New site jumping all over search engine page position

[ratboy]

I guess I will let Coca Cola know next time they launch their next big marketing campaign to make sure not to get too many high quality links from news outlets / marketing blogs.

Oh and next time the NHS launch a new health initiative not to get links from local boroughs and other government organisations.

Take the piss all you want. You ain't Coca Cola.

 

[Per1213]

Okay so lets take a step back from a massive brand - lets say you are starting up a small clothing company (purely online) that is designed to help babies and toddlers from over heating. You launch your website that is trying to rank for baby clothing and the BBC picks up your story because of the uniqueness of your product... Then the guardian, huffington post, daily mail.... Okay so with all this press quite a few mum bloggers are keen to blog about your product as they feel it really helps and government organisations are looking to recommend it to their constituants. I guess I will just turn round and tell everyone not to link because supposedly this will punish my site?

 

[ratboy]

In one of your opening posts you said:

I haven't used any black hat seo techniques and have only manually added links back to it.

That isn't a natural link profile, it's build BY YOU. Sure if you were lucky enough to get fantastic PR etc and everyone talked about you the "profile" would be a mix of web links "check out these guys" or "www.coolclothesformums.co.uk" etc, plus facebook likes, shares, twitter tweets, Google+ (maybe not) - get my drift.

You said your site was penalized, and you said you'd build links to it. There is your problem. I just said steady on the building, keep it natural and actually do nothing seems to work the best at the moment.

A normal site doesn't link build. Remember that!

Good luck with it all though

 

[JamesMac]

A normal site doesn't link build. Remember that!

* A normal site will build links from sources that will actually generate traffic for them.

 

[Nick11380]

Okay so lets take a step back from a massive brand - lets say you are starting up a small clothing company (purely online) that is designed to help babies and toddlers from over heating. You launch your website that is trying to rank for baby clothing and the BBC picks up your story because of the uniqueness of your product... Then the guardian, huffington post, daily mail.... Okay so with all this press quite a few mum bloggers are keen to blog about your product as they feel it really helps and government organisations are looking to recommend it to their constituants. I guess I will just turn round and tell everyone not to link because supposedly this will punish my site?

Sorry guys, while I don't particularly like the way that Per1213 is making his point, he's totally right.

Anyone who thinks that a huge number of legitimate quality links over a short period of time are going to punish a site frankly need to get back to the drawing board. This is not something that has ever been highlighted as a problem by any of the most experienced people in the industry.

There have only ever been a few reported cases of clear negative SEO penalties (penalties, not devaluations). To think that negative SEO can happen because you went and got 500 .gov links is absolutely bizarre.

 

[Blossom]

PR is a terrible way to judge link quality for SO many reasons:
- Penguin
- The fact you can easily fake PR
- The longer you go without a PR update the more this metric becomes unreliable.
- Did I mention Penguin?

You can look at SEOmoz scores, search engine results and any other metrics you want. But only PageRank will tell you if a site has been penalised for actually passing juice at the end of the day.

For example, take a look at jenn/dot/nu. SEOmoz scores look good. Lots of backlinks. Ranking in search engines. Yet PR is 0. I've watched that site over the years and it's been repeatedly penalised for link juice benefits because of paid guest posts and the like. PR is the only metric that will tell you that. There are plenty of sites with great backlinks that have been banned from passing juice completely.

The only even valid/related point in your list above is the 'unreliable' factor from the update. But realistically, the SEOmoz index is not *fully* updated that often either. I've waited 3 months for a Wikipedia link to show up in OSE for a reasonably average authority site before.

I'm *not* saying PR is the only way or the best way to measure a link's value, because of course that would be idiotic. But it would also be idiotic to ignore a metric provided by Google, even if it's just an observation rather than practical use.

The problem with SEO is that people parrot a lot of stuff. Yes, PR has its flaws, it's quite crappy compared to a lot of other tools. But you may as well use everything you've got.

If your site was "normal" would it suddenly start getting PR3+ links all over the place? Nope.

It would get slow low PR links, the odd PR3 one, and definitely zero PR5 links generally.

500 Gov links would blow your site into the darkest dungeon in Google basement never to be seen again. Unless it was old and well established in the first place.

This.

Okay so lets take a step back from a massive brand - lets say you are starting up a small clothing company (purely online) that is designed to help babies and toddlers from over heating. You launch your website that is trying to rank for baby clothing and the BBC picks up your story because of the uniqueness of your product... Then the guardian, huffington post, daily mail.... Okay so with all this press quite a few mum bloggers are keen to blog about your product as they feel it really helps and government organisations are looking to recommend it to their constituants. I guess I will just turn round and tell everyone not to link because supposedly this will punish my site?

