When Can I Expect Backlinks To Show Up For My Articles?

I recently received this question from someone who had just started article marketing his brand new sites:

“If I know that a link exists to one of my sites via an article which has been published or indeed from another website, how come I don’t see it when I do a backlinks check? For instance, at the moment, www.mysite.com definitely has a link from www.myothersite.com and also from articles that have been published. So how come a backward link check registers no links? Just hoping to find out how this works.”

That is an excellent question–I think that’s a common point of confusion, especially for people who are marketing brand new websites.

Let me help you understand how the the backlink registering works and give you some tips on building more traffic to your site with article marketing.

Here are 2 ways you can do a backlink check:

*Use Google’s webmaster tools https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ – on the menu in that you can then go to ‘Your site on the web’ and look at ‘Links to your site’, although even this is a little limited as it only shows the  top 1000 domains linking to your site and doesn’t include all the links they/the webmaster know about. Still, it gives you an idea. Yahoo site explorer offers similar functionality, but again is only partial.

*And/or you can use Yahoo Site Explorer

Both of these link checking methods will tell you how many backlinks that Google or Yahoo has registered.

Now that is *not* telling you how many backlinks you actually have–it’s telling you how many links are registered at Google/Yahoo.

Search engines typically take 3-4 plus months to register backlinks for a site, and it can be longer if the site is brand new.

This is just the way that search engines work–they do not reevaluate links on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis–usually it is more like every 3 or 4 months.

I remember when we were first starting our blog, Creative Article Marketing, it was only in the 5th month that the links started turning up in a backlink check. We had been building links for all that time, but it just took 5 months for the backlinks to be registered by Google. Then all of the sudden in the 5th month a whole bunch of links showed up.

For a brand new site, you need to give Google a chance to…

1) index your site, and

2) register your incoming links.

That can take anywhere from 3-5 months.

As the site gets more established, the backlinks tend to register sooner (like every 3 months or so), but especially for a new site it just takes Google a bit of time to recognize the site and count the new links.

So, stop looking at your watch, and start looking at the calendar

During that time, you should be busy–busy marketing your site and submitting articles.

I have a few resources that should really be helpful for you as you’re starting to market your site:

5 Things To Do Before You Start Article Marketing… (this is a great resource that tells you how to gauge your progress and how soon you can expect to see results–please read it)

Here’s a tutorial on how to use Yahoo Site Explorer

Here are some tips for developing healthy article submission habits.

So, just to go back over things–there are 2 reasons why you might not see backlinks for your site yet:

1) Your site is brand new. Until your site is indexed by Google, no links will show up at all in a backlink check, even if you know for certain that you have links coming in. Once your site gets more established the backlinks will register more regularly, but at the beginning it takes longer.

2) Not enough time has elapsed since you have submitted your articles. After you start article marketing, it will take 3-4 months for the backlinks to register in Google and other search engines. This does not mean that the links are not there or that they are not accumulating with each article you submit–it just means that the Google spiders have not gotten around to visiting your site and checking you links. The links will show up in a few months.

However saying that, measuring incoming links, numbers etc. is generally fairly meaningless (eg. numbers don’t give indications on quality) and a better investment of time is spent looking at traffic and conversions.

Here’s What To Do:

*Read over the resources I gave you above.

*Develop a submission schedule where you’re submitting articles for your site(s) every single month.

*If you’re very interested in keeping on top of your website’s progress, follow the instructions in the post I referred you to above 5 Things To Do Before You Start Article Marketing. You can keep track of your stats every month, but know that it will likely take anywhere from 3-5 months for the backlinks to be registered. There are still other ways to measure progress even as you’re waiting for the backlinks to show up. See that post for the other ways.

*Be patient I know it’s tempting to want to see results right away (we all want that immediate gratification!), but this is a marathon, rather than a sprint. The links created with Article Marketing have long lasting impact on a site’s ranking and traffic, but it does take months before seeing the impact of your work. Even after you see the impact of your work you should continue to submit articles to build on the momentum, as it’s just a natural part of marketing your websites and your business.

Photo Credit: Calendar Card – January Originally uploaded by Joe Lanman

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