Inherited GREAT SITE...but LINK problems

[alphacooler]

I recently inherited a HUGE PR 6 site that gets a good stream of traffic. The previous owner knew absolutely nothing about SEO or when she was getting rooked on link exchanges.

Anyways, she has 60-80 outbound links, many of which are to government and .edu sites that don't need my PR. I would love some suggestions (or links to how-to's) on how to prevent these links from passing PR. I've heard using css styled text to look like a link and an 'onclick' event works well. Can anyone give me a full example of this? I have absolutely no idea how to do it. Thanks so much, everyone in this forum has been amazing!

K

[Frequent]

Frankly if it's a PR6 with good traffic I would not mess with it. "Don't try to fix what ain't broke."

Freq---

[Cartman]

Can't you use the new rel=nofollow tag to accomplish this?

[ypsites]

I couldn't agree more with Frequent. I've gotten burned by messing with things that weren't broken. Plus, since they're non-profits and such, why not just keep the links intact for the good karma?

[martinibuster]

Don't fix what isn't broken. Those links may be part of what makes the site useful to others, and it may be putting you in a good neighborhood and getting you ranked better.

[alphacooler]

Ok, I see your point(many of these .edu sites are indeed beneficial..though some are not). But out of the nearly 80 links on this page, there are MANY (non govt and edu sites) that are supposed to be link exchanges, but the other sites have long since removed any link to my site. However, I would still like my visitors to check out these other sites, but I definitely will not be rewarding these other sites with page rank.

Can anyone give me a snippet of how this css 'onclick' link works? Or perhaps a link to another article...I couldn't find anything. Thanks so much for the advice so far!

[alphacooler]

Anyone?

[rj87uk]

Hi alphacooler,

Again I would just leave them for the time being - as long as you think they help your readers then leave them. Outbound links help search engines tell what your website is about.

I dont see why you want to keep page rank, Its a tell tale sign that your website is SEOd - giving it more chance of being devalued - I would like to hear peoples thoughts on this matter.

[buckworks]

If the links are relevant and make good sense to your human visitors, keep them. As rj87uk says, good links help the engines discern your topic.

The algo looks at so many factors that It's not worth playing games with outgoing links to try to hoard PR. What you gain in one way you could easily lose in another. If you want to keep a bit more of your PR circulating within your site, a better way to do it would be to add a few more links to your own internal navigation system.

[chadmg]

He's really just looking for a solution guys. I'm sure he's considered your advice.

The code you're looking for:
<style type="text/css">
span.link { text-decoration: underline; color: blue; }
</style>
<span class="link" onclick="document.location='http://www.example.com/'">Link Text</span>

[rj87uk]

That might be true but alphacooler must know this could affect how he ranks.