That's a different situation. If you attract so much interest from high authority places, it's more likely you will continue to do so at that level (you will have bloggers, forum posters etc. linking to you as the new wave following the initial press interest). Most people building lots of links to a new site throw hundreds/thousands at it for a few weeks and then stop building altogether. That's not natural.

Anyone who thinks that a huge number of legitimate quality links over a short period of time are going to punish a site frankly need to get back to the drawing board. This is not something that has ever been highlighted as a problem by any of the most experienced people in the industry.

You said yourself it's 'normal' for sites to bounce around the rankings. I think it's abnormal. I think that says it all really.

There are plenty of things I've seen that haven't been acknowledged by experienced people in the industry. But there are plenty of reasons for that; because they work on hugely different sites in different contexts, because they don't give away everything they know, because they don't work on new sites, or simply because people have never raised a question in a particular context.

I think the only way to settle it really is to do as controlled a test as possible.

There have only ever been a few reported cases of clear negative SEO penalties (penalties, not devaluations). To think that negative SEO can happen because you went and got 500 .gov links is absolutely bizarre.

I don't necessarily believe it's any kind of penalty. I believe a big part of it is Google trying to figure out where the hell the site belongs in the rankings because there are mixed signals.

 

[Per1213]

You say this:

It's a terrible idea to send high quality links to a new site, it's practically guaranteed to make it jump around for weeks/months if not longer.

Then go on to say this:

That's a different situation. If you attract so much interest from high authority places, it's more likely you will continue to do so at that level (you will have bloggers, forum posters etc. linking to you as the new wave following the initial press interest). Most people building lots of links to a new site throw hundreds/thousands at it for a few weeks and then stop building altogether. That's not natural.

I think the fact you differentiate between high quality links and high authority places is the stumbling point in your argument.

If you can generate hundreds/thousands of PR 3+ links to your site by buying them or clicking a button then guess what - those links AREN'T high quality.

 

[Nick11380]

I think that says it all really

Not sure what you mean by this?

If your site was "normal" would it suddenly start getting PR3+ links all over the place? Nope.

It would get slow low PR links, the odd PR3 one, and definitely zero PR5 links generally.

500 Gov links would blow your site into the darkest dungeon in Google basement never to be seen again. Unless it was old and well established in the first place.

This.

Google isn't looking for 'normal' sites. 'Normal' sites don't rank. Quality sites with 500 gov links do rank.

EDIT: Just for clarity - when I say 500 government links I'm not talking about buying links. And FTR, whenever I talk about links I'm never talking about buying them, I'm talking about earning them.

 

[storebuilder]

To the OP I would say this:

Forget about wasting your time trying to build links and concentrate on providing good well written content. In terms of value for money the time spent writing content far outweighs any time spent gaining links.

For a new site gaining links is an even more meaningless task unless you have more quality content than you can shake a shitty stick at. If you have good quality content then you will rank links or no links.

The argument over gaining links is exactly what Penguin was designed to eliminate - free up a webmasters time to concentrate on providing what matters and not what doesn't.

 

[Nick11380]

If you have good quality content then you will rank links or no links.

In most cases this will take several years. The only way that this will happen faster is if you get links.

 

[storebuilder]

Ergo the only way you will gain links faster is to provide good content.

My my you lot do like a good argument don't you. I'm out of here.

 

[Nick11380]

Ergo the only way you will gain links faster is to provide good content.

My my you lot do like a good argument don't you. I'm out of here.

I don't often chime in on SEO threads, I learned my lesson many years ago when it became obvious that every discussion would eventually digress into utterly polarised opinions. Sorry it's driven you out of the thread!

Shamefully I must respond to your comment. You mentioned that quality content will rank 'links or no links'

 

[storebuilder]

I'm not being rude. I learnt my own lesson that forums and arguments like this can eat up vast amounts of your time which can be put to better use - writing content! LOL.

 

[cc976a]

This all just comes down to common sense.

If you 'go out and get' a backlink in a deliberately adding links on to sites for a jumping up SERPs point of view then you've become your own black hat.

If you send a press release that 500 government based sites feel the information is useful and cover I really can't see this as being a problem. For one it will probably be editorial than sitewide footer text link, plus if 500 government sites talk about it, so will lots of other people in lots of other places validating the 'referals'

If you go out to 'get back links' anyway you can and only targeting PR sites, you're probably going to get caught. Then again if you communicate via press releases, or gain media exposure your backlink trail will be different - and IMHO this is the trail that get's you penalised or not - not who links to you and frequency of it happening.

