There is a lot of myth that gets spread around the webmaster community. One of the favourite debates concerns the speed at which it’s OK to build links to a page. Whilst some people will argue that building more than 10,20,30 links a day is enough for Google to take a dump on your page there are others that claim to have built 2000 or even 10000 without problem. I’ve been running an experiment and I have a new take on it, it actually agrees with both sides of the argument but for a very specific reason:-
Can you be penalised for building too many links too quickly?
I believe the answer to this question is yes you can, but it depends massively on what page you are pointing the links at. I took 2 websites, one with a page rank of 3 and just under 2000 links to the home page. The other was a page rank 1 website with under 30 links to the home page. I added a relevant article to each website and waited a couple of weeks for Google to index the new articles and settle on a SERPs position. This is all quite straight forward.
I then set about pointing links quickly at the 2 new pages. I decided on the article marketing route and over the space of 2 days added in excess of 200 back links to each page. I was only using the target phrase as link text. I then waited a couple of days for the results.
On the page rank 1 website my new article was nowhere to be found after those couple of days. From a respectable page 3 it had gone completely from the search results. With my page rank 3 website the new page had jumped from page 4 to page 2. I should point out that the page that was lost from the search results did pop up again 4 days later but was way lower than where it was initially positioned (without any back links being built for it). Just to make sure I tried another new article on the page rank 1 website and repeated the back link process, but this time only creating 5 back links. The end result after 3 days was a page that moved several places up the search results.
So what can you take from this? To me it appears as though the more respected a website is the more you’ll get away with creating lots of back links to individual pages on it. If you attempt to create a load of back links to a page on a less respected website then you do appear to be running the risk of an algo slap. None of this is conclusive because there are so many variables involved but it’s significant enough for me to personally make sure that I don’t go overboard with my article marketing efforts for my less popular websites. Slow and steady would seem to be the order of the day. On the other hand it also means it’s open season on my more popular sites 
Has anybody else tried anything along these lines? I’d love to know if your results were the same as mine?
8 Responses to “Can You Be Penalised For Building Too Many Links?”
Chris
February 26, 2010
I would expect that google looks at the overall popularity of the website and then tries to figure out how “normal” the amount of links you are building is. As your more established website had more links it would be more “normal” for a single article to get more links back.
How do you do your article marketing? I have never found success with it but, then again, I have only ever produced a few articles. Do you write them yourself or pay content writers? How effective are they?
|.-= Chris´s last blog ..Update: Where have I been? =-.
Paul B
February 26, 2010
It’s an interesting topic, if Google look at normal then I wonder how long it takes for hundreds of links a day to a site to be classed as normal? There’s another experiment there somewhere.
As far as articles go I mix writing my own and using article writers. If it’s a subject I’m familiar with (and like) then I always try do my own. I’m not a big fan of manual submission so I have a variety of tools and services that I use to spin and distribute unique versions far and wide. I also outsource a bit of this if it’s a ranking I’m really chasing. I know a lot of people who have tried article marketing who submit manually to ezine and a couple more then give up on it when they don’t see results.
As long as you play by the rules and realise that the links back are never great weight carriers (I think it’s a numbers game) then it’s possible to have really good success with it. Once you’ve got the systems in place there aren’t many easier ways of getting relevant SE friendly backlinks.
|Al
February 26, 2010
Thanks for the article m8. Came in at the right time when I was considering article marketing. A question, if you have time – How many directories do you do per article marketing campaign? And how many campaigns do you run per article (your blog article) to get the desired rank?
Please let me know
Al
|Chris
February 26, 2010
I think it’s down to link velocity and history. If your site has a history (established) it will also have a link velocity, if you have a means of generating links you want to start slow then build up faster and faster – similar to an exponential curve. I would expect it tries to fit in visible link velocities with some sort of pattern and if it is majorly different it flags it up for review (manual or automatic)
What programs do you use for spinning / article submission? Are they free? Are they worth the cash?
|.-= Chris´s last blog ..Update: Where have I been? =-.
Paul B
March 1, 2010
Al – That a bit of a how long is a piece of string question
If it’s a fairly low competition long tail then 1 article spun and submitted to 10-12 directories tends to work well. In some cases all it needs is 5-6 backlinks to do the job. For primary keywords with plenty of competition then I’ll keep on writing/have written articles until I start seeing results. Generally speaking 2-3 100% unique articles spun out over as many directories/services that I have at hand will see some positive effect. I don’t think you’ll ever get a number 1 slot for a massivley competitive search using articles alone but it’s an effective tool if you combine it with other methods.
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