Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
As I am trying to dissect the issues in great detail that may have caused my ranking demise, I am now looking at external links. My questions is:
What characteristics do BAD links exhibit ? Obviously, dead links fall into this category. But, how, if at all, can I distinguish an external link that may be associated with a bad link farm by Google ? I have many links that I have "exchanged" with others in my domain, but I have NEVER bought any links. How might I be able to distinguish those domains that are on Google's "link buying/selling" or "Bad link" list ?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions here.
Personally, I see links as editorial, and I treat them the same. If the editor/author doesn't think the link is suitable, it should go. If the editor thinks a link is OK, it stays.
This is tricky on large sites, but on small-medium size sites it should be a case of looking at the outbound links: if any in the list don't seem familiar or trustworthy, visit the URL and decide if it's somewhere you want to be associated with.
Obviously, dead links fall into this category.
Has this been said authoritively? I don't think I've heard that one.
site:domainname.com and see if its in the serps.
Also do a search for the domain and see if it comes up.
The bigest indication that a site is bad to link to is if it does not appear in google at all.
Otherwise use common sense. Dont fool yourserlf into thinking its ok. If you even have a question dont link to it.
Good luck
Bradley, I'm not sure if this is authoritative or not, but I assumed so, and tools like XENU can easily identify these "dead" links.
The bigest indication that a site is bad to link to is if it does not appear in google at all.
But not all sites are included in Google. I operate sites myself that opt-out of indexing in search engines - although there is no question that they are in any bad neighbourhood. At a minimum you would also need to check whether robots exclusion was in place if a site is not in Google results.
The most prominent place where Google declares link buying seems to be the toolbar display, so if it's that activity in particular that's of concern, then that's likely a good place to look.
Has this been said authoritively?
It depends on what you take as the authority, but in any case, (internal) broken links can only have bad consequences, so fixing them should always be a part of site maintenance.
In general, this is the guideline I use, and although others may not agree with all of the items below, this suits me pretty well.
1. There are only so many high quality websites. Use editor discretion to decide whether a website truly offers outstanding content for your visitors. Be vigilant in your decisions. I usually go from a position of 'no external links' when I assess this, and work my way up to 'what will be included'.
2. Check that there are not hacked links in the website, injected via a blog or other methods. You can do that by viewing the source file and looking for strange items such as iframes. As mentioned, use Xenu to locate all outbound links.
An alternative is that if you are unsure about outbounds, then nofollow them for now while you are assessing their quality. I would not recommend 'mass nofollow' all external links at one time, as to me that would throw up a few red flags.
3. My sense is that most websites will get a quality vote from me 'from content'. For most of my websites, there is no reason to link to another website from the footer, or navigation, since I really talk about the other websites I link to in content that I create. Therefore, I have no outbound links from the homepage or from the navigation. While this might not be the case for every website, I do believe this is important to consider. Since content is king, most quality links out be from topically related content and from the actual content itself. An alternative is, of course, a small resources page.
