Could use some guidance ;-)

Correcting Excessive Linking Problems

[jbauder]

I posted an earlier message about my pages being dropped entirely from google and was given a few things to look into.

Thanks to the help, I now think the problem was caused by my excessive linking within my sites.

For example I have 5 sites with 120 pages on each site. I then added a table at the bottom saying visit additional designteks sites. I thought this would get 600 pages cross linking and boost the pr of all of them.

I'm guessing now that I overdid it, but do not know for sure what to do to correct it. Should I remove all the tables ... or can I leave a few of the pages on each site crosslinked (homepages, linkspages etc)???

Also any idea how long it is going to take to get the listings back, and are they going to be penalized (ie rank lower) than before they were removed ???

Man I blew this one ... I had great rankings that I thought I could get higher ...

dummy in chicago

[mack]

This level of cross linking may cause you problems. what you could do is create a link circle.
site "a" links to site "b", site "b" links to site "c", site "c" links to site "d" and dite "d" links back to site "a".

That way you are sharing your PR across your network of sites without cross linking.

More importaintly though concentrate on getting good quality inbound links from external (related) sources especialy the ODP and Yahoo! if posible.

Hope this helps a bit :)

[wasmith]

The hub method seems to have not been harmed thoughout the last six months ... no bets on the future.

The hub method is linking all sites to a common site. This common site links to all of your network sites. The same method has been used by major content providers without appairent consideration of PR (as defined by google, getting a link from a high trafficed page to increase traffic was not discovered by google ... or if it was it was only discovered as a way to rate sites).

Another method that should stay well below the radar is to have a giver site and a taker site. The giver site links to the taker site ... the taker does not link back.

[jaytierney]

I definitely agree that a giver site is a valuable commodity. I have one of these I don't care much about and it works wonders for getting a new site off the ground...

[egomaniac]

The hub method of linking between sites is a good one. It can be used to pass a significant amount of PR without coming off as excessively cross-linking.

The best way to do any cross-linking is to link only when pages/sites are topically related. The hub-method supports this well, and as pointed out, you see many major sites doing this. A few unrelated links here and there are OK, as can be having a links page within the site. Linking everything to everything is the problem as you discovered jbauder.

[jbauder]

Thanks for the responses !

I like the concepts of both the "hub" and the "giver" methods that were given. I think where I will end up is a combination of those two models.

Any idea's how long it is going to take to get the listings back ??? Also once I get the pages updated ... should I just wait for the googlebot to return or should I be trying to resubmit ??

thanks again, this is a great site, I wish I would have found it BEFORE I screwed up my rankings ;-)

[zeus]

Have your page ready before 21 july, because googlebot sometimes starts that early to spider web sites and then your page will maybe show up late August or if you are lucky you will see it with this update in late july.

I would submit my main page again to google, just to be sure.

zeus

[jbauder]

thanks zeus ... (Page Ready) I wish it was that simple i put that friggin table on about 700 pages. but I'm busy changing as we speak.

One other question if you have some thoughts, my sites are setup in a single product (limos) with many locations (cities) type of structure. Alot of these pages are VERY similar except the different CITY Name scattered throught the page.

Is this going to give the appearance of "spamming" ? and if so any thoughts on "how much" different the pages have to be to avoid this.

I continue to be amazed at the more I seem to learn the more I realize how much I don't know.

:-)

[zeus]

I am not sure if it will be cald spam, I have the same thing on my pages there is only the title and different names that differ from the others on some of my pages, so Im not sure of that one.

zeus