Backlinks not moving the needle?

[AhFreshMeat]

Ive built about 50+ links from high authority sites that are relevant with all the principles or proper anchor text distribution, etc. (DR80+, all well known companies/brands/sites)

However, my sites not jumping in rankings from where it currently was. What gives? These links are aged about 1- 3 months each on avg so far.

I’n curious if im just wasting my time here? Do I just continue to build more links? Im doing well grabbing them from really strong, non spammy, relevant sites on relevant pages, all appearing very natural and are of course do follow.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Here's some questions I'd ask you related to all the times I've seen this:

• How old is your site?
• Has it been indexed about the same length of time?
• Are the links aiming largely at homepage or to inner too?
• Are the links aiming at posts that had been indexed for a decent amount of time?
• How many referring domains did you have before these new 50+?
• What was your DR or DA score or whatever metric you prefer?
• How much content is on the site and how much is indexed?
• How tightly related to itself is all of the content? (topical authority)
• How competitive are the keywords you're going after, volume and KD wise?
• These links may be dofollow, but are they profile links? Google may be ignoring them as user-generated.

I think those answers could offer enough insight to get an idea of what's going on.

 

[AhFreshMeat]

Here's some questions I'd ask you related to all the times I've seen this:

• How old is your site?
• Has it been indexed about the same length of time?
• Are the links aiming largely at homepage or to inner too?
• Are the links aiming at posts that had been indexed for a decent amount of time?
• How many referring domains did you have before these new 50+?
• What was your DR or DA score or whatever metric you prefer?
• How much content is on the site and how much is indexed?
• How tightly related to itself is all of the content? (topical authority)
• How competitive are the keywords you're going after, volume and KD wise?
• These links may be dofollow, but are they profile links? Google may be ignoring them as user-generated.

I think those answers could offer enough insight to get an idea of what's going on.

thanks for the reply, heres the answers:

• Almost 2 year old, its been indexed for about that time
• 60% of Links are aimed at homepage, 40% are aimed at inner pages which 60% of inbound inner pages with links to them are new pages
• I had a good amount of random links from blogspot pointing to this doman before the link building (all disavowed)
• I was dr 7, now im dr 40 after link building
• 170 posts and all but one blog post google decided not to index.
• Content is fairly tight, my site isnt about boats, but to give some perspective lets say it was about boats - if i was asked if my site is about boats… id answer: no it covers any human made object on water (ex. Rafts, jet ski’s, water racing, etc) and many of my links point to a mix of all of those pages and many point to pages that cover the topic of water based vehicles in general.
• ^TLDR: loosely tight/moderately broad
• Id say anywhere from 20-55kd for keyword competitiveness. Probably 100 sv - 2000 sv on ahrefs
• These are in/content links from dr 80-91 sites. Usually at the top of the article - i did everything textbook, perhaps i need more time and more topic specific links?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Id say anywhere from 20-55kd for keyword competitiveness. Probably 100 sv - 2000 sv on ahrefs

Everything else seems kosher to me. If I had to blame something from your answers (and we don't, you know) I'd wager this was the biggest part of the problem.

KD20 isn't too bad but KD55 is pretty rough competition. I would expect you to start seeing some improvements in traffic from various long-tail keywords picking up, but Google's results aren't very diverse across related keywords any more. They all tend to show the same results slightly shuffled.

I'd try hitting some KD5 to KD15 in the same volume range and see how quickly they rank. You have the backlink profile to take those down. Might as well get in where you fit in instead of not making ground in other places. I always recommend interlinking to these new articles from older ones if you have relevant spots to do it, with exact match keywords.

 

[AhFreshMeat]

Everything else seems kosher to me. If I had to blame something from your answers (and we don't, you know) I'd wager this was the biggest part of the problem.

KD20 isn't too bad but KD55 is pretty rough competition. I would expect you to start seeing some improvements in traffic from various long-tail keywords picking up, but Google's results aren't very diverse across related keywords any more. They all tend to show the same results slightly shuffled.

I'd try hitting some KD5 to KD15 in the same volume range and see how quickly they rank. You have the backlink profile to take those down. Might as well get in where you fit in instead of not making ground in other places. I always recommend interlinking to these new articles from older ones if you have relevant spots to do it, with exact match keywords.

thats a good point. My link building canpaign is mostly targeting my low KD keywords at positions 9-20 and trying to get them higher. However they don’t really budge much, perhaps i’ll just keep going and going, i have no other option. I’ll build 2x more links than I have now and if nothing happens then oh well! I’ll shoot for where I fit in I suppose!

