Over the past few months, some of clients have seen a rapid drop in the number of backlinks. Anyone else seen this? And could the Search Engine's be discounting blog commenting. Because this is where I am noticing the decrease. And yes I build backlinks through other methods too, so don't suggest articles and squidoo, and so on.
Google is absolutely devaluing blog comments, Matt Cutts has even been talking about it. You're backlinks are still there they are just not doing anything. The whole game of chasing after as many backlinks as you can is a waste of time. My sites rank just fine with as few as 40 "backlinks"... in fact by dumping a load of highly targeted links to one site over the past few months one of my sites fell from #3 to #8. So if your "strategy" is like everyone elses to just dump links on any Web 2.0 property, Google has caught on. Time to rethink it. Nothing last forever.
Sometimes the drop in backlinks are due to the removal or expiration of some sitewide links that you may have gotten or bought a few months or a year ago. I've seen that. .
No I purposely do not do site wide links on blogs for this reason. I do not go about just creating an S*** load of links....I do a few here and there. But I will start to forget about blog commenting! also can I have a link where "Matt Cutts has even been talking about it"
Links gained by blog comments by the very nature of blogs will tend to disappear over time... Same goes for forum posts and article submissions. For example, suppose you notice some dofollow blog with a post on their home page that you think is relevant to a page on your site, so you comment on it and drop a link to your URL. While that post is on the home page, it's being linked to by the blog home page, the first page for the category which is linked to by the home page, and the first page of the archive page which is also linked to by the home page. As more posts are added to the blog, the post drops rolls off of the home page thus losing its strongest link. As more posts are added to the category, the post drops off of the category page (which itself is still linked to by the home page) and moves to a "previous posts" page for the category which is only linked to by the 1st page for that category. If more than 10 posts are made within a month the post also drops off of the main archive page for that month to a "previous posts" page for the archive. As you can see over time, a new post starts out with several strong links (home page, category page, archive page) but a typical post loses most of its strong links over the first few weeks or months and typically end up only being linked to be a couple weaker pages on the site. So the blog comment loses it's punch over time. Frequently, if the post you commented on did not get any inbound external links while it was on the home page, it will eventually get deindexed. So it's not at all surprising that you see a loss of links. Unnaturally linking strategies like blog commenting, forum sigs, article submissions, etc. almost ALL experience this same phenomenon where they lose their effectiveness over time and you have to constantly continue blog commenting, forum spamming, submitting new articles, etc. just to maintain your rankings. This is why natural links given on traditional sites are FAR better as they tend NOT to lose their effectiveness over time.
However 'natural links on traditional sites' are usually far more difficult to get plus link exchange is usually the mode of getting them, which in turn is not exactly liked by Google in excess. so yes, its tricky, and continuous link building either through blogs or article dirs seems like the only good way of going abt doing seo through link bldg
First of all, which backlink checker you use to verify the drops in backlink counts. I suggest you to use several backlink checker tools as results will be different for each service providers. When it comes to counting backlinks, I still prefer to use Yahoo Site Explorer. Most of my link building is from dofollow blog commenting and I don't see any decrease in the counts. All I can see the increase.
yes go for yahoo site explorer. in google the links may have vanished but stil u have advantages of having those links..
First of all let me state that there are several reason why a site rankings drop so fast. ... Some twenty backlinks on your linkspage are a surefire sign you have too many
I tend to agree with you - but I would have to go by my own personal experience. I had my very first client this past spring and like a dummy - did nothing but sig links. He got to the first page - I moved on and learned a lot more concerning SEO - so yeah - sig links can be a waste of time. However - I was checking on former clients the other day and noticed that he dropped two places but was still on the first page. I was really surprised by this. I knew he didn't have anyone else working on backlinking. I checked his site as well - nothing changed. So I was puzzled by this. I say that he was an exception to the rule. But overall - when I personally tested other sites w/ sig links - they went up - when I stopped - they went down. So yeah, sig links over time are a waste of time. But it seems like there could be some exceptions for whatever reasons.
Ok I do see the point about Blog Commenting and Forum links. You have to keep an ongoing campaign or these will drop. I ALWAYS use yahoo site explorer to count backlinks. I just have not checked said clients links in a few months and when I saw a drop I wondered what was happening.
Backlinks in comments are not the best backlinks, i would even say they are the useless ones. backlinks have to be made constantly, after sometime older ones are not shown, so not to loose ranks and positions you have to create then time by time.
i second that.. its only a myth that blog commenting links is not suitable or will lose its effectiveness.. i seen dozens of people that use blog commenting and rank well for their keywords..
It sounds like some links just dropped off. If yahoo does not show them anymore i would think they are not on that site anymore.
When I got into this game I was told that once you build links they stay. Life goes on. What I found out is that everything is so temporary. You try to build something and the thign falls down on you.