What is the best Linking Strategy for Directories

[mturner]

Hi All...

I have a well placed PR6 directory with about 200,000 pages of unique content, with about 1000 updates a day. Up until now we have only linked to companies that have linked back to us, and if their site was bad, we would rel nofollow our link to them to ensure that we were not seen to be linking to crappy websites.

Everything I am reading suggests that Google seems to of devalued reciprocal links, and even worse is penalising sites which get involved in this practice. We have something like 10,000 reciprocal links, even though their links all deep link to different pages on our site. My question is what do you think the effect of turning all our links into non followable redirect links would be.

I am concerned that we are being penalised by Google for having all these reciprocal links. All the sites that link to us do so from their homepage.

However if we do the re-direct thing, and stop Google from following our links out then I am then concerned that Google would see it as unnatural that we didn't have any outbound links.

Any suggestions very much appreciated.

[wheel]

I won't address the rest of your topics, but not having any outbound links isn't unnatural in itself. I have plenty of sites that rank very well that don't link out to anyone.

[wheel]

Actually, I will address your other points. I've no idea if Google penalizes your structure, or if so, what would trigger that. However, your linking scheme looks pretty unnatural in a variety of ways.

My recommendation is to forget about trying to find a technical solution. Google's going to be one step ahead of you all the time. Instead (and yes, I know this is vague advice) figure out how to build some links that are all of one way to you, from quality sites, and relevant to your industry. That's how I'd tackle the problem.

[mturner]

Thanks Wheel.

I agree with you going forward. Stop generating reciprocal links. What the question is though is what do we do about what we have now.

Do you think we should effectively stop Google from following our links out to all these
other sites (Over 10,000) by doing redirects or rel=nofollow rather than linking to them directly.

Cheers

[Shaddows]

until now we have only linked to companies that have linked back to us

Did they link to you on the basis you would link back? If the link was freely given to you, nofollow should be fine- if indeed you want/need to keep the link at all. In fact, you would be better to remove links that add no value to your user, but keep the ones that they would find interesting and/or relevant.

If you were doing link exchange, they might be upset that you suddenly nofollow their links, and will likely remove the link to you (or at least nofollow it) as and when they notice.

[Shaddows]

Also, I'd make sure your site is otherwise squeeky-clean, as a dramatic change in your link profile might (emphasise MIGHT) cause a review of some sort

[mturner]

As a directory, all the links add value to the user, as it helps the user get to a source of further information about the company they are looking for.

So its not like some of the links are not relevant. Also we regulary trawl all our out-going links for dead sites and remove these. We have also developed a scanning system which works out if we are happy to link to the site in the first place, e.g. the site contains some good content, is not dodgy, and is not under construction.

I understand what your saying about only having relevant links, but when ever we link to a site, on thats sites homepage is a link back to us, so it must be fairly obvious to Google that we have engaged in link exchange activity. Obviously this is something we are trying to address now, without killing our site.

[wheel]

I think best practices would likely be to leave current things as they are and move forward with getting high quality one way inbounds. In the absence of someone with specific knowledge of what works and what doesn't, the type of tinkering you're looking at doing looks as much or more unnatural than what you've done in the past. Seems like you'd be making things worse potentially, not better.

Leave things alone, start building your link profile from a different perspective,instead of WHAM! doing a dramatic shift all at once. Drastic changes have the possibility of looking like SEO manipulation.

[Shaddows]

To restate

SEO manipulation often looks like SEO manipulation to the company who is most effected by (and sometimes feels is at war with) SEOs.

Every now and again, I apply the 'non-SEO rule'- If I had never heard of SEO, or read anything about Google WOULD I STILL BE DOING IT.

BTW, sorry about a part of my previous post. I added the bit about keeping/deleting links and value-to-end-user just before I posted. It clearly doesnt apply to a directory.

[mturner]

Fantastic guys... Thanks for your advice..

We have seen some stuff happening in the SERPS in the last few days.
Traffic to our site is definitely down (At least 10% in the last few days), and some of our competitors have seen rises to PR7 even though our content is significantly more developed than theirs. We have loads and loads of inbound links, but have remained at PR6. Which makes me think something we are doing is defitely not favoured by G, and that must be our linking strategy.

[edited by: mturner at 5:04 pm (utc) on Oct. 29, 2008]

[pageoneresults]

I hate to rain on the parade...

What is the best Linking Strategy for Directories

Not discussing them is probably the best strategy moving forward. ;)