Is It Possible to Be Punished By Google For Getting Too Many Links?

[scottgray0620]

Hello,

My team and I have been trying to get high-quality back-links by seeking other sites and blogs. We were ranking really well and then all of a sudden, our rankings dropped dramatically.

We were only using backlinks and good ones at that, yet, our rankings have dropped. Is it possible for google to punish us for getting too many too fast? If not, what could be some of the other problems?

[Chris.Menke]

"Is it possible for google to punish us for getting too many too fast?"

Absolutely.  Maybe you didn't read the sentence after the one you read that told you getting links to your site is good.  That following sentence said.. "If you are not familiar with how google's algorithm values links, do not engage in link building and do not purchase links because there is a good chance that all of a sudden your rankings could drop dramatically at some point in the future.

Did you miss that sentence?

[scottgray0620]

Got it.

So how long does google punish you?

Should I stop getting backlinks or just slow down the rate that I'm doing it?

Will my ranking eventually go back up?

[gertseoleverage]

There's no established figure that would mean TOO MUCH, I'd aim for matching what could be natural based on the social signals Google might pick up about your site, and at what competitors of a similar size are getting in terms of backlinks.

[Chris.Menke]

Too many, as in:

• Relation to site age
• Relation to others in your industry
• Relation incremental velocity
• Relation to the quality of links

Google's seen at least 10s of thousands of websites in your industry and is aware of every site that has ever linked to other sites in your industry. It knows how fast those others have acquired links, at what age they've acquired links, how quickly they've developed links, when and why spikes in link acquisition have occurred, and what percentage of links tend to be low quality.

Think of a link as a hand shake between you and  a businessperson in an industry complimentary to yours that you had a good conversation with over lunch at an industry conference. If the relationship between you and the linking site isn't at least as close as that, it's possible it may be counterproductive.

[scottgray0620]

Hi Everyone,

So I've done some investigating on search console and we don't have any manual actions against us but my search traffic is down by 33% from last week. That said, could we have been punished by google from an algorithm update?

I'd love someone's expertise to discern why we've dropped dramatically when we get high-quality backlinks and have a very low spam score and our domain authority is much higher than our competitors. Thank you.

[gertseoleverage]

We're in the middle of Google's May 2020 Core Update that still takes a few days to finish rolling out. Many pages have lost a percentage of overall traffic, there's a very high chance your drop might not be link related.

Here's a few theories based on initial research + feedback from other SEOs on the update:

• Google seems to prefer bigger brands
• Freshness seems to be more important
• Check your site's usability / design / loading speed / accessibility

Links are important but there's a huge amount of other things that can affect your rankings.

[scottgray0620]

Thank you all for your responses.

Over the course of the last few weeks, my site has continued to further be slipping in rankings locally.

My question is, where do I start to detect the issue and regain my previous rankings?

[areebtahir1]

Yes, some time google gives plenty to your site when you made harm backlinks. Learn more here about it.