Do you stop link building once you have your desired rank?

[tempowebdesign]

So with all these updates hitting sites left, right and center.

Now you have your desired rank on Google, do you stop link building for that project?

I can see some positives in this

You will not add links that will get hit by future updates.

If you do get hit in future updates you have less links to remove.

Obviously it an outstanding link came along from BBC or CNN you would go for that.  But press releases etc would you now stop anything like that?

[eyepaq]

Unless the links build are not shady I will move forward. Once the ranks are achived then maybe cut from the pace a little - don't invest that much as the ROI will only go down from there but stoping it's not a good choise in my opinion: it's not natural, there are spikes in the link profile, some old links will fade  and at some point you will want to resume, competition is never at sleap.

Move forward while you are ahead and make the gap between you and competition even bigger - long term you will only have benefits.

On the other hand, yes, if the links are bad, spammy then you should stop before starting

[SiteWizard_LLC]

I agree with eyepaq.  It depends largely on the quality of the links you are generating.  To the best of my understanding, press releases should only be published to a single authoritative site (either your site or a third party, not both).  If you are distributing the same press release to multiple websites, those will likely be counted as duplicate content.  If your site is one of those duplicating the content then your rankings could suffer.

However, if you are producing legitimate back-links from social media, blogs and other viral marketing channels then don't stop.  Your competitors won't stop, and they will keep on moving past you.  SEO (and marketing in general) is never done.

Never stop producing new, useful, engaging, unique content and getting the word out.  Even if your current content ranks well, you should be producing new content that needs to be shared.  I believe Google considers freshness of content as a marker of relevancy, so if all of your content and back-links (especially social) are 3 years old I suspect your rankings could decline.

[Mr.Rangen]

Never. Stop. Link Building.

Look at it like buying real estate. You want to protect your investment, you want to build it up as best as you can, and one day, if you choose to sell it, it'll resale quite nicely.

Sure, if you have other open projects, you can now kick up their priority status a bit, but always continue to drive authority to the domain.

Do you rank for 1-3 short tail keywords? What about long-tail keywords? What about variations? Market defined variations? #pointstoponder

[tempowebdesign]

What do you think about Local SEO.

I see a lot of the sites post Penguin ranking with only 20-30 decent links.

In my opinion keeping it going could be overkill and cause you issues in the future for simple local keywords.   What does anyone else think?

[TinaGammon]

With local SEO it could be a little different we built our sons Karate school's website two years ago, the majority of his links come from Karate tournament videos on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Manta, and a couple other local sites.

We had first place after 2 months, and have never added another backlink. He is still number one, but this is because the competition is so small.

He may have 20 real competitors for his top 4 keywords, but most of their sites have little to no SEO at all.

I think it depends on your competitors if they are adding good links you should be adding good links.

For larger national keywords someone is always going to be adding backlinks so to stay relevant you will need to as well.

[tempowebdesign]

I agree Tina, I think more so in this market to continue link building once you have a local rank could cause you issues.

[KeriMorgret]

One thing to remember is that even if you change nothing about your site (on-site or off-site), your competitors are still working and changing things. If keep everything the same, your competitors could still be out there working harder, and there goes your rank.