Is there such a thing as building too many links?

Today's question comes from Mark Schneider in Denver, Colorado.

Mark wants to know, Matt, is there such thing as building too 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.

Wools, thanks, 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 of examples.

Think about sites like Twitter, Facebook, dig 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 Dig 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 paid rank 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 want to 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 interests 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 kept it.

It's just the fact that as long as people will 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 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.