Building links is one of the necessary tasks of a webmaster.
This task can be done in much way, but not all ways work the
same way or are effective as it should be.
Wrong Way #1: Building all your links at one time then stopping
Perhaps you've heard the discussion about the so-called
"sandboxing" of new sites on Google.
What is sandboxing? Google is trying to create a fair rating
system for every website in their index. Let's imagine a website
selling shoes. A guy called "Competitor Chris" started the
website in 1998, and he's kept it updated over time with a
constant flow of new content and inbound links. His site is
ranking very well in the search engines. Now YOU decide to build
a website, selling another type of shoes which are similar to
the ones sold by Competitor Chris. You are clever, and you have
some cash to invest in your site. You buy all the latest SEO
tricks, and you hire an SEO company to build 1000 links in one
month and to optimize your site to the max. After only one month
in the business, you have double the amount of links that
Competitor Chris has, and you are beating him in the search
results.
Not for long! Google says that's not fair. Why should Competitor
Chris's site be penalized, just because you came along with a
lot of cash and built links like crazy over a short period of
time? Nobody knows if you are even serious about your business,
but Competitor Chris has proven to constantly update his site
for the last 7 years. So Google puts you in a "sandbox"; they
cut you out of the indexing process for 3, 6 or even 9 months to
find out how you develop your site over time. It's kind of like
putting cold water on a hot engine, to make it slow down and to
see if it still works after an undefined time. After the time is
over, Google sees that you had little or no development
whatsoever. No new links, no new content, no nothing, so they
rank you FAR FAR behind Competitor Chris in the search results.
You're buried in the search results, you're getting no free
traffic, and all that money you paid to the SEO company was a
waste. Build your links the right way: If you want long term
success, you need to build your links consistently over a long
period of time.
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