Does linking to not yet indexed pages hurt them?

I’ve been away from seo since 2011, and since i’ve returned 3 months ago I’ve been experimenting with multiple techniqes to see what works and what doesn’t, and here’s a trend that keeps repeating itself.

If I build a page and start linking to it straight away, that page never ranks for anything. Literally ever!

But if I wait a week or two until it starts to show search terms in search console, and then start linking to it, I can be extremely aggressive with backlinks and the page responds really well.

Have you ever noticed this trend?

I really dont understand what your question is. what website are you exactly linking to? or do you mean when you link to your already existing websites? Please clarify.

Well seems like a good thing to test but I have so far not had such issues.

well no, i thought its exactly the opposite. google gets to know about your site not from GWC but from social or from somewhere, if it were to change anything, id believe it would be a boost

Julie85 said:

I really dont understand what your question is. what website are you exactly linking to? or do you mean when you link to your already existing websites? Please clarify.

Click to expand...

what he means is new money site have to wait 1-2 weeks before start linking to backlink.
and he questioned is do you experience the same thing or not.

CMMIW

would be also interested

can you start link building immediately or do you need to wait till your pages are indexed

@Poker Rakeback Mafia Here's what I was asking myself as well:If you backlink for a website that you haven't even registered yet, how can google make a difference between it, and an expired domain?

Still, a great thing what you've shared here, considering that it's true.

So are you saying that the actual "sandbox" is only that short?

I don't think that the sandbox that people refer to is anything to do with this. People who describe a sandbox generally refer to websites not being able to reach page one for a set period.

Although I've read people saying that it's niche specific, and others saying that it doesn't exist at all?

What I'm saying is that it seems that if you start linking to a page before google has even ranked it in position 36 or whatever, then google knows that you are artificially building those links, as no-one else knows that the website even exists, so no-one would be linking to it, and google then penalises that page.

But once the page ranks for anything, even in a low position, then it seems like google accepts the backlinks without a problem. I've noticed this with more than one new page.

Good observation. But how many times have you seen this happening ?

Three different websites, multiple pages.

I built one a couple of weeks ago, and linked to one internal page, building 2 links per day for a week, and that page doesn't rank for anything at all, whereas another page on the site which only has copy pasted duplicate content, is now showing on search console as ranking in various positions for multiple terms.

The same thing first happened in dec when I set up a new casino site, and only linked to the home page. The home page has still never ranked for anything, but I've noticed that whenever I build more links to the homepage, the internal pages all go up in the serps.

And it happened again. I built another internal page that I wanted to rank and started linking to that, and that has never ranked for anything either, yet links to that page also cause the other internal pages to rise in the serps, so the juice that the page is receiving is being acknowledged and passed around and benefitting the website in general. Just not the pages that are being directly linked to in those cases.

But when I've linked to other older internal pages, they respond well to the links and move in the serps.

So I can only put this trend down to premature backlinking.

Awesome, thanks for sharing