I allowed many of my sponsored back links to expire, this did not make a difference to my rankings until the recent July 2008 Google PR update, why? Also will getting the same back links back help me re-gain my positions and how long will it take? Thanks all! ps. Is a website update a bad idea at this time?
A backlink is an indicator that a website is popular or useful and thus is probably going to be useful to a searcher, therefore a better rank is donated. However a backlink that disappears indicates that maybe your site is no longer useful, it might have gone out of fashion and isn't really all that popular anymore. So Google trys to reflect this by lowering your rank. It's also a trust factor. Google is against paid and unnatural links because they offer a way for people to manipulate the listings unfairly. So looking from Google's perspective, does it trust a site with many links that have remained permanent or does it trust a site that has suddenly lost quite a few backlinks at once, perhaps indicating those links were not natural in the first place. The question is how to get your rank back? One would think that simply reinstating the same links would return things back to normal. But in theory Google would then have a record that shows lots of links disappearing and then reappearing at once, this is suspicious as links do not often do this, especially all from different sites at the same time. You may find that simply reinstating the same links will not be effective, on the other hand some would argue that this sort of link pattern does happen naturally occasionally and so Google would be unfair to dampen the effect of reinstated links. Some would also argue that Google isn't really that advanced anyway so you have nothing to worry about. To be ultra safe : do nothing at all. Though this means you don't get your rank. To be risky : reinstate the links. You may get the rank you want or you may also attract unwanted attention. To compromise : source new links from new sites, that way you don't get an unnatural looking link pattern. The disadvantage here is that you do not know the worth of the new links. As for the website update. Websites change all the time, but try to make sure that when you do the update keep the content similar and try to make sure all current backlinks will still point to pages your site.
T-Media, thats a great write up and some nice logical advice, much appreciate! Thanks! From what you have said I think I will renew 50% of the expired links and get some new organic links...