in the region of 15 – 55% exact match anchor text. So the question is what does big G provide a heavier weighting for, A.) The total percentage of exact match anchor text for all your backlinks, until it reaches the point of over optimization. A higher percentage up to about 60% will help you rank in the top 3. Meaning I should change a 1,000+ backlinks on multiple domains to the exact match anchor text. B.) Or just a few backlinks with the exact match anchor text but from really high quality domains with a ‘Majestic SEO’ Trust and Citation Flow above 40. Any help would be appreciated, exact match anchor text is meant not to work but it still does.
Link Building | | tomfifteen0 -
Starting a new site's link campaign... how to approach it?
Over the last few years I have been building content in my niche that I believe rivals some of the best content out there and deserves some attention. Although I have a plan to produce alot more content which I believe will take the quality and quantity of my content into a position among the top 5 or top 10 sites in my niche in the next 1-2 years, I decided that making that massive investment in content production irrespective of a consistent marketing plan is a recipe for failure because I need the positive feedback loop from site visitors to begin now, not in 2 years. Right now I'm in a position where I'm producing content that I think is better than alot of what's out there, and it's just not ranking the way I believe it should. I think I need to do a legitimate link building campaign to establish the website a little more firmly and put it on more level ground with some of its competitors. In Majestic SEO's "fresh index", most of my site's immediate competition have no more than 500 new domains in their links, though the biggest one has some 2,000. How can any link building effort I might take on possibly compare to links of this scale? Is there some "rule of thumb" for how many quality links I should aim for to get on square ground with some of the competitors on the lowest rungs? And if I try to build that many links at once, do I risk sending signals of untrustworthiness? (Assume I'm not going to be looking for any shoddy links, and in general will aim to follow Google guidelines.)
Link Building | | guitarsites0 -
What backlink is better?
Hi Guys I recently helped out a friend with some marketing advice and to do me a favour back he said that he'll put a link on his site back to my website. Just some background on the site, it is very high quality with DA of 71 with each blog post/inner page having roughly PA of 45, it's been online for 15 years and has nearly 4,000 indexed pages and 10,000 links. Anyway my question is would it be better to get a sitewide link in a sidebar that is displayed on every page of his website or would it be better to write a blog post on the site that links back to mine? Thanks
Link Building | | jackalancurtis1 -
Dodgy backlinks
I've got a new client who made the mistake of spending $5 on a sack load of dodgy links some time ago. I'm redoing his site, not set up analtics or WMT or anything yet, just starting on it but I had a look at his backlink profile and it's pretty shocking. Riddled with porn and money scams etc, but I'm concerned by the nature of one of the links....to the url is disturbing and I'm tempted to report them to the police. :(. If I use the disavow tool will it remove the links from my backlink profile altogether or just block the dodgy site? I want to disaccociate the site altogether.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Struggles with Rankings
Links seem to be very important to the success of websites today. That said, they are real tough to come by in my specific industry. Plus the president of the company does not want any links on the site, so,................... thats where I am. I paid for links in the past and that was a big mistake!! I am still looking to gain a few links for the website (www.allianceconcretepumps.com) is ezinearticles.com a good location to post aricles in hopes to get links? If it is a good location, do you know of any other ones which would be beneficial? I know I could use some more and better sight content......... I have quite a lot of fresh stuff in the works not just up yet. Hopefully in the next few weeks.........? Any other words from the wise are very much welcome. Thank You Dave
Link Building | | APICDA0