Does Google Punish Websites by ...

[sclick]

Hi ... does google punish websites by expiring, permanently or temporarily, back links, especially back links from sources, such as forums. (Posting is not a comment about forums.)

On or about 19 April 2008, my site had a few hundred sig back links from forums; 11 forums, averaging about 250 posting each. On 20 April 2008, the next day, all but 31 forum back links were gone. The 31 remaining back links went to the same url, on my website, and were from the same forum, with the same anchor text ("Sis Boom Bah").

Anyone have any thoughts on this occurence?

Thanks.

[stacy131]

Google just wants to see that our links occur naturally (in other words, you're not going on an obsessive link buying mission).

Google will become suspicious if it seems some alarming trends.
I.E.:
- most or all of your backlinks are to your homepage only
- a link to your site is featured on every single page of another domain instead of a single page
- your anchor text is always the same

Those are just a few examples. Read up on SEO and don't accept everything everyone tells you as the truth. I personally don't bother with link building.

[sclick]

Hi ... thanks for the feedback. I'm likely guilty of anchor link sameness, but have 32 pages linked, including home page, and don't do side-wides.

How do you get visitors to your site, if you don't build links? Great sites, by the way.

Thanks, again.

[stacy131]

How do you get visitors to your site, if you don't build links? Great sites, by the way.

Content.

[dartdesign]

This topic is very interesting, some people think that forum signatures are bad, other think that this helps. My own opinion is that every link counts, no matter forum or another website. Just use proper anchor text which is more descriptive.

[miss.]

Some forums will have a nofollow tag attached to links - so those aren't going to help with PageRank at all, which is generally what people think of when they refer to links "helping in the ranking" - however, the link will provide traffic, regardless.

As far as punishment - Google will most certainly punish you for links that are unnatural. By unnatural that means too many at one time, links that are specifically from link farms or large directories and links that are from irrelevant sources.

For example, if I was selling purple shoes who cares if a dentist is linking to me?

Another thing to consider is that there is sometimes a "honeymoon period" with Google and ranking. Sometimes you'll rank higher, have more pages listed and more links for a bit - but then Google takes the time to re-evaulate what you are offering and might bump you down to a more realistic ranking/value.

Ashley

[luxscold]

It is very difficult to harm your website position in google with few links from forums. I'll be happy if I will receive each day few hundreds baklinks from different forums.

[sclick]

Hi ... stacey131, how do web users and others know about your content, if you don't promote?

[Natural Elements]

You don't need to promote your contents, if those are valuable for visitors, search engines will know and will rank your contents depending of the quality.

You can always make some cross linking to interconnect your different's article, so it would be a fast navigation for your visitors and they will see right away all your articles they wish to consult.

[luxscold]

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

You don't need to promote your contents, if those are valuable for visitors, search engines will know and will rank your contents depending of the quality.

Never.
1. SE can't estimate the quality of the text.
2. without enough backlinks your content can even be not completely indexed (even unique and very valuable)

[stacy131]

Never.
1. SE can't estimate the quality of the text.
2. without enough backlinks your content can even be not completely indexed (even unique and very valuable)

Nobody's saying that backlinks aren't important. They are. Some people just prefer to let others do the backlinking work for them naturally while they focus their work entirely on content-building. Everyone does SEO differently.

Scenario 1 - Some create a small site and work their butt off submitting to directories, posting in forums, writing articles...
Scenario 2- Others just continuously keep building content and get natural backlinks from visitors to their site, without ever paying attention to backlinks. Either way, you'll get indexed and you'll get backlinks.

Scenario one is risky if Google sees that you're doing anything unnatural, but it is a quick way to rise in SERPs and get indexed quickly. The downside is that while you've been spending so much time getting backlinks, those competitors who chose scenario two have overtaken you in content-building. Scenario 2 is safe because you're not manipulating backlinks and thus can't do anything black hat in that aspect. But, indexing will be slower and you will remain low in SERPs. The good thing is that if you are patient, you will have gotten backlinks without putting in any actual link-building work yourself. Your visitors will do it for you. You will also have a mega site because your focus was on content. Thus, if you are patient enough, you will go up in SERPs and start getting indexed more frequently. It's just that scenario 2 requires a lot of patience.

[Kryvast]

And doing both is better than doing each scenario only.

[Natural Elements]

Originally Posted by luxscold

Never.
1. SE can't estimate the quality of the text.
2. without enough backlinks your content can even be not completely indexed (even unique and very valuable)

My site should be an exception then !

[luxscold]

Originally Posted by stacy131

Scenario 1 - Some create a small site and work their butt off submitting to directories, posting in forums, writing articles...
Scenario 2- Others just continuously keep building content and get natural backlinks from visitors to their site, without ever paying attention to backlinks. Either way, you'll get indexed and you'll get backlinks.

Scenario 2 do the job only when you do superb content, for example "TV has gone" or similar outstanding projects. furthermore this scenario can work if you properly use social bookmarks. Otherwise even those who desperately want to read your articles will not be able to find your site.
The only exception - honored free-hosting, but this is a very difficult. New websites placed on these free-hostings have huge bonus.

In all other cases you do need to buy (or use other techniques) back-links, but you must do all the best to generate "natural" grows. Currently I'm trying to write an article about natural link profiles, but now I can tell, that backlinks from deep pages looks more natural, rather than backlinks from homepages.

[Natural Elements]

Stacy: If you submit on the quality directories with a set of specific keywords, it could bring traffic. Some Christmas tree directories made for adsenses are just picking up the contents from reputable directories. Everyday I discovered someone is listing my site on these kind of directories, like any other sites, spammers or links farm. As you know you cannot forbiden people linking to your site.

Kryvast: Good point, both scenarios may work very well.

[sums123]

You can get good rank on behalf of content,but it depends on quality of content in your site.

You need to be highly creative and a passion for writing to do this.

Most of the Seo go for link building is that it is easier to do than writing and updating content regularly.