Can too many high PR links can hurt SEO

[atohad]

I recently accuired about 10 PR 4- 5 for my website after getting mostly PR 1-2 for the past 6 months.

After a couple of day my rankings not only didn't go up, but actually went down really drasticly for many keyphrases that i used to rank at the top 3.

Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down?

Or maybe i should even those out with some low PR link?

[Theo-NL]

As long as these links are acquired in a natural and valid way, I wouldn't worry too much about them.

If you had acquired a couple hundred links in a short time, when your website had only ten before, that looks unnatural, which isn't good. If you already have thousands of valid backlinks, a couple hundred extra won't hurt you as this fits the natural pattern. Besides, PageRank isn't a great metric to base any decision on these days anyway as it seems (http://www.finishjoomla.com/blog/33/why-pagerank-lost-its-value-for-seo/).

In regards to the rankings: I personally think these are either natural swings or there is more at play than just a handful of new and naturally acquired backlinks.

[EGOL]

If you have a great blog post or new article that is successful at Reddit, Slashdot and other community sites you could naturally get a lot of high PR links in a single day.

However, when I read your post I see..... "Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down?"....  That statement sounds like you might be getting unnatural links which to Google could be seen as manipluative - and run the risk of being devalued.  That will be a loss in the time required to acquire them and possibly the cost if they are purchased.

So, maybe your better question should be... "Will this high PR links be a long term asset to my site?"..... vs... will they be a spend that brings zero value.

[atohad]

I'm pretty new to all the SEO process (about 6 months..)

EGOL, you understood the situation

I also forgot to mention that those links had a link in a post and a blogroll link..

When i checked it out with yahoo site explorer i found out that those blogroll link are from EACH PAGE of the site which makes a one link in  a site to hundreds, even thousands of links from every page that site has!

Should i try and delete those links?

[Dan-Petrovic]

Your risk is not in PR itself but in your link building style. I would avoid buying links from known link sellers, blogrolls that go out to totally irrelevant topics, paid editorials etc. Natural link growth is characterised by both high and low quality links at the same time and in different proportions.

Having only high PR links that look like they were purchased can hurt you if you get manually reviewed by a member of Google search quality team.

[EGOL]

I agree...  I think that google is looking at your overall "link profile".  If that profile is made up completely of link drops on blogs, low-value directory submissions and links that look like they are "paid"... then your rankings are on risky ground.

I would rather have a dozen good natural links than 1200 low-value links from spamming and automatic directory submissions.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Absolutely. You're spending time doing low quality links and you're spending time getting high quality links. One of these two is a valuable investment of your time, the other one isn't. Perhaps it's time to stop link building and work on content a bit?

[EGOL]

I am often amazed at the rankings that can be obtained from only a few good links.