run of site links. good idea or bad?

[ownerrim]

I've always believed you should avoid these, but I know a webmaster who runs a very high pagerank public service site with over 2,000 pages. The site funds it's charitable activities by two means: donations, and by offering run-of-site links to other sites. I checked the sites that get these run of site links. All have pr 6 or pr 7, and I'm thinking that a big chunk of this pagerank is the result of these run-of-site links on this 2000+ page site.

Opinions?

[labeler2003]

What is a "run of site link"? I'm sorry, I've not heard this term before. I may not be correct, but I'm relating it to how a similar term is used in print publishing, which relates to how I do most of our link exchanges.

For our link "exchanges" we prefer to get links on topic pages instead of a links page, and we offer the same in return. I've found the target traffic we get from these links is much more valuable than chasing page rank by accumulating incoming links from untargeted links pages. In other words, I like targeting customers instead of page rank.

[ownerrim]

run of site link: you get or purchase a link from someone, but these inbound links appear on all pages of the site that is linking to you.

regarding "on topic", how does google determine whether a link is on topic and relevant? Perhaps nothing more than anchor text. If that's the case, it doesn't matter if the linking page is on topic or not, as long as the link text is.

[diamondgrl]

Since nobody has jumped in, I will give an opinion based only on logic and reading other posts.

I have to think that a run-of-the-site ad - as opposed to deep linking to different URLs from each page - is a perfectly natural thing. It would be a pretty radical thing for SEs to ban that practice altogether given how natural it is to have ads appear on multiple pages on a site. For example, I have a business partner who gives a run-of-the-site link to mine and I haven't noticed negative effects (that I can tell).

On the other hand, it would seem that there is a sharply discounted value for each additional link from a particular site. After all, I guarantee you I don't get PR transfered from every page on the run-of-site.

If I were writing Google's algorithm, I would probably allow something like a maximum of 2x the maximum PR transfer from a single link if there are multiple pages on the same site.

[1milehgh80210]

I wonder how many multi-thousand page websites with site-wide links intend those links as a 'natural' vote? (like the kind Google designed its original algo around)...very
few I'll bet.
If I were an SE, I'd throw'em out. But don't worry, I'm not., lol.

[diamondgrl]

I actually think it's perfectly natural to have a site-wide link. If one company has a marketing partner or wants to advertise the fact that they are a member of the Better Business Bureau or whatever, it makes perfect sense to have a link on each page.

So I think it makes sense and I think that's why it makes more sense to impose a cap on how much PR a site can transfer.

[clearvision]

Yes, it does seem natural for run of site ads. Not all people come in through the same page...don't you put your navigation text links on each page for just this reason? :)

Personally I don't concern myself about the PR structure. One of our site ranks #1 for an extremely popular keyword and it only ranks out at a PR 6. So what does this PR have to do with search engine ranking? That is another topic :)

[ownerrim]

"It would be a pretty radical thing for SEs to ban that practice altogether given how natural it is to have ads appear on multiple pages on a site...On the other hand, it would seem that there is a sharply discounted value for each additional link from a particular site"

All sounds logical to me. I also know of a site in britain that earns it keep by selling image link ads. These appear on all pages of the site.

For google to come down on this practice would be to say to thousands of websites: "You can't sell advertising except in the way that we see fit". I think dg is right in her thinking that google gives less value for each additional link emanating from the same site.