Should I be Scared of a Penalty?

Hey everyone,

I own an e-commerce store with many different categories.
I'm aggressively buying PBN links to my money site, I'm also using an indexer for the backlinks and also blast stuff like web 2.0's, PR's, profile links, niche blog comments, etc. I'm also sending a good amount of social signals to each category page.

I'm sort of new though, so the idea always had me scared; do you think it's likely to get penalized by Google because of PBN links?

Sticking to white-hat only is not only very costly, but also very slow and inconvenient. I'm an e-commerce website so in terms of getting a white-hat link through outreach, I highly doubt that they would link to my collection pages. Maybe HQ blog posts sure, but definitely not to categories.

What would you guys suggest me to do in this case? I can't change the domain if I get penalized as it's a 4-letter domain, it's about 20 years old.

Any input is highly appreciated. Thank you.

halikilim said:

I'm aggressively buying PBN links to my money site, I'm also using an indexer for the backlinks and also blast stuff like web 2.0's, PR's, profile links, niche blog comments, etc.

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Yes, you should be scared of a penalty from Google. Isn't it obvious since you're buying backlinks aggressively.

It is always recommended you take it slowly when acquiring backlinks.

halikilim said:

What would you guys suggest me to do in this case? I can't change the domain if I get penalized as it's a 4-letter domain, it's about 20 years old.

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ouch! I wouldn't want to lose that domain if I were you. Slow down a little... with the link building I mean....

Before you started massively spamming your site with links how many RDs did your domain acquire over the years? To keep it safe you want to stay within that average to avoid sudden spikes or obvious patterns and increase the average number slowly and gradually. Also, many people don't say it (and it's probably not important, I don't actually know this), but I never build links to pages that are not indexed.

Also, be mindful of the anchors. Do not use more than 5-6% of your keywords as anchor texts, and even 6% might be too much (I usually keep them at 2-3%)

As for the diverse backlinks, yeah diversity is good, but again, not so many links at once when your domain does not have a history of acquiring links in large batches. This is the part that worries me the most, not the shitty links themselves which pretty much everyone gets nowadays but google ignores those for the most part....

Also, if possible, do not point auto-approve blog comments directly to your money site. That's useless and it might actually hurt you if you're not a huge brand (which I assume you aren't)

Other than these, I don't know what to say. I just hope that google will never catch you

tazarbm said:

ouch! I wouldn't want to lose that domain if I were you. Slow down a little... with the link building I mean....

Before you started massively spamming your site with links how many RDs did your domain acquire over the years? To keep it safe you want to stay within that average to avoid sudden spikes or obvious patterns and increase the average number slowly and gradually. Also, many people don't say it (and it's probably not important, I don't actually know this), but I never build links to pages that are not indexed.

Also, be mindful of the anchors. Do not use more than 5-6% of your keywords as anchor texts, and even 6% might be too much (I usually keep them at 2-3%)

As for the diverse backlinks, yeah diversity is good, but again, not so many links at once when your domain does not have a history of acquiring links in large batches. This is the part that worries me the most, not the shitty links themselves which pretty much everyone gets nowadays but google ignores those for the most part....

Also, if possible, do not point auto-approve blog comments directly to your money site. That's useless and it might actually hurt you if you're not a huge brand (which I assume you aren't)

Other than these, I don't know what to say. I just hope that google will never catch you

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Thank you for your reply. I'm not even sure what massively spamming my website means

I bought a DR increase service thinking that it would provide benefit, it has some redirects that I think look pretty sketchy in my link profile when I open up Ahrefs.
I also bought some PBN links from sellers here, but my anchors are probably not 6%. But I'm ranking on page 2 for most of the keywords I'm targeting and every day I'm gaining new keywords. Organic traffic also increased. I've been building web 2.0's, PRs, some minor PBNs, and did some expensive guest posts in the first few months; so the website is sort of warmed up. By blasting I mean I did about 250 links this month, I'm thinking of doing another 200 next month. Also did a bunch of niche edits along with the PBNs.

It's just that when I open Ahrefs, the sites have like 80 DR but 0 keywords and 0 traffic. This looks pretty sketchy to me, obviously, it's not a real website. But I guess that's what all PBNs look like. I'm progressing well and very fast in my opinion.

I have two major keywords, I'm ranking #8 for one of them, and #13 for the other. Both have 7k monthly traffic.

