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
-
Paid link with high quality content
I know paid links is against google's policy. But what if I have a very quality content including my paid link on blogger's site referencing to my site.
Link Building | | zeitnot
Is it counted as an ad or spammy content which leads to penalization by search engines ?0 -
Keyword are not ranking
Hello, Recently We have a taken a project " http://customerconnect-services.com/ " and are responsible for the Digital Marketing for the website. FYI, we have been following the best On-Page SEO practices ever since we took the project: Performing Keyword Research, Finalizing the Keywords,Using those in the Page-Title, Meta-Descriptions, Heading Tags and of course in the Content as per MOZ suggestions & SEO standards. But, we are unable to rank in first page; all the considered keywords have a ranking of 51+ which is a serious matter of concern for us. We have also checked whether the Domain / URL has been blacklisted, but it's not (Not even by Google). We are therefore unable to figure out what is going wrong even after following so many best practices to get the keywords a good ranking (1st & 2nd page of SERPs). Therefore I would like to request you to provide your expert opinions in this regard by checking what is it that we are not getting right. The website is euro t20 slam As this is a high-priority issue for us & the client is a prestigious one of course, please help.Looking forward to hearing from you at the earliest.
Link Building | | Sabirasifseo9990 -
Link building for a 'boring' eCommerce site
Hey all, I'm in need of some serious inspiration and I'm hoping one of you generous people can help. We're looking to do a spot of link building for an eCommerce site which I would describe (without putting it down too much) as 'boring'. This isn't our fault per se as the site sells printer cartridges and there's only a certain amount of excitement such a product can create. As a result natural linkbuilding is quite tricky, especially when it comes to creating links to anything other than our homepage. For the past couple of years we have focused on creating good content and indeed have a thriving database of hundreds of helpful articles and videos on the site. These are generating decent traffic (and rank #1 for many different help related search terms) but the problem with these articles is that they don’t convert in to sales at all well. I’m also conscious that it will ultimately end in us developing a link profile which would classify us as a printer repair resource rather than cartridge sales website. I have read numerous guides on Moz but they all tend to focus on products which are a little sexier than those that we sell. Getting someone to share and link to a truly unique product would be incredibly easy compared with asking someone to engage, share and link to the latest Epson cartridge. I started writing articles on some decent quality business blogs however the links given don’t look particularly natural and the link would always be to our homepage. We have the staff and the time but we built a whole host of rubbish links back before Penguin and I want to ensure that we are going to head in the right direction before embarking on something new. If you had a site which was really dull how would you devise a link building strategy that was relevant and, most importantly, natural? Thanks for your help. Chris
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate1 -
How Effective Are Links Between The Same Company's Websites With Different Domain Extensions?
Morning! The main competitor of an eCommerce site I'm working on has a total of 31 sites for 31 different countries. Each one of these sites has a different domain extension (.com, .co.uk, .fr, .it etc.), and every single one of these sites' pages links to all the other homepages through a dropdown menu on the navigation bar. When I pop the .co.uk URL (our main competitor) into Open Site Explorer, I'm advised they have a 45,079 links from 475 domains. If I look at 'just discovered' links, most are from their own sites - I guess MOZ picks these up every time a new page is created. Now, these guys are huge in the UK. They rank in the top 10 for pretty much every single search term and, to put it into some kind of perspective, their Search Metrics score is 33,000 compared to our measly 160! Don't get me wrong, they do get some decent links from authoritative sites, but it seem most of their links are from their own sites. How does Google view these? Does my competitor have these thousands of 'internal' backlinks to thank for their current position? I've just checked their .kr URL and this has 12.5 million(!) links from just 450 domains. Do every single one of these links pass equity? Or does Google just look at one from each domain? Thanks, Lewis
Link Building | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
New pages backlinking
Hello there, I have created a website that with some basic link building has been appearing nicely in location based keywords, eg, computer repairs flintshire, this was easy enough to achieve as the competition wasnt great, just wish i has these on page seo tools 6 months ago! my question is this - i am trying to get similair results in other location based keywords, eg, computer repairs chester and computer repairs wirral. What i have done is created a new page dedicated to each keyword, making sure that there is no duplicate content ect ect, the on page SEO is perfect and i am already on the first page for a couple i have done. so i have a url that now is http://www.ep-networks.co.uk/computer-repairs-chester.php
Link Building | | eirianprice
when linking the keyword 'computer repairs chester' do i point the url to this page or just to the http://www.ep-networks.co.uk ?? Thanks EP0 -
Should I find a way to archive high authority product pages for an e-commerce site?
One of the sites that I work on has a high turnover of products as it sells cutting-edge technology products that quickly become outdated. For each product it is important to build a strong link profile as the competition is very high. I am therefore reluctant to remove pages once products have been discontinued (typically after 6-12 months). However, I do not want discontinued products to appear alongside the latest products as this will hinder the customer experience. Is it worth me finding a way to archive the old products, so as to maintain the links that have been built up?
Link Building | | pugh0 -
How do I help an author of family histories and biography's reach her niche's
Please have a look at this site for me http://www.louisewilson.com.au/ louise also has about six blogs on different books she has written. She has sold a few thousand copies which is great and has help people find out where they came from. Not many of these people have linked to her site's and she is not getting the traffic she deserve's for lots of long tail keywords and some broader ones. What simple on page changes can she make and what would be the best broader keyword's to go after. What would a good strategy be she has a very small ( tiny ) budget but can write and is enthusiastic , It's also a great way for her to be involved with people who are interested in simalar thing's. Oh yeah she has never used facebook of social networks how could she effectivly market her books and engage with potential reader's. Thanks in advance Oh and by the way Im not getting paid to help her Just incase you think i'm trying to get you to do my work for me. I just think this is an interesting case. I do do sales for an IT and SEO company but she is not one of our clients. So far I have just explained to her about keywords in titles meta tags and internal linking and just explained to her a bit about link building. But really need some help thanks very much. PS was this question too long?
Link Building | | duncan2740 -
Finding Directories – HIGH Quality – Directory Critic REALLY???
I am trying to concentrate on high quality directory link building as part of my search for quality one way followed links. My usual criteria is: Domain rank of at 70+ Page ranks of 20-30+ on the actual link pages. Human edited I have been finding them using loads of different resources and have occasionally used Directory Critic. (Obviously I have used the SeoMoz directory list but as we are all aware this is past it’s prime..) Any resources or techniques other people use?
Link Building | | JohnW-UK0