Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
For about 6 months I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to my previous very good Google rankings. I’ve done a ton of work but nothing has brought them back. The other day I was checking back links and noticed one was < an adult > link. I did not request or reciprocate to get this link. I don’t know how I got it.
Then I thought about that funky product name and wondered if that has anything to do with it?
Question: Can a dirty swear word (listed several times on a single page – on a site with 900+ pages that are clean as a whistle) cause:
1) A drop in rankings?
2) Somehow attract <an adult > IBL?
Anyone?
[edited by: tedster at 2:59 am (utc) on April 3, 2007]
And many people do.
But it's your site; you decide the content. If you don't want adult content, then remove it, and remove all doubt.
But as it happens, I think it's a fairly unlikely cause of your problems. I'd review ALL your links; any you are unhappy with - especially non-related and reciprocal - then remove them, and your ranking will likely improve.
Can someone help me understand this correctly...
If I have OUTBOUND links, on a series of "links pages" that are non-related to the product I sell (not adult links, just off-theme to my product) I should remove them? ...Even though the reciprocal link is still incoming into my site?
And this should help with my suppressed Google rankings?
If they are part of a link exchange scam, sorry, scheme, or are reciprocal and non-related, or go to a bad site or bad neighborhood, then your site is at risk.
There are no certainties here; but the days are long gone when a link was a free ride; the word now is "quality linking", and if in doubt, losing the link is usuaully much better than keeping it.
Plus links pages / resource pages / minidirectories, especially when unrealted to your theme, need to be reviewed link by link regularly, unless you choose to use nofollow.
Are you saying if my product is “A” I should only exchange with other sites who mention “A” on their site? And if they mention “B” it might harm me?
It's the quality of the individual links that tends to do the damage.
If you trade as a response to those automated email requests, or with any weak sites, you are IMO much more likely to go wrong. If a site very obviously is totally unfussy who or what they link with, walk rapidly away.
It's hard on new sites; but you have to worry about the safety of your own. As the benefit of one link is often very small, then there's no point risking the farm on it.
I had not done a hand review of my outbound links in years. I checked them with xenu, though, from time to time. One day recently I was doing a hand review and saw that what was once a person's website about the same topic my site is about is now a spam site having nothing to do with my site's theme other than in the most vague way. So this is a practical example of what people say about cleaning up your outbound links -- when domains expire and others' pick them up, the new site might not be a good fit as an outbound link for your site. I was really surprised the person let the domain go and would not have expected to see this. It makes me leery about linking to sites that aren't .edu or .gov, simply because it requires more maintenance on my part to insure that the links are still ok.
Yes, in recent months I've experienced that same thing. Good point.
