Hosting a Directory Area & Recent Google Changes

[Apparelyzed]

Hi all,

I have noticed quite a bit of flux in my rankings lately for keywords which have been stable in SERRP's for a good 7 years, this seems to co-incide with the recent Google changes.

One question I would like to ask is: Would my site be penalised for hosting a small niche reciprocal link directory?

if I am being penalised, should I just remove the directory, or add it to my no index in my robots txt file and remove the pages from Google's index in Webmaster Tools?

Thanks

Simon.

[Planet13]

"Would my site be penalised for hosting a small niche reciprocal link directory?"

Yeah, I would say you have a pretty much 100% chance of incurring a penalty either now or in the very near future for having a reciprocal link directory.

I would remove the directory from your site altogether.

The problem will be that you will still have a lot of incoming links from a lot of lazy webmasters pointing TO your site, which will need to be removed / disavowed.

~~~~

Why not just noindex / robots.txt it out?

It might not satisfy google, and it is highly unlikely that reciprocal directory actually provides any value to your users.

[Apparelyzed]

Thanks,

I've been thinking of removing the Directory for a while, so I guess now would be a good time to do it.

The links I have incoming are from sites related to my own, so shouldn't those links be ok? Without incoming links, surely this will reduce my SERP's?

Thanks

Simon

[Planet13]

"The links I have incoming are from sites related to my own, so shouldn't those links be ok?"

My suspicion is that a lot of it depends on how lazy the people are who link to you?

Do they also link to a bunch of crap sites? Did they go out and build a bunch of spammy links to their own sites?

Maybe it would be better to disavow those links?

"Without incoming links, surely this will reduce my SERP's? "

Strong possibility it would reduce your position in the SERPs. Or it could be that google is ignoring those links already.

But there is a possibility that you will either get a penalty or an algorithmmic demotion (which looks and feels a lot like a penalty).

Some people complain that they got a "penguin slap" and either lost position in the SERPs site wide, or they stopped ranking completely for certain keywords.

Aside from that, I don't think anyone knows anything for sure about google.

[Apparelyzed]

Thanks,

simon

[Robert Charlton]

simon - You've got to be concerned about both inbound and outbound links. If the inbound links are coming to the home page of your site, rather than to your directory, you really can't block them. In any event, if you want to disavow your inbound links, Google is going to want to see evidence that you've made large efforts to remove them before it will consider disavow.

This video might be helpful, though parts of what Matt says have been subject to reinterpretation since the video was posted....

Disavow links
Matt Cutts - GoogleWebmasterHelp
Oct 16, 2012 - trt 9:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA [youtube.com]