Too many related high quality links a bad thing?

[brinked]

Just want to know what everyones opinion is on this. I have a site about 2 months old and the homepage is in some kind of penalty. I have about 80 one way links to it, 30 are PR0 but relevant and the rest are PR2+ relevant links. Does anyone think that too many high quality one way links too fast can look un-natural?

Should I start seeking crappy not so related links?

[Robert Charlton]

the homepage is in some kind of penalty

Would you describe what you mean by this in more detail. If you mean it's not yet ranking for competitive terms, that's normal on Google. Two months is still fairly young in Google's eyes.

If you mean it doesn't show up on site:domain searches, then you may in fact have a problem.

If you do have a problem, it may have to do with how the link sources relate to each other. Are they from completely independent sources?

Does anyone think that too many high quality one way links too fast can look un-natural?

How similar or different is the link anchor text and link descriptions? Does the traffic to your site suggest that getting links this fast is natural?

[brinked]

Robert...after much thinking I am convinced I have fallen victim to googles paid links penalty even though I never purchased a link. The site is 2 months old, has about 5 pr2 backlinks,8 pr3 backlinks and about 4 PR4 backlinks. These backlinks are coming from dofollow blogs and other free methods. I used about 4 different anchors as those are the keywords I am targetting.

The homepage is without a doubt in some sort of penalty, all pages are indexed in google but when i do site:website.com the homepage appears on the very last page of results.

Also, I noticed that the site is not in this penalty on asian versions of google and when I do a allinanchor: search, my site shows up very well for my targetted terms.

Also, one of the terms im targeting is a very simple term with pretty much no competition, the top ten sites that rank for it are all PR0 or no longer even exist.

I am about to buy some links using many different variations of anchors...hopefully that will look natural in googles eyes and remove me from their penalty.

Ironic huh...buying links to get out of a paid links penalty...if it works would prove google can be manipulated and is flawed.

[jimbeetle]

As Robert said, two months is still new as far as Google is concerned. And the few halfway good links you do have are just not enough to push it up as yet.

There's nothing in either of you posts that explains why you think the site has a paid links penalty.

[brinked]

2 months is new...but it is enough time to legitimately rank for the one easy keyword I mentioned...when my site first was indexed, I was ranking #6 for said term. I understand that new sites generally rank well initially...I have been doing this for 10 years.

Lets put it this way...my homepage title is very unique...no other website according to google has the exact sequence of words put together...yet when I do a search for "my page title" with and without the "";s my homepage is nowhere to be found...yet my subpages show without the "" and they have different unique page titles and dont contain the exact phrase either.

So trust me...I am 100000% sure my homepage is in some kind of penalty.

I have actually had this same penalty before on a site thats 2 years old, and I was able to remove all the links that were added right before I was penalized..the very next day I was out of the penalty...yes the very next day!..I literally jumped out of my chair in excitement since the 4 keywords I was penalized for bring in a combined 30k+ uniques a day. I thought since this site was 2 years old it was a different penalty...but now I am starting to suspect its the same...the older site might be able to get away with a little bit more..but with the new site google has no trust for it.

[Miamacs]

again, question is: what percentage of the links say the exact same thing?

keep repetition ( inc. anchor text starting with the same words ) below 40-30% and you should be fine.

make them use the exact same text - or start with the same phrase - 40-50% of the time and you'll never rank for anything.

...

[brinked]

miamacs...thats interesting advice. so you're saying that if im targetting the keyword cookies i would be penalized by google if all my links were like this:

cookies and more
cookies here
cookies
cookies as gifts
cookies and gifts
cookies delicious

etc......

Never thought google would pick that up and apply a penalty.

[SEOPTI]

I run a free widget and I'm getting thousands of links with a simple text like 'example widget', never saw a penalty for using more than 90% exactly the same text in links pointing to my site.

[brinked]

seop...thats probably because your domain is several years old and well trusted by google...its my experience that new domains are very susceptible by googles penalties.

[andylc0714]

It seems that my site is in the same situation. But the differece is that When i search "mydomain.com" my homepage is ranking #1, however when search "mydomain" the homepage is gone nowhere. My site is 11 months old and with 298 google inlinks, I'm not sure that my site is penalized.

I also feel confused about "anchor text". l'm always use the same text when i exchange links, is this harmful?

[fishfinger]

I think that, as suggested above, the key here is the OVERALL profile of your site in Google's eyes.

The '950' and other penalties are related to anchor text and on-site optimisation. Depending on your

- market
- keywords 'targeted' (intentionally or not)
- link profile (age of links, type and perceived quality of site linking to you, anchor text used)
- age / trust factor of your site
- on site content and its variety (not just of content/theme but of words optimised for on the individual page)

you could potentially fall foul of any number of inter-related filters in place. Trigger more than a few flags and the filters kick in.

Randomising anchor text as much as possible helps. You can change existing links or get new ones to balance the profile out. De-optimise the site - get someone else to look at the text. Are you over-using keywords in links? Are you over-using keywords in the content? Does the content read like a conmputer generated page with 'insert keyword here' added to it?

Also look at proximity of words to each other in the code file i.e. you might have an image and a table or block level element separating two instances of the same word, but to Google they are right next to each other. No proof, just a hunch :)

I have an idea (no proof, just a feeling) that filters might be harsher in some areas (i.e. terms with 'free' in them or other highly spammable markets). Is your business / website name a generic or competitive search term in a market open to 'abuse' by webmasters?