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Is there such a thing as building too many links?

Is there such a thing as building too many links? - answered by Matt Cutts

Matt's answer:

Today’s question comes from Mark Schneider, in Denver, Colorado. Mark wants to know: “Matt, Is there such thing as building to many links, if you’re following Google’s webmaster guidelines exactly? Too many where you [could] get banned, even if you’re following the rules? Thanks, Mark” Uh, Mark, I wouldn’t worry about that, really. There’s no such thing as building too many links, as long as you’re doing it in a great, organic way. So let me give you a couple examples. Think about sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, sites that people go to every day, all day long, they spend lots of time there. People link to those sites because they find cool things there, or they like the stuff that they see there. So that’s links that are editorially-based, they’re given on the basis of merit. People link to these websites because they like them, not because, you know, Digg emailed everybody and said, “Hey, I’ll trade links with you if you link back to me,” or Twitter said, “Hey, I’d like to buy some links from you, and you can pass pagerank through them, or anything like that. The real objective in making a successful website, is to make something that’s so awesome that you get the links basically for free. It’s word of mouth, where people say, “Ha! Did you see this great site? It’s called YouTube! And you can watch videos, and it’s really a lot of fun!” And they email each other around, and you get viral word of mouth, or buzz, and people link to your site naturally. That’s the sort of site that you wanna build, because if you can do that, whether it be a fantastic blog, or a funny website, or whatever, those links will come naturally, and you won’t have to work for them nearly as hard. So if those links are being attracted on their own, on the basis of the merit, or the interestingness of your website, then get as many links as you can. There’s no reason whatsoever to worry. And if you think about it, it’s not as if Google.com got some number of links and then we capped it. It’s just the fact that uh, you know, as long as people want to link to Google, we’re happy to have those links. So as long as you’re abiding by the guidelines, as long as you’re doing things, that, you know, anybody else, including your competitors, if they knew about, wouldn’t really be that worried about. I say, get as many links as you can.

by Matt Cutts - Google's Head of Search Quality Team

 

Original video: