12 replies to this topic

[ITWeb]

I've heard that the search engines will notice if you acquire too many recipricol or for that matter inbound links during any period of time.

Well, that's nice ... how many can I safely add in what period of time? What would you quess. Or is this major big time search firms advice a lot of hog and wash.

I sure ask a lot of questions being a newbie, seems i've been a newbie for years now... things keep changing and I am again new as I don't do this all the time.

And, by the way... you guys are terriffic!

[clueless]

A reasonable concern, but it's been given the HR treatment. See this thread

[Scottie]

The phenomenon seems to affect bulk link buying. Natural link building (directories, reciprocals, press releases, articles, etc) shouldn't be a problem. I'd say unless you are joining a link network or buying bulk links, you should be fine.

[Jill]

how many can I safely add in what period of time?

Do you mean you're worried about how many links you can add on your site to other sites?

Cuz how else does one "add" links?

Your best bet is to figure out ways that your site will naturally get links to it. (Not get links that appear natural, but actually are natural...real votes.) Then you don't have to ever worry about how many or how fast.

[ITWeb]

There I go again, not being clear about what I am talking about.

Sorry, when building receipricol links, am worried about how many new incoming/outgoing I ad in an average day looking like spam.

50 --> 100-->1,000 or just 10

[Scottie]

Are there really 1000 links you want to add to your site? Sites you'd recommend to your visitors?

[Jill]

It's doubtful those reciprocal links will help or hurt you either way. Do as many as you want or none at all.

[ITWeb]

OK Jill,...

If I understand your position on this one, ... you mean something like the following:

"having recipricol links does not help in link popularity. So there is no reason to cultivatge them. All the talk on link backs is a waste.

And that link popularity (page rank derivititve) does not improve ones search score results is also a waste of time?"

Maybe I didn't get that right, but I think it is my takeaway from your comments.

I am not suggesting that link popularity is a replacement for page optimiation, but that once a page is optimized it still seems to not show high in results without link popularity either to that page or to the site - or something like that (in google anyway). ough,... my head is beginning to hurt again..

And, no Scottie, I don't have 1,000 site to link to , just wondering if there is some threashold trigger point that should be avoided. I have heard this from a big time SEO company friend.

thanks...

[Randy]

You're reading far too much between the lines of Jill's statement ITWeb.

1. Links help.
2. Quality, Relevant links with good anchor text help a bit more.
3. Reciprocal or not makes no difference on the bad side of things, assuming you're linking only to Quality, Relevant sites.
4. Links alone will not drive a site to the top of the SERPs in anything that is a remotely competitive market. They're not the end-all, be-all for SEO any more than on-page SEO is.
5. And to get to the point of your question, you really don't have to worry about tripping any filter for adding too many incoming links too fast if you're building them the right way. Meaning applying a Common Sense approach instead of trying to game the engines by signing up for some program that adds 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 links in a split second.

Bottom line: Build you site right. Build it for the real humans who will be reading it. This very general statement applies for both on-page and off-page factors.

Do that and you don't have to worry about these wild theories that are put forward by the so-called SEO friends or the ubiquitous "someones" out there who like to play Chicken Little and chirp that the Sky Is Falling.

If you build your site for real people you'll probably never run afoul of some filter. Filters/Penalties/Bans are only set up to catch those who try to game the system.

[ITWeb]

Yep, you are right. It is my philosphy anyway. The site is for the readers not the search engines. Then I get involved with SEO. And go around logic circles a bit. Jill's terriffic and I see she is too smart to allow me to goad her into an ongoing debate over what she has said a thousand times already.

[marclindsay]

On the other hand of this topic.

Link building isnt just for search engines. Most of the traffic on the internet is not gathered through searches, rather through links on sites.

So also "effective" link building can increase relevant traffic to your site alot, if you do it correctly.

[ewc21]

That should be it; getting link to gain traffic instead of looking good to SEs (which will deliver traffic too) should be the first objective.

[Michael Martinez]

RandFish recently announced that SEOMoz came out of the sandbox after 9 months and getting 12,000 natural links. I don't know what his basis for estimating inbound linkage is, but I'm inclined to trust his judgement in the matter.

It just goes to show you that a few thousand inbound links won't hurt, but they won't necessarily help, either.

A month ago, Rand noted that one page came out of the sandbox almost overnight. That was, of course, his immensely popular Search Ranking Factors document (this link goes to Google).

Overnight natural linking success is indeed possible for sandboxed domains. Did that help push SEOMoz out of the sandbox completely? Maybe. Maybe not. There is no way to tell from the outside. I think a lot of people will choose to believe the linkage for that one document helped considerably, and I know of no reason to say they are wrong (or right).