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 many external links do I need?
I write short blog post between 80-100 words and I link out to other websites. However, How many external links should I have in each blog post to rank better in search?
Link Building | | WilCross0 -
Is it really possible to clean up a website from spam links?
I have an acquaintance/customer, who is a politician in Italy, he had a website under his name as domain firstnamelastname.it (where firstname and lastname are the firstname and lastname of the guy). He used it during his campaign, then he forgot about the existance and didn't pay the bill to the isp. I don't know what happen exactly, I assume someone registered it after it expired and started using it for some fraudulent purpose, because checking the backlink profile I can see the first backlinks from 2013 are legit and coming from relevant sources (local newspapers), but all the following 300+ links are spam, using keywords like "louis vuitton", "ralph lauren", and so on... Right now the domain is in status "deleted", so I could just register it again, disavow the spammy links and had recycle it. But I am scared as hell. I never had to disavow a single link in all my life, and I don't know if it is going to really clean up the domain from any possible google penalization. Is it?
Link Building | | max.favilli0 -
Googles stance on Back Links via a Badge/Form
Hey guys, Does anyone know what Google's stance is on backlinks that come via a form, WordPress theme or badge. For example if I offer website security and provide badges for websites that are malware clean (with a back link to my website) and 100 websites sign up to my website will this be deemed as bad practice in Google's eyes? Also if I create a free WordPress theme with a backlink to myself? The second question sounds like I'm providing content for a link which seems okay but the first one can go either way. Thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Spammy Links in MOZ but when I go to the external link I can't find a link to us
I was going to try to contact webmasters to see if they would remove some of our spammy links. I see alot of them in MOZ but when you go to the site our anchor text is not there. Is this good? How often does MOZ refresh external links. Please see: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.totalvac.com None of the links for the anchor text <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text." data-text="vacuum cleaner parts vacuum parts vacuum bags vacuum cleaner bags" data-id="46391436859">vacuum cleaner parts vacuum part...</a> in MOZ exist? We got hit extremely hard by Penguin in May
Link Building | | totalvac0 -
I am getting links on people's wordpress blogs but are not showing up on the just discovered tool. Is it true that wordpress links are no-follow links that do give off any link-juice?
A blogger told me that "wordpress.com does not allow blogs to show advertisements or use links to sites that sell merchandise of any kind" is this true? Am i wasting my outreach time trying to get links from wordpress operated blogs?
Link Building | | odegi0 -
I want to design SEO link building strategy for my website? Is wordpress.com, squidoo, tumblr, blogger, typepad - Good option for link building?
I am currently concentrating on 8 keywords, for e.g (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). I will be writing blogs with 2 of any related keywords present in it. I am thinking to post 5 blogs on 5 different platforms as (wordpress.com, Squidoo, Typepad, Tumblr, blogger) respectively. I am thinking a strategy as: Monday: Keyword A,B on Wordpress/ C,D on Squidoo/E,F on Typepad/G,H on Blogger/ A,C on Tumblr. Tuesday:C,D on Wordpress/E,F on Squidoo/ etc.... and will rotate these keywords through out the week and the cycle restarts on Monday. The URL for every keyword will be different and relevant to that keyword. I need quick suggestion on this topic..Please..
Link Building | | Christain0 -
Does the twitter link shortening service reduce link value (strength).
We have many SEO team members that use Twitters link shortening service, will this reduce the strength or value of the page to be indexed? I ask this cause the displayed URL isn't the actual page it is going to and would like to make appropriate changes to improve our company's SEO For example: http://t.co/zHu8vIcjPx is going to page http://4wheelonline.com/atv/QuadBoss.107503 Thank you for your assistance.
Link Building | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0