15 replies to this topic

[premtech]

Hi all

I am slowly building a link campaign and was wondering if getting too many links in a short time was detrimental to my site.

My site is still in the aging process (I think) so I thought it would be good to build inbound links slowly..

If i got 3 or 4 a week compared to getting say 2000 links(hypothetical) in one week would this be more believable to a search engine?

Is my way of thinking that 2000 links in a week would be considered as spaming?

Cheers
Warren

[ewc21]

Internal linking is not bad (pointing inside pages on your site to the homepage) but it's definitely suspicious to get 2,000 links in a week.

Could be considered spamming so I won't suggest you do it.

[premtech]

My thoughts were number 1 not to burn myself out and 2 to pace it so that every week for the life of the site there were a couple of links comming in. so i am on the right track?

[Jill]

Is my way of thinking that 2000 links in a week would be considered as spaming?

Seems to me it would be highly unusual for any new site to suddenly get 2000 links in a week. My site is years and years old, and I don't even know if it has 2000 links.

Use this info however you'd like...

[oneofthe3lions]

I would be amazed if you can get 2000 quality relevant links in such short space of time, in natural circmstances it would take months to aquire that amount.

edit> (Oops sorry Jill, we were kinda saying the same thing at the same time there)

[Michael Martinez]

If i got 3 or 4 a week compared to getting say 2000 links(hypothetical)  in one week would this be more believable to a search engine?

No.

Keep in mind that sites shoot to success overnight because they naturally get hundreds or thousands of inbound links after being featured in news stories.

The search engines appear to be applying some sort of pattern analysis to their link maps. It's not as simple as "If you get X number of links, you cross a threshold". There are many people in the SEO communities who speak that way, but there are always exceptions to such "rules", and the exceptions imply that the algorithms are far more sophisticated than they are being given credit for.

If you can get 2,000 sites to link to you in one week, if the links are not automated, if you don't control the sites, if they offer a VARIETY of topics and content, GET THE LINKS.

Don't get stuck on trying to do things the search engines' way. Your first priority in Web site promotion should always be to increase your visibility.

If you are not generating links, if you are not creating fluff content for the sake of flooding the search indexes, if you are not pretending to be popular, if you are offering [url=http://searchengineland.com/070531-115312.php]Real[i][/i] Content[/url] that people want to link to, then by all means encourage people to link to you.

Don't hold back.

But if you don't have something hot, don't worry about it. You cannot naturally get 1,000 or 2,000 or even 200 links in a week to mediocre content without padding the results. It's the padded results that get people into trouble.

Natural linking is good, it's always good, it's all good, and there is no limit on how many natural links you can have or should want.

[ipchaser]

In my experience, getting links which will help to build your authority on a particular topic are far more useful for getting those great results than adding your link to any page which looks inviting.

While it's great to have many backlinks... Just be mindful of which ones are most relevant to your site / business.

[Bri]

If you are thinking about having a company getting a whole bunch of links for you, i wouldn't recommend it. I get all of my links, i try to stay within the realm of offering my users links that would be beneficial to them and that are relevant. I don't trust anyone else to be as scrutinizing as myself. We have #1 position for many keywords and phrases, not to mention 2-5 position for many others. I've seen competitors drop off the top who have had hundreds more links than ours and we're still around. Hence, quality is much more important than quantity!

[ipchaser]

I agree completely Bri... Great addition.

[Michael Martinez]

"relevance" is another SEO buzzword that is being ground into finely overused dust. Seeking out "quality, relevant" links is artificial. Technically, seeking out links is artificial.

I was one of the first people to speak about relevant links. It made sense a few years ago to switch from getting any kinds of links to getting related (not relevant, but related) links because the search engines were starting to look less at link popularity and more at relationships between pages.

Relevance became an issue when people asked, "How do you figure out which links are better to have?" Well, if you have a Web site about tacos, you'll get more visitors from other taco Web sites than you will get from a motorcycle Web site. That is what relevance was supposed to be about.

