By Eric Ward
August 27, 2007

The full text including hyperlinks for this Link Week column 
can be read at SearchEngineLand.com here

When it comes to link building, how much is too much? How fast is too fast? Neither of these questions would have been asked in 1997, because their was no such thing as too fast or too much. But it isn't 1997 anymore is it? And since link development now plays a prominent role in web success and failure, these questions deserve answers.

Allow me to try.

Question:How much linking is too much linking?

Answer: I could take the easy way out and say "it depends," and I have done that for years, because it's true. But, let's dig a little deeper. First, you have to qualify what you mean by "too much linking." Too much for what? For search rank? For link popularity? For click traffic? For your health? The reason most people ask the "too much" question is fear of penalty by any or all search engines. And it is in fact true that the onlyreason to ever worry about having too many links would be because you fear a search engine may penalize you for it. There are only three reasons a site will attract thousands, or even millions of links.

First, the site is so useful to so many people that everyone naturally links to it. See this obvious example.

Second, a site is dedicated to a topic that suddenly and without expectation generates massive amounts of natural news coverage, like Hurricane Katrina did.

Third, someone is actively seeking links for a site far beyond what it would naturally be able to obtain...read the full column at SearchEngineLand

Link well my friend,

Eric Ward