Am I doing it right?

halikilim said:

Thank you for your reply. I'm not even sure what massively spamming my website means

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massive spamming means pointing 1000s of garbage links directly at your site, such as comments, profiles, redirects, etc... That's what I meant by "massively spamming" but maybe I exaggerated a little, I oftentimes do

Still, I don't like the sound of "redirects". Redirects are not good, maybe the backlink seller giving you these redirects knows something that I don't know, but I don't trust it. As a matter of fact, if you've purchased DR increasing services then this is bad in itself and I would tell the guy that's tasked with this to stop doing it. Even if those redirects do the job well for a few months I'm sure that they'll be exposed in a future google update. Just protect your 20 y/o domain, man! It's much more valuable with fewer, but better links then with 1000s of shitty ones that will get exposed down the road....

halikilim said:

It's just that when I open Ahrefs, the sites have like 80 DR but 0 keywords and 0 traffic. This looks pretty sketchy to me, obviously, it's not a real website

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yeah, it's sketchy...

halikilim said:

But I guess that's what all PBNs look like

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um, not really! Good PBNs do get at least a few 100s visitors a month, otherwise they look like dead websites and google have stopped ranking dead sites long ago. But anyway, if you know for a fact that the PBNs are good don't listen to me as Ahrefs might have simply failed to update their database with those sites' stats...

halikilim said:

Am I doing it right?

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except for redirects and the comments blasting then yeah, your links are a good mix of power and diversity. Just make sure you don't get big spikes of them in a short period of time

Google is very smart and will spot spammy inbound links. YOu should be notified of any manual panalties via Google console but there also algo "panalties" which hurt your site and rankings whihc you are not told about.

You can appeal against manual penalties after cleaning up your site but it is best to avoid the situation in the first place if you have a n old valuable domain.

I would only use spammy links on tier 2 and tier 3 sites and not your moeny site

Thank you for starting this thread.

Your post lays out the classic dilemma every online entrepreneur faces when it comes to search engines.

They are forced to choose between the fast but potentially dangerous and the slow but safer route.

A white hat approach that focuses on consumer-centered content can take a while.

Depending on the niche you're in, you're looking at possibly waiting anywhere from six months to even a couple of years.

No wonder a lot of people try to cut corners and try black hat techniques.

But "black hat" SEO is a broad term.

As far as Google is concerned, if you are actively trying to influence your rankings through links or factors outside your website in your content, you are engaged in black hat SEO.

But in practical terms, there is "aggressive black hat" involving doorway pages and "cloaking" as well as injected links.

You're definitely pushing the envelope with that end of black hat SEO practices.

For the rest of the options out there, it's really a spectrum.

You can buy links from aggressive PBNs who sell to basically anybody with extra dollars.

Or, you can take a more laser-focused approach and pick PBNs that look natural.

The people running them are more cautious and go out of their way to project a "natural" backlink footprint to Google.

So just like with any kind of risky strategy, there are different levels of risks within that strategy.

So pick whatever you're most comfortable with and understand that the riskier the approach, the faster results, but also the higher the likelihood Google will find out eventually and penalize you accordingly.

Building backlinks aggressively? Try to slow down a bit and make sure it looks natural to avoid risks.

Yes, too many unnatural links pointing to your website could get you penalized. make sure to use quality links which has high metrics and get links from category based pages and content has to be unique. If you suspect something is wrong get your back link profile and check for low quality links pointing and disavow them.

You shouldn't buy PBN links for money sites. You can go with Outreached guest posts and Niche edits for money site. Also you can buy some PBN links if its niche related and handwritten posts. I suggest combination of guest posts with some PBN is fine. But only PBN links is not a good choice if you don't want to kill your domain!

It will affect your site for sure. Don't send cheap PBN links, profile links, blog comments directly to the money site. You can use them as to tier 2 to boost your tier 1 links.

halikilim said:

I have two major keywords, I'm ranking #8 for one of them, and #13 for the other. Both have 7k monthly traffic.

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It's great that your main keywords were in first and second pages. But don't over do with those keywords. Diversify the anchors with more long tail keywords. You can also add more guest posts, niche edits, & more high quality PBNs. Drip feed the links to look more natural.

Having so many links pointing to the same domain is unnatural and has a greater chance of being penalized. Slow down the process, drip-feed the links, and diversify the anchors as well. Build high-quality PBN links to all the inner pages, rather than only pointing to one. Make sure the content is of high quality and unique.

Yes penalty can be bad , sometimes does not recover that easily!

Penalty is just around the corner. I bet it will get penalized as soon as it starts ranking. That is what I had experienced with this approach.