Over-doing text links

Over-doing text links on particular terms

[rbftpnetworks]

I need some help from the Google experts out there.

Text links have become very important in a sites keyword ranking, however I have recently had keywords drop down the rankings since I have gained some text links.

For example, we used to rank #1 for blue widgets, and green widgets - I then gained incoming links from the site superwidgets.com (see the text link at the bottom) with the keyword "blue widgets" and on freewidgets.com for "green widgets".

These links include a link at the footer of every page of the site in question. Since I have obtained these links, my ranking on these keywords have actually gone down.

Perhaps im over-doing it? How could I make these links effective, should I have the keywords removed and changed to my Website Name? Or perhaps a keywordless text link, just the URL of my site for example?

Any ideas/suggestions guys?

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:45 pm (utc) on Nov. 26, 2004]
[edit reason] widgetized [/edit]

[millie]

If you're sure it's these links that have brought about your ranking problem I would first check that the sites that are linking to you are 'clean' ie: not using any SE spam techniques. If you're happy that they are quality sites I would change your arrangement with them so your link only shows on one of their pages - ideally the main page. But keep the keywords in the anchor text.

A sprinkling of links from one site is OK but links on all pages can throw up a warning flag that makes Google wary of your site.

You're better off getting one link on 20 different sites than 20 links on one site - they'll count for more in your quest for link popularity.

Always aim for quality in the resources that link to your site.

[jamie]

it could also be because google is downgrading the importance of inbound links which were previously deemed more important.

this would then have nothing to do with your new links, rather, that all of your inbound links, both old and new, are now less important.

it sounds like a natural move to combat the text link boom.

just speculation of course.

[rbftpnetworks]

Thanks for the replys. I actually provided keyword examples in my original post, but they where turned into widgets :-/

It's as though google has recently updated it's algorithm in the past week or so, because I had one of the sites linking in before the drop in ranking and was ranked #1 for that keyword - now i'm on the 4th page.

My backward link count is 7,690 - but the actual displayed links are much less now too.

Jamie mentioned the backward links importance update - is this a recent update?

[walkman]

"It's as though google has recently updated it's algorithm in the past week or so, because I had one of the sites linking in before the drop in ranking and was ranked #1 for that keyword - now i'm on the 4th page. "

welcome to the group. It is the sitewides IMO. Do you get freshbot daily?

Can you remove the links to see if you rebound?

[rbftpnetworks]

"welcome to the group..." - Thanks :-)

Can you expand on "sitewides IMO"? Yepp, we get the googlebot daily, with daily site updates in the google cache - our news article pages (new pages twice daily) are also indexed very regularly.

I could have the links removed, but one of the links in question has been active for a while (over 2 months) and it's only recently the keywords have dropped.

[steveb]

Sitewide links are doing extremely well this current update, so your problem certainly isn't that, unless of course the sites you get them from are problematic (penalized, known PR link sellers, whatever).

[rbftpnetworks]

The sites we get out links from are not problematic, link sellers or SEO cheaters they are trusted news portals - they both actually feed google news. We are awaiting a reply from our application to google news also.

Perhaps I could show you guys one of the pages that has recently dropped down and you can shed some light? Perhaps im doing something wrong on the page itself. Would it be wrong to post the URL? (I'm new here :-)

##EDIT##
I've actually just checked one of the terms we dropped down to page 4 on, it appears we are now back on the first page - but still not ranking #1 as we used to.