Building backlinks to your homepage?

[Dopani]

Search engine rankings will increase for your categories, blog posts, pages if you just build backlinks to your homepage?

Your comments would be appreciated.

 

[SEOPub]

It depends on if your site structure is any good or not.

 

[Hawker]

Well you wouldn't want to build too many to your homepage that's link building lesson 101.

Of course, your inner-pages like categories etc will rank higher if they or your homepage has some juicy backlinks to it.

But you'd want to build links to your inner pages as is only natural for sites overtime anyway.

Too many links to the homepage and none of the internal pages is a big giveaway tell tell sign you're trying to manipulate things.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Sorry Hawker, but you are incorrect on this one. Building links to a homepage is not a sign of manipulation. I have a lot of sites where I have never built an external link to an internal page. There are also plenty of real world examples of this. Why in the world would someone link to an internal page on the website of a dental practice? They link to the homepage.

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

Thnx bro, there are a lot of reasons why Hawker is incorrect and I've shared a few as well. Another good example is when you take an expired domain and use a plugin like "Link Juice Keeper" so that if anyone clicks on a link from another site that links to a blog post that's no longer there, link juice keeper will redirect that person to the homepage.

Link juice keeper also takes the link juice that was created to inner pages which are no longer there and send it all to the homepage (via 301 redirect). So only the homepage will have backlinks in this case but your inner pages will rank in search engines if the domain has strong enough link juice to rank btw.

That is another reason people these days are building sites using expired domains instead of buying a new domain because they rank fast with little effort. If you've bought expired domains then you know what I'm talking about.

There's tons of reasons to prove that you're wrong this time Hawker, sending too many links to the homepage is not a sign of manipulation.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

To be honest, I would stay far away from Link Juice Keeper and any other plugins like that when building private network sites. To me, it creates a huge and easily identifiable footprint. "Real" websites do not redirect all their 404 errors to the home page.

If I was Google, it is certainly a way I would use to track down and identify network sites.

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

I really appreciate the advise brother, I got this from people I trust and we haven't had a problem with it. But from what you just said I can see that it can create a footprint. I'm removing all the different link juice keeper plugins that I installed on a few of my blogs.

I'm glad I mentioned this before disaster happens, so Many Thnx bro.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Taking it one step further, what I would do is if there are specific URLs that have a lot of links or a number of good links you would like to preserve, I would redirect those URLs individually or recreate the URL if it was relevant and can be used.

 

[Nytshade]

Too many links to the homepage and none of the internal pages is a big giveaway tell tell sign you're trying to manipulate things.

So what happens when many people find my content valuable and share it on their sites, stores, schools and other portals but only link to the homepage, then I end up with a lot of links on the homepage as compared to inner pages?

Google will penalize my site?

For instance, if a magazine takes an article from my blog they don't link to the blog post they always link to the homepage.

Same thing when we take articles from article directories, we don't link to the directory but we link to the URL they used in the resource box, which is mostly their homepage. Even when we do link exchange with other big sites they always link to the homepage.

Most membership sites and magazines do this because they have paid subscribers so they know people paid for fresh content. Even online schools who use my content always link to the homepage and most of the organic links I get go to the homepage.

The examples I gave you above are just to show you that sometimes you don't have control as to how many backlinks you get to your homepage, you can get more or get less depending on the content (and many other factors).

Search engine rankings will increase for your categories, blog posts, pages if you just build backlinks to your homepage?

My advise is, create backlinks for whatever that you want to rank. It could be your inner pages or homepage, then create links on those pages to link to other categories/pages/posts on your site.

The key is to use your link juice wisely like SEOPub has already mentioned. It doesn't matter how many links the homepage has as compared to inner pages. If too many homepage links affect rankings then if I wanted to outrank my competition, I could just send many links to their homepage then outrank them, so build links for what you want to rank in the SERPs, it's that simple.

Hope that answers your question.

 

[Hawker]

Hawker

Well it depends doesn't it. Firstly, it depends on the age of your site.

For new sites, sites that get too many backlinks too quickly, to just the homepage, (that have also other internal pages) it can indeed happen (Sandbox penalty).

