Jul 03
Q and A : I’ve lost 1000 backlinks – is my site now permanently damaged?
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Dear Kalena…
I have a site which has lost about 1000 back links, they were weak back links (repetitive links from same domain).
My question is this: is the site now permanently damaged or is it possible I can get it ranking again?
Thanks
Louie
Dear Louie
No the site is not permanently damaged – you’ll most-likely find that since the links were poor quality, and site-wide, a bulk of them probably weren’t even being counted in the first place.
Not all links are equal and the better quality (ie. more authoritative, trust worthy, relevant etc. ) the fewer links you’ll need to achieve the same results.
Jim Boykin explains this nicely in his post about Why that site with 50 backlinks beats your site with 1000 backlinks where he quotes:
It’s not always “He with the most links” who wins the game……often, “He with the right links” can win the game as well. Really, very often, he with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1000 of the wrong links – I see it all the time.
So all you need to do is go out and find some decent links and you’ll be fine. If I were you, I’d consider this a good thing to be rid of the old crumby links and a golden opportunity to start building a better inbound link profile.
Hope this helps
Peter Newsome
SiteMost Search Engine Optimisation
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August 25th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Hi,
I stumbled onto your website while researching backlinks. I just had a quick question. What is a good amount of backlinks that a website should have to get say 5,000 visitors a day and is the quality or the quantity of the links more important?
August 26th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Hi Dan,
The number of backlinks you gain should look as natural as possible. So if your site consistently attracts 20 links a month and then you suddenly start getting 1000 links a day, it could trigger some alarms (unless, of course there is something that the additional links can be attributed to, such as a viral linkbait piece).
Another consideration is the number of inbound links your competitors have. If the top 10 sites in your niche all have, on average, between 100 – 500 inbound links and you come along and in the space of a few months gain 5000 inbound links, it could also appear unnatural.
Link quality always outweighs link quantity – so my advice would be to aim for the better quality of links, grow your your inbound link profile gradually over time, keep your link building goals inline with the other sites in your niche… and if you’re sourcing links in ways that the search engines may not endorse, then try and make it look as natural as possible.