Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have not found a pr6 or higher in my niche. It took a long time to find a pr5. Most seem to be pr4 or less, mostly 0's. I am not sure what to do about this!
I'm sure you can tell that I am new to this game, but I do need help. I had found myself #1 on google with both sites (finally) for about a week with my main search phrase. When I deleted sites that I had not heard from, I got sandboxed!(both sites). I am still number 1 on other major search engines though and I would like to stay there. What to do?
>>>What do I do if they don't answer my emails?
Forget about them.
If they answer and say they will reciprocate but don't?
Wait two weeks then email them back. No rush. I've had some Indians emailing me at two in the morning asking about a recip they requested 24 hours before... rushing me to hand them a PR 5 link. Of course I told them to jump in the lake. So don't ever rush anyone. You must remember that some businesses outsource their web updates and it can cost them a minumum of $50 or more to add a link. Some businesses wait until they have an hours worth of updates before they get around to adding a link. Although fifty bucks isn't a lot of money, most people still wouldn't throw it away to convenience your link building effort.
>>>Do links to great sites with pr3 or higher that I link to, without them linking to me, hurt my rankings?
No. But it's probably better for your readers to cite them by linking to them from within an article. If the link is useful don't hide it, provide it.
>>>I have not found a pr6 or higher in my niche. It took a long time to find a pr5. Most seem to be pr4 or less, mostly 0's. I am not sure what to do about this!
Nothing. Don't worry about PR. Just get links, and if possible make sure it's from a quality site (please keep in mind that PR is not a sign of quality).
When I started doing this I had good content too, all copied from other sites that were top-ranked for the same keyterms. I remember it made sense to me at the time, but I can't follow the rationale today for some reason.
They won't all answer your emails, you may need to scan/spider their sites to see if they are linking to you. I have found that spidering finds less than 30% of new links (that I didn't already know about from other sources). Run the spider first to find as many as you can, then manually check the remaining sites. It's a long process. You can manually scan about 200 to 400 sites per day if you can pay attention that long.
Some sites will say they will reciprocate and won't for a month or two. I know sometimes when I was doing this when swamped it might take me 6 weeks to or longer to reciprocate, after saying I would. I generally only link to other sites of high quality and merit so leaving a link up is not an issue, but I will take them down after severel months, just to "tidy" things up.
Do links to great sites with pr3 or higher that I link to, without them linking to me, hurt my rankings?In general no, they'll help you, as long as they are relevant to the content you are providing.
You may want to look into using some automated script to handle your linking, there are many link management tools available. None of them are right for everyone.
If your drop was caused by losing links from other sites, because you didn't know they existed and you deleted your links to them, causing them to think you had tried to cheat them, then you would have to go through the process again and try to get links from them again. A difficult feat since you wouldn't know which sites out of all the one's you invited were linking to you.
#1 for one week? and then you got sandboxed? How long was the site online before it got to #1? How long was it in the top 10 before it went to #1? How old is the site? When did it drop? During this last update? Or has all of this transpired since the last update?
My sites have been up for almost three years. I just got into the top 10 about 3 months ago. I have been steadily moving up for about 6 months. I have been on the second or third page for about that long. I changed my main keyword phrase because of content, I then got to #1 on all the major search engines for that keyword phase for about a week. I still am on all the majors except google. Google sandboxed me after I took off the sites that were not linked to me. Which I did because I read that I could be penelized for linking to them when they don't link to me. So I am confused. I do have a livestats reporter for my one site. Google spiders several times per week. When they update I don't know.
My niche is the horse world, I have not encountered many who can afford or would hire someone else to do their work on their sites. I myself am doing everything on less than a shoestring. I have tried to be patient with others as they are probably at horse shows or working with their horses somehow. So that is not the problem. I just would like to make the SE's happy too.
Thank you very much for all your help.