 

[ratboy]

don't over egg the pudding

 

[JamesMac]

don't over egg the pudding

If that was aimed at me I would say that the reason I corrected you is because what you said previously was fundamentally wrong.

This is a fantastic rant by Danny Sullivan about traditional link building (easy links) vs real link building (hard links):

http://searchengineland.com/link-building-means-earning-hard-links-not-easy-links-123767

If you haven't heard it already its definitely worth listening to as it really settles quite a few arguments in this thread.

As for my opinion - I would say great content/UI comes first but once your site is built you should invest a considerable amount of time in high quality link building from relevant sources that get traffic.

 

[Nova]

Okay plenty to take in guys and I thank you for all your feedback. Just to clarify, being new to this I didn't know that manually adding links to sites and blogs of similar nature would be classed as black hat. I also don't have hundreds of links maybe 20ish.

My site does have good content and it is in a field I have expertise in. It is a reference site and I don't have any adds or affiliate programs on it. Obviously I would love to be on page 1 for its key word but don't mind waiting as I am in no rush, after that I may consider adding some ads as it would be nice to make some money. lets be honest I'm sure many here aren't putting up sites on purely a good Samaritan point of view. Sure they should offer the reader quality and the information they are looking for but its also nice to make some money for all the hard work and time you put into them.

Its quite funny that I have read a lot on this forum about what you should and should not do, and some members have specified on how to find good sites to add links to your site too. Now it seems like some are saying SEO is dead and that we should just spend years on developing a site and add lots of good content, which is all very well but goes against a lot of what I have read on this forum. As a newbie I am just a little confused, that's all.

 

[JamesMac]

Okay plenty to take in guys and I thank you for all your feedback. Just to clarify, being new to this I didn't know that manually adding links to sites and blogs of similar nature would be classed as black hat. I also don't have hundreds of links maybe 20ish.

My site does have good content and it is in a field I have expertise in. It is a reference site and I don't have any adds or affiliate programs on it. Obviously I would love to be on page 1 for its key word but don't mind waiting as I am in no rush, after that I may consider adding some ads as it would be nice to make some money. lets be honest I'm sure many here aren't putting up sites on purely a good Samaritan point of view. Sure they should offer the reader quality and the information they are looking for but its also nice to make some money for all the hard work and time you put into them.

Its quite funny that I have read a lot on this forum about what you should and should not do, and some members have specified on how to find good sites to add links to your site too. Now it seems like some are saying SEO is dead and that we should just spend years on developing a site and add lots of good content, which is all very well but goes against a lot of what I have read on this forum. As a newbie I am just a little confused, that's all.

Basically in my opinion a USP of any site should be its content. If you are confident that your site has high quality content that rivals the top 3 in your market place you have got off to a good start. Having good content opens up a lot of doors when it comes to link building and marketing as you can get links from very high quality sources. The easiest way to look at it is if a site has been set up to solely give out links and provide little to no value it is probably not worth getting a link from. If a site has been set up to provide value to its user, has traffic and you think you might be able to get a link from it then it is definitely worth trying to get one.

Over the last 3 weeks I have manage to get myself 3 links from government body resource sections to one of my sites. While this is not a ridicules rate they are by far worth it. Not only does the link itself provide traffic to the site but it is also a key indicator to Google. I would not have got these links if I had sat back and done nothing - I found the right people to contact and showcased my site to them.

 

[ratboy]

If that was aimed at me I would say that the reason I corrected you is because what you said previously was fundamentally wrong.

No it wasn't aimed at you at all, just mean't in general.

In my experience firing links into a brand new site means one thing, and that is described in the OP.

This seems really contentious, we all seem to have different views. We speak of the right way to do it, but then see 301 links firing into irrelevant blogs ranking #1,#2,#3 for "payday loans" and it makes us all look like fools!!

 

[JamesMac]

No it wasn't aimed at you at all, just mean't in general.

This seems really contentious, we all seem to have different views. We speak of the right way to do it, but then see 301 links firing into irrelevant blogs ranking #1,#2,#3 for "payday loans" and it makes us all look like fools!!

I apologize for my above comment if that is the case.

There is always exceptions to the rules and the pay day loans searches are always very amusing considering most of the domains are under a month old . That being siad I think we can all say all tactics like that are short term and will eventually (hopefully) get cleaned up by Google.