Now people restrict their inbound taco links to other taco sites. Well, yes, that makes sense to a certain degree. I used to argue with business people endlessly over the value of exchanging links with competitors. Some still won't do it. But a lot of people think, "Hey, we just need to swap links, and if I swap more links than the other taco sites, I'll do better."

That ain't the way it works. You don't do better because you swap links, you do better because the search engine thinks you're more relevant to a particular query than the other site. One page can be relevant to a thousand queries. One page can rank well for many queries. If you have 100 links for "best taco sauce" and you're number 1 for "hot sauce connections", where did that come from? Stuff like that happens every day.

Expanding your inbound linkage to other areas, accepting with open arms links from legitimate content sites, broadens your visibility both with people AND with search engines.

Ultimately, you cannot control who links to you or how they do it, so thinking in terms of applying quality control to your inbound linkage makes no sense. You cannot affect the quality of your inbound linkage. You may restrict yourself to only requesting links for your taco site to taco sites and directories, but you are hurting yourself more than you help yourself.

I have the (usually) top-ranked "white cheese dip", "mexican cheese dip", and "queso blanco" Web site. Sometimes other sites move into number 1, but that site almost always ranks in the top five for those three expressions. I didn't worry about who linked to me (and, yes, some good quality links came in from About.com and a few popular recipe communities). I set up a high-quality page, found out that it was popular, and just allowed it to grow into a resource people love. I don't check backlinks, I don't solicit links, and the site is hosted on a domain that is primarily devoted to science fiction and fantasy.

There is a total disconnect between the SF & F community and the cheese dip community. But most of my most pleasant and interesting email actually comes from people who are looking for that cheese dip recipe.

That is what you get for not worrying about who links to you. Top placement, lots of traffic, and kudos for providing something of value.

With a business site, it helps translates into conversions. Sometimes, I wish I were selling cheese dip. I could have made a fair amount of money by now, I think.


ON EDIT: If I recall correctly, I got the About.com link because I contacted the editor of a relevant recipe section. She had written an article about a Texas queso recipe and I asked her if she knew about the white cheese dip, or something like that. She looked at my site and liked it enough to link to it. I don't recall specifically asking for the link, but if people want to hold that as a possibility, that's okay. I believe I posted one link on a message board, in response to a question about the recipe, where the other replies were for the wrong recipes.

Whatever links that site has now were mostly acquired naturally. I did not bother conducting a link campaign for the site. It was originally created for just a few friends, and I only noticed afterward that it had become a popular destination.

Edited by Michael Martinez, 18 October 2005 - 12:41 PM.

[premtech]

thanks for that

I'm basically Submitting to a lot of Directories at this stage and want to take the time while the site is in the ageing process to get links so that when its released it will have a decent amount of linbound links.

I guess I will just keep plodding on and try to add more content as well.

cheers
Warren

[Bri]

Great post michael, I wasn't aware of the evolution of the term related link to relevant link in SEO! Good to know.

[clueless]

If only we were all working within the white cheese dip niche. That's all good and well-taken advice - but I am a little skeptical of accepting it as a generalization particularly in more competive, commercial, market driven spaces. I am not disputing the experience or validity, but I would hesitate to attempt to apply that reasoning across the board.

[Michael Martinez]

If only we were all working within the white cheese dip niche.  That's all good and well-taken advice - but I am a little skeptical of accepting it as a generalization particularly in more competive, commercial, market driven spaces....

Then you missed part of the point of that long-winded anecdote.

If a science fiction mega site can rank well for three cheese-related expressions in two languages with one page and no link-building campaign (and I assure you, there ARE major players in the cheese dip industry because, yes, there IS money to be made in it), then ANY site can do something similar.

I handle top-level commercial quality searches just fine, thank you. What worked for the cheese dip site works for other sites I won't speak about openly.

That's less than I'd like to say, but probably all that should be said.

[clueless]

Michael, I wasn't challenging your knowledge or your ability to get big work done. I was only attempting to point out that for someone starting from zero/scratch that you do need to establish some critical mass - a point at which your site has a sufficiently substantial presence that it's quality will feed upon itself. Your suggestion that concentration on building quality content is - again - well-taken. But I don't think that's the whole story for someone looking up from the ground at established competitors.