Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So to Google, I assume that at best this looks like an internal link...and at worst it looks like a dead end.
Most people are scared to have too many outbound links. But if our programmer can figure out a way to simply add a tracking tag to the end of the merchant's url, it would look more like what it really is, a useful outbound link.
We are not a dead end. In a sense, we are a portal. And it would make sense to me that Google might give us a boost in its results if it sees us as a portal where visitors are successfully passing through our site and finding what they need.
Because Google can see it is an outbound link, they can properly value its anchor text.
And because Google can actually follow where these links are going, they can see that the Merchant product pages we are linking to are relevant to the product page on our shopping site.
Does this make sense?
My only concern is that we'll initially launch with only four merchant clients. So we have about 10,000 outbound links pointing to only four sites. Might we be seen as an affiliate site and get penalyzed?
Your pages are dynamically generated. We're able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler could overwhelm and crash sites that serve dynamic content, we limit the number of dynamic pages we index. In addition, our crawlers may suspect that a URL with many dynamic parameters might be the same page as another URL with different parameters. For that reason, we recommend using fewer parameters if possible. Typically, URLs with 1-2 parameters are more easily crawlable than those with many parameters. Also, you can help us find your dynamic URLs by submitting them to Google Sitemaps. To learn more, visit our FAQ at [google.com...]
So we have about 10,000 outbound links pointing to only four sites.
The outbound linking patterns of affiliate sites don't fit a 'normal' profile. This is one good reason to hide your affiliate links using a go.php (or similar) script and exclude that file using robots.txt.
Just because you don't link 'properly' to your affiliates doesn't mean you can't link to other authorities from each product page. For example, I usually link to the product description on the manufacturers site (in my niche, the manufacturers don't sell their products directly).
arran.
I don't know what to say. It sounds like your are looking for justification of "how you would like Google to view your site" rather than "how will Google view your site"
"10,000 outbound links pointing to only four sites" does not scream "we are a portal" it screams "we are an affiliate" or "sitewides"
I wouldn't get too caught up with outbounds, its only one factor and there are many that advocate they do zilch for your ranking, although I am not necessarily in agreement with that.
However, I'd say "10,000 outbound links pointing to 10,000 unique authority five star websites" would scream "quality portal"
Are you an affilite? BTW.
i am not an affiliate. i'm developing a PPC site.
"sounds like your are looking for justification of "how you would like Google to view your site"
--yes. I need to make a decision here. I don't want to appear to be an affiliate. But I also don't want to appear to be a dead end. I am neither of those things.
"However, I'd say "10,000 outbound links pointing to 10,000 unique authority five star websites" would scream "quality portal"
--That's what I'm scared of. Considering our tight niche, and a desire to only include the highest quality merchants, I don't imagine we'd ever have more than 50 merchants sites that our links would be pointing to.