 

[Ryuzaki]

thats a good point. My link building canpaign is mostly targeting my low KD keywords at positions 9-20 and trying to get them higher. However they don’t really budge much, perhaps i’ll just keep going and going, i have no other option. I’ll build 2x more links than I have now and if nothing happens then oh well! I’ll shoot for where I fit in I suppose!

A lot of times these days you'll see no movement, but 6 months later some core update will happen and your traffic will explode. It's like you built the links in a window of time where Google was gathering data, then you had to wait on them to crunch the data, then they roll it out into the live Penguin side-algo. You could see an explosion later.

You are getting some traffic though? Like there's nothing to make you think the domain was penalized or anything in the past, perhaps even before you got your hands on it?

 

[bernard]

I've noticed sometimes a link building campaign will not move the pages it is aimed at, but you can see the effect of secondary keywords.

I spent $5k on links recently, which was a mistake, these particular links imo.

Never really budged much on the pages I targeted "best x for y" types, but the broad phrase jumped up.

There are factors at play I suppose in the top 10 as well.

 

[harrytwatter]

Over the last 5 years my ability to correlate a new backlink to a specific rank movement has become so obfuscated I've pretty much stopped trying.

Instead of worrying about measuring I try to spend more time making sure the links I do buy are of the very best "quality" (topically-related pages, safe anchors, careful selection of destination pages etc). The idea being the more confident I am in the quality of what I'm buying the less I have to worry about the risk or lack of impact.

Does this mean I waste some money? Probably. But for me the only alternative would be going mad because movements vary so widely, from destination URL to topic cluster movement (I interlink the fuck out of my content) to the amount of movement (three steps forward one step back G dance shit), it becomes almost impossible to gleam causation enough to warrant a change in strategy.

Now if you're spending Bernard type money or run your own program where you're blasting inner pages maybe impact measurement becomes easier, I can't speak to that, but I am pretty confident Google intentionally delays link impact for the sole purpose of dissuading folks from investing too much in it (hard to justify investing in something in which ROI is so hard to measure in realistic finite amounts of time).

 

[AhFreshMeat]

A lot of times these days you'll see no movement, but 6 months later some core update will happen and your traffic will explode. It's like you built the links in a window of time where Google was gathering data, then you had to wait on them to crunch the data, then they roll it out into the live Penguin side-algo. You could see an explosion later.

You are getting some traffic though? Like there's nothing to make you think the domain was penalized or anything in the past, perhaps even before you got your hands on it?

Yes not penalized in any way - the site makes about $15k/month avg in q4 with 170 posts. It ranks, but many of my posts rank for position 8-20… they just dont move with links, in fact some lost positions after getting a link from a dr 90, In content relevant big name branded website with a partial match keyword, lol. My guess is im impatient, and it will explode like you said after an update (this was my intuition as well but wasnt sure as this is my first site and first time building links

Over the last 5 years my ability to correlate a new backlink to a specific rank movement has become so obfuscated I've pretty much stopped trying.

Instead of worrying about measuring I try to spend more time making sure the links I do buy are of the very best "quality" (topically-related pages, safe anchors, careful selection of destination pages etc). The idea being the more confident I am in the quality of what I'm buying the less I have to worry about the risk or lack of impact.

Does this mean I waste some money? Probably. But for me the only alternative would be going mad because movements vary so widely, from destination URL to topic cluster movement (I interlink the fuck out of my content) to the amount of movement (three steps forward one step back G dance shit), it becomes almost impossible to gleam causation enough to warrant a change in strategy.

Now if you're spending Bernard type money or run your own program where you're blasting inner pages maybe impact measurement becomes easier, I can't speak to that, but I am pretty confident Google intentionally delays link impact for the sole purpose of dissuading folks from investing too much in it (hard to justify investing in something in which ROI is so hard to measure in realistic finite amounts of time).

Yes all links were built organically either through link bait type articles or guest outreach. It would make sense that google would do a google dance with intentional delays though.

 

[bernard]

In any case, I think mostly organic backlinks are almost always worth it, but if spending, I would argue that buying links is pretty difficult these days and that if anyone actually has a serious edge in that, they also have a huge edge in general.

Personally, I would prefer something like link insertions linking to a resource page that links to my money page.