Spring Cleaning For Links!

[mayanetwork]

We were "newbies" when building one of our sites and accepted reciprocal links from anyone who would accept.

Consequently we've linked to sites that are not related to our subject matter and/or may be questionable in terms of site quality.

We've read that these OBL can and will negatively affect our rankings. First, is this correct and should we remove any OBL that don't relate or that are questionable, or do only IBL matter?

