Too much, too soon

I launched my blog a few months (not the one in my sig) and I flew out of the gate, getting links whenever and wherever I could.

I didn't actively buy links, but I did spin a few articles and hit social bookmarking sites, directories etc pretty hard - pretty much with the same anchor text each time, give or take a word or two.

It hasn't paid off - I am stuck in obscurity on Google at the moment for my main keywords, constantly sticking around page 4-5 and never getting any higher.

Strangely enough, I have some pretty good rankings for related search terms so I don't think I have been penalised for my eagerness - Google appears to have sandboxed these links so they won't help to improve my rankings.

Despite this, my traffic is improving week on week, mostly because people keep on visiting and I get alot of traffic from blogs and guest posts that are featured on other sites etc, so its not all bad.

It's definitely worth chilling out a bit when you first launch a site rather than blasting the links from day one.

If your content is good and you want to build your own personal brand all those low quality sites which accept your spun articles etc will only hold you back in the long term.

AJT

 

It all depends on what you believe google ranks based on, I've read countless blog posts/topics regrading Google and how they sandbox, why they do it etc. There are many who believe that it's based on poor content, I was reading a blog post ealier on how Google only takes action when you reach a good spot (First page for a good keyword) - But they'll only take action (By sandboxing your website) if your content is crap.

Now, I don't work for Google, but I know they are a very smart company, with very smart systems in order to prevent spam and to get the search listings working nicely, but I beleive that this is how they base your work, afterall the whole point of backlinks, your meant to get them from other webmasters, because your website is good, why would they link to a website with crap content? They wouldn't, plain and simple.

Content will always remain king, dispite backlink count.

 

Ahh ain't that the truth, AJT. Also even if the content you post on the low quality article sites is 100% unique and perfect, and the content gets indexed, is there any staying power for those links and will the content stay indexed?

 

I think getting traffic is more important in the beginning. Probably when you add more content, your website will appear in the first page.

 

You are right. This is what I have been saying to people who say link building, build links. I always do a session of link building and chill them out for some time.

 

How long ago was the website in your sig launched?

 

Couple of months - That's not the one i'm referring to in my post though. I just play around with that as and when I get chance.

My content is pretty good. I spend a lot of time writing it and post at least one article a week. There's already 15-20 articles on there so far which is why I seem to get a lot of long-tail traffic - people hit the site on all sorts of phrases.

 

Even if the content does stay indexed, the blogs and websites they are posted on will never grow into authority sites, so they will always be very low value.

 

You need to build links steadily over time. So if you got lots of links when the site was new... that's fine, so long as the number of links you've been getting since has been either consistent with that first phase, or more than it.

 

PM your website URL, and I will check it out to see if there are any easily fixed errors you are making in terms of onpage SEO.
Seems to me you may have put the cart before the horse.

 

Its all about being natural. think about what would be natural and make sure it happens.
Scott