I mean that just sticks out like a big soar thumb. Why would the site get/have lots of links all of a sudden to its homepage only and none of the other pages you know?

That's why you should never just build links to your homepage but to your internal pages too to level it out.

However.... like you have said, sometimes you can publish a post and it can go viral quickly and get you 100/1000's of backlinks overnight, in a week whatever.

Google knows that sites can indeed pick up a lot of backlinks, shares etc quickly (go viral) and that the webmaster is not always in control of what backlinks his/her site has.

That's why they provided the Disavow Tool.

But Google is not stupid. It can't think like a human yet still but it's getting a lot better at knowing the difference between real genuine backlinks and shares etc over/vs some poor SEO work too.

So generally, for new sites, yes this CAN happen / has happened.

For older, more established sites that already have a wide link portfolio and aged backlinks it's much less likely to happen.

Nobody really knows the full set of rules taken into consideration.

What we do know is that Google likes good quality content and real genuine backlinks as well from related sources.

These are usually much harder to get by doing SEO as well.

Example would be a technology blog releases a new post about some exciting new technology product and has a lot of information on it.

That blog post quickly attracts a lot of attention and gets reblogged about, mentioned on forums and everywhere that are related to technology or that product.

Next to guest posts and link exchanges, those kinds of backlinks are harder to get as quickly as you can when you get them virally.

Google surely understands this today better than it did before.

So then, for new sites, sites with no age and already no backlinks, shares etc that quickly build too many links to their homepage, indeed a sandbox penalty can happen.

However it depends on the site and its on-page SEO score from Google's perspective and whether it thinks any of the links are real or manipulation.

And I believe Google has emphasised a lot on that these days to make sure it gets it right.

But for older, more aged, more established sites that already have a lot of backlinks and what not, it is much less likely to happen.

I hope that helps.

 

[Miguelito203]

It depends on how you have your site set up. With mine, I build links to specific pages through blog commenting, forums and what not. I like to use pages for my reviews and posts for like my articles or whatever.

Joey

 

[janseo]

I think it is a good idea to distribute the link profile equally to all the pages instead of pointing all the links to the homepage. You can interlink all relevant pages with appropriate anchor text.

 

[Hawker]

Sorry Hawker, but you are incorrect on this one. Building links to a homepage is not a sign of manipulation. I have a lot of sites where I have never built an external link to an internal page. There are also plenty of real world examples of this. Why in the world would someone link to an internal page on the website of a dental practice? They link to the homepage.

You must not have read my whole post! We are not talking about you building links to your homepage yourself overtime! We are talking about if a NEW site goes viral and picks up a lot of links to the homepage too quickly. That site can indeed get sandboxed.

Am I wrong about that? Try to keep up with the conversation pub buddy.

And there are plenty of reasons why someone might not link to the homepage and link to an internal link of that site. Such as the product page or a category.

So no, they don't always link to the homepage. Not always. People are people and do different things.

Thnx bro, there are a lot of reasons why Hawker is incorrect and I've shared a few as well.

What does that or link juicer plugin have to do with what we've been talking about here?

I am not wrong about this boys. New sites CAN get sandboxed if they suddenly get too many links too soon all to the homepage.

If you think that is incorrect you have less webmaster/domaining and SEO knowledge and experience than I thought you did.

That's all I'm saying here. If you feel I'm wrong somewhere else do feel free to pull me up on it!!

Mike.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Yes, you are wrong about that.

New sites do not get sandboxed for going viral and getting too many links to the home page.

So if I launch a new restaurant tomorrow in a big city and I put out press releases, radio ads, television spots, newspaper ads, and canvas the whole city to let them know we are opening, which attracts a bunch of links and stories, Google is going to keep the site from ranking?

Sorry. That is just not happening.

When someone complains about a new site getting "sandboxed", what they are usually referring to is their inability to rank a website and they are looking for any lame excuse they can find.

 

[w3master]

Not all backlinks brings you the traffic to your blog or website. Some backlinks wont work in improving your rankings and rather can lead to negative effect. So it is important to focus on choosing the best and quality backlinks for your site.

