Determining When You May Have Too Many Links

[Charlessipe]

Hi,

I was recently reading how the Penguin update can penalize your site for having too many links because it looks unnatural or over-optimized. It seems that this depends on your niche and how many links your competitors have.

If you are comparing your site's inbound linking domains compared to other sites in your industry, what is a safe percentage to exceed your competitors. For instance, is it okay to have 120% more linking domains than your competitors but risky to have more than 200% more than your competitors?

Thanks!

[MattAntonino]

Penguin doesn't (AFAIK) penalize "too many links."  It penalizes "too many _______ links."  What I mean is "too many unnatural links" or "too many footer links" or "too many links from the same domain" or "too many purchased links."  It's "too many ________" in our experience.

We use a link profile graph like the one I did for Scott on his blackfriday site.  http://scott.offord.me/KvTb

See how the blue graph is WAY out of alignment with everything else?

THAT is an unnatural link profile that got slammed.

[Andropenis_Australia]

Agreed with Matt. It's not about "too many" but more about too many crappy links.

If you get deemed with too many shite links, chances are the rest of your good links will also get devalued.

Best of luck