It is also important to know that a high quality backlink should come from a high quality site that leads to the trustworthy of the site and gaining higher trusted rank.

For the blog owners, it is not actually possible to manually build links for their articles. So building links to homepage of blog is a good way to get traffic and authority to your domain. So yes you can filter the entire page rank coming from these links to your blog’s other webpages via internal linking.

But yes it is important to keep in mind regarding the below points while starting with the quality backlinks:

• Avoid site wide link from footer (WordPress themes or plugins)
• Avoid buying exact anchor text link (Keep a proportion of 40%-20%–20%-10%-10% for anchor text variation)
• Avoid buying bulk links from sites like Fiverr
• dont opt for link networks (Build my rank was one of such private link network, which got penalized)
• Avoid Blogroll links
• Article directory links are not that effective anymore

 

[Hawker]

Yes, you are wrong about that.

New sites do not get sandboxed for going viral and getting too many links to the home page.

So if I launch a new restaurant tomorrow in a big city and I put out press releases, radio ads, television spots, newspaper ads, and canvas the whole city to let them know we are opening, which attracts a bunch of links and stories, Google is going to keep the site from ranking?

Sorry. That is just not happening.

When someone complains about a new site getting "sandboxed", what they are usually referring to is their inability to rank a website and they are looking for any lame excuse they can find.

Are you as ignorant as much as you're arrogant?

New sites do not get sandboxed for going viral and getting too many links to the home page?

If you think that you know absolutely nothing about SEO and you pretend you know more than you do on here anyway.

That CAN happen. I don't know why you're being so thick headed about this. What is so hard to believe about it?

New sites CAN get sandboxed and new sites do get sandboxed for having too many links too quickly.

Not all the time, but it can indeed happen, it's happened in the past and it happens today still too.

I've already said to you, we're not talking about the links you build yourself!!! I'm talking about when a site gets too many links too quickly.

Launching press releases, radio ads, television spots, newspaper ads, and canvassing the whole city is NOT the same as a site going viral and doesn't even begin to equal the amount of links a site can pick it if it goes viral. LOL!!!!

It can raise flags with Google and they temporarily sandbox that domain. Sometimes that sandbox can last for years.

How does television spots and newspaper ads even equate to backlinks anyway?

Here's a guy called "SEOPub" that claims to know a lot about SEO but doesn't think that new sites can get sandboxed for having too many links too quick.

How naive.

When someone complains about a new site getting "sandboxed", what they are usually referring to is their inability to rank a website and they are looking for any lame excuse they can find.

No, not at all. There is a massive difference between not being able to rank a site and a site being sandboxed!

It's arrogant as hell to just say "oh they just can't rank their site so they are lame and are saying they've been sandboxed".

What!!??

No!

New sites CAN and DO get sandboxed (not all the time) for acquiring too many links too quickly.

Not being able to rank a site has NOTHING to do with being sandboxed.

Although you will find it hard to rank a site that has been sandboxed.

But to just assume that people who can't rank a site think they've been sandboxed is just arrogant and lame in itself!

 

[SEOPub]

Google does not punish new sites just because they get a bunch of links whether they are pointed at the home page or other pages. Now if they are shitty links, that is a different story.

Why in the world would Google punish a site for getting a bunch of links? There is nothing unnatural about that. Christ, if anything, a site going viral should be the kind of "social proof" that everyone claims Google is looking for.

Sandbox a domain for years because it got too many links when it launched? That is not a sandbox. That is a penalty. Big difference. No site gets "sandboxed" for years.

You clearly have not been around forums very long if you have not seen people crying "sandbox" and "penalty" when their site does not rank as well or as fast as they think it should.

When I say that people claim their site is "sandboxed" because they cannot rank it, I'm not being arrogant. You see it all the time on forums like this. You will find tons of threads on the internet asking if their site is sandboxed when it doesn't rank. Or you will see replies from people suggesting that must be the reason. That or they claim it must be "penalized".

People PM me their sites all the time to take a look. There are always other reasons the site is not ranking that have nothing to do with a sandbox or penalties.

And by the way, I think you are a total jackass for being so insulting just because I disagreed with you. Supposedly people complained about me as a mod for answering their questions too bluntly. You on the other hand, I regularly see go out of your way to insult people. If I was considered rude for this forum, I can only imagine what the membership must think of you.

 

[Hawker]

Hawker

Regularly go out of my way to insult people? Being a jackass? What are you talking about!?

How have I insulted you? Get over yourself man!

I regularly try to help people here, I don't "go out of my way to insult people". You're talking complete and total nonsense!

Show me where I have gone out of my way to insult people.....

And if saying that is an insult to you, you need to get some thicker skin mate!

Google DOES penalize NEW sites that get too many links too quickly. It CAN happen. It DOES happen.

That is my only case here. You're supposed to be an SEO and you're saying that Google doesn't penalize new sites for getting too many links too quick.

Well if it doesn't, then why do peoples sites sometimes get sandboxed for in the first place then?

Answer me that.

Absolutely ridiculous.

 

[SEOPub]

It is not nonsense. Not being able to rank a website and then saying, "oh... must have been sandboxed," is nonsense. It's a line many crappy SEO's use for poor results. I see it all the time when clients come to me.

New sites do not get sandboxed for getting links too quickly. Why would they? Google DOES NOT care how fast a site gets links, new or old. They care about the quality of links and crappy links will get the attention of Penguin, but that is an algorithmic penalty, not the mythical sandbox for too many links.

And yes, there have been many threads where you take disagreements personally. I have seen it many times here. There is a reason that many of those posts have been deleted either by yourself or others.

 

[Hawker]

It is not nonsense. Not being able to rank a website and then saying, "oh... must have been sandboxed," is nonsense. It's a line many crappy SEO's use for poor results. I see it all the time when clients come to me.

You're getting confused. Since when did I ever say that someone who can't rank their site has said oh it must have been sandboxed? Show me where I said that.. You see it all the time when clients come to you? What clients come to you saying their site must have been sandboxed because it's not ranking? Really?

New sites do not get sandboxed for getting links too quickly. Why would they? Google DOES NOT care how fast a site gets links, new or old. They care about the quality of links and crappy links will get the attention of Penguin, but that is an algorithmic penalty, not the mythical sandbox for too many links.

OMG Okay. Sure sure. I forget you work for Google Webspam team and know everything from top to bottom, inside out.

And yes, there have been many threads where you take disagreements personally. I have seen it many times here. There is a reason that many of those posts have been deleted either by yourself or others.

Oh please.

Any threads that were deleted, were deleted by Hoang because of the language YOU and Nyteshade have used in that thread. That was the reason! Not because of anything I've said.

It's fine to have a disagreement about something. Everyone has their own opinions on something that's based on their own life experience. But what is set in stone for one person, isn't necessarily set in stone for another. But there's no need to get personal about it SEOPub that's just childish.

If I don't agree I don't agree and I'll tell you I don't agree. I don't get all personal about it.

It's as simple as that. We agree to disagree and move on.

Cheer up blimey.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I said that it is the excuse their former SEO's use for poor results. Most of the clients don't know what it means and just assume the SEO knows what they are talking about.

Whether or not a sandbox exists has been debatable for over a decade now. Google confirmed back in 2004 that the sandbox was real, but have really not confirmed its continued existence, and most of the SEO professionals out there believe it disappeared long ago.

Bottom line, it never was about sites going viral and getting too many links to a home page. It was always about preventing sites using low quality links from racing to the top of the SERPs. It was a tool in the Webspam Team's arsenal.

Can a new sites use spam and get to the top of the SERPs the way they could a decade ago? Certainly not, or at least not nearly as easily. Will a new site get held back by Google just because it becomes popular? Nope. It doesn't happen that way.

 

[Nytshade]

Bro just let this go. This guy asked me what does link juice keeper have to do with any of this while the answer is in the post where I talk about the plugin. You on the other side have been saying the same thing over and over again but he still doesn't get it.

So I'm not sure how he's reading these posts, is he just skimming through them or what? I don't know and I'm not interested, it's just surprising how he KEEPS asking something that was already said hehe D:

This is a waste of time and let's stick to the main topic which is all about homepage links not sandbox. Sandbox has been a big debate for a long time, like you said, even when we ask John Mueller about it he dodges the question (he did it twice).

So let's cut out sandbox and stick to OP's question.

 

[Hawker]

I said that it is the excuse their former SEO's use for poor results. Most of the clients don't know what it means and just assume the SEO knows what they are talking about.

Well, you'd have to be a pretty naive client to believe your site was sandboxed. One only has to do a site:site.com search to see if it is or not. But I guess I under-assume the amount of people that must have happened to then as well as their intelligence for it to be thing then.

Whether or not a sandbox exists has been debatable for over a decade now. Google confirmed back in 2004 that the sandbox was real, but have really not confirmed its continued existence, and most of the SEO professionals out there believe it disappeared long ago.

That's really interesting what you say though about John Mueller dodging the question regarding sandbox algorithm. Are you referring to the [URLnf="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r3IIPCHt0E&feature=youtu.be&t=14m33s"]Google Webmaster live stream hangout video back in July 2014[/URLnf] where at 14:33 into the video, Barry of seroundtable.com asks John about churn and burn sites and that lot of blackhats finding it harder to rank churn and burn sites and how it reminded him of the original Google sandbox and whether are a victim of sandbox or some algorithm and if there was some updates around the sandbox algo and while he doesn't get specific about it and says he'd have to "double check", he doesn't rule it out either and goes on to say that it would be subject to a manual review anyway. Just goes to show how cagey Google are about giving away insider information sometimes.

Whether or not a sandbox exists has been debatable for over a decade now. Google confirmed back in 2004 that the sandbox was real, but have really not confirmed its continued existence, and most of the SEO professionals out there believe it disappeared long ago.

That much is true. I don't think the sandbox is a separate algo but rather a penalty from one of the current algos. I believe that even if they don't have a separate algo for that and they have discontinued doing it, then they certainly wouldn't be open about it because it's a mind game to them and they wouldn't want people to think that it doesn't exist for obvious reasons.

Bottom line, it never was about sites going viral and getting too many links to a home page. It was always about preventing sites using low quality links from racing to the top of the SERPs. It was a tool in the Webspam Team's arsenal.

Can a new sites use spam and get to the top of the SERPs the way they could a decade ago? Certainly not, or at least not nearly as easily. Will a new site get held back by Google just because it becomes popular? Nope. It doesn't happen that way.

I agree, I wish I had a time machine and I'd go back in time, make a website called facebook, patent it, then jump back to my present time and sue Mark Z for all his companies worth.

Seriously though, your point is fair, but I do digress as I do believe it can indeed still happen, although these days, probably not as easily as it used to. That's because, like I've previously stated, Google is much better at knowing the difference between what real virality is and what's SEO. Plus there much more manual reviews going on than there used to be too.

It does still happen though. I'll put $100 on it now that in some point in the future, someone comes on here saying their site has been sandboxed (deindexed). And on the grounds of it, I would also be willing to double my bet that was because they built too many links to their site too quickly. You up for the bet pub bud? :rolleyes2:

Bro just let this go. This guy asked me what does link juice keeper have to do with any of this while the answer is in the post where I talk about the plugin. You on the other side have been saying the same thing over and over again but he still doesn't get it.

So I'm not sure how he's reading these posts, is he just skimming through them or what? I don't know and I'm not interested, it's just surprising how he KEEPS asking something that was already said hehe D:

This is a waste of time and let's stick to the main topic which is all about homepage links not sandbox. Sandbox has been a big debate for a long time, like you said, even when we ask John Mueller about it he dodges the question (he did it twice).

So let's cut out sandbox and stick to OP's question.

Cool bro. That's what it's like when you put us three amigos in a thread though, we can be talking about one thing one minute and something completely different the next at the drop of a black hat!

Interesting to see you have mentioned John Muellers bullet dodge as well. I guess you mean the same video for one. TBH I don't think the guy had that much information about it back at that time and I'm sure by now he knows a bit more about it and enough to know that he shouldn't deny it exists no matter what he says no matter what. For obvious reasons.

 

[PTTed]

I'm struggling to recall even one single instance where I have seen a site (new or old) get severely demoted in the search results from natural links. I can't recall one.

The only time I have seen it happen is when the links weren't natural.

Anybody who is worried about their new site getting too many natural links too quickly is insane. They should also worry that maybe just maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow or maybe the earth will spontaneously explode later today when some elephant in Africa farts hard enough.

Who in their right mind would ever worry about a new site getting too many links too quickly other than someone who is trying to manipulate their rankings through link building. For frick's sake, the hardest thing to get for a site are good natural links.

If other people want to link to a site of mine for some reason, they are welcome to link to the homepage or any other page as much as they want. Those are natural links and I sure as hell am not going to worry about them negatively impacting my rankings.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Yes. This exactly.

 

[MrT]

MrT

I don't recall a single instance either. There's been many local business sites I've built and instantly built citations/links back to the home page, used press releases (not for link building but for location relevance and additional citations)

Now if you're blasting 10k crap links to the home page, sure, I see that being an issue.

 

[UVM]

If I had to give you a simple answer I would say it is better to spread out your links to other pages for two reasons.

You wont be able to rank for too many keywords just on the first page, you need specific pages to attract more competitive keywords.

Also when you get a link to ANY page on your website, you automatically gain more domain authority so you don't lose anything from spreading them out.

I hope I made my point clear.

Good luck

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Domain Authority, if you are talking about Moz's metric, is not a ranking factor, so your second point is a bit off.

As for your first point, if you built a well-structured website and understand how to properly use silos to funnel linkjuice and relevance to other pages on your site, you can rank just fine by building links to the home page. In fact, if you understand how to maximize your internal linking, I could make the argument that you have a better chance of ranking more webpages on your site by focusing on building links to your home page.

That is not to say that there is anything wrong with spreading links out to relevant pages when it makes sense to do so, I'm just pointing out that you can do really well for yourself focusing your link building on your home page or a silo landing page for that matter.

 

[zizuflorin]

From my experience is good to create to each page/post. And to many backlinks in a short period is not good.

 

[Hawker]

Hawker

To many? Or too many?

Sorry, that word misspelt is one of my pet hates lol

Along with the incorrectly used "it's theres" instead of "it's theirs".

And also while we're on "it". Its and it's. As in, "it is theres". Or "it is over their". :bash:

Instead of the correct "It's theirs" or "It is over there" or "It's over there".

But never "Its over their". When you say that you're basically calling a person an it.

I never like to be referred to as an it. But rather as an person or by name.

Sorry but you got me started! LOL Get a spell/grammar checker addon!

And also, I agree, there was a post recently that caused some controversy on this very subject about how many links is too many (yes too many not to many) and whether or not it really is a bad move to build too many links to (yes to not too) your homepage because it can end up getting your site penalized and sandboxed for trying to manipulate the SERP's.

Obviously of course, it's happened to many webmasters in the past. More those that were cocky and naive and thought they could get away with it. While some did/have/do, some got/get the penalty. That's why there are so so many "churn and burn" sites out there that make up a large percentage of the Internet today. If it don't work and gets burned, move on and try another you know.

But the question given was what of new sites that go viral and pick up a lot of backlinks all at once overnight. Google doesn't always punish these sites. So why should building too many links to the homepage yourself get your site punished with a sandbox penalty? And does the sandbox penalty really exist or is it just a culmination of various algorithms?

While there are mixed answers given to these questions. And Google doesn't deny it doesn't exist (which makes sense as they want to scare of spammers and black hats). It certainly can happen (sandbox penalty) (de-indexed). However, Google is better at detecting what is real virility and what is black hat. Even though your black hats are getting better at hiding their tracks these days, Google is much more clued up about what is real virility and what is black hat links now when it comes to your link profile and velocity.

 

[ev3v4hn]

for me, i am just target for homepage, 90%
10% to inner page

 

[brainsdigital]

yes ranking with your home page and link building will effect on the categories ... etc
but of course your category and other pages if you build specific links for these pages + home
*note* your home must have a good structure

 

[AgentProv]

It depends on how you have your site set up. With mine, I build links to specific pages through blog commenting, forums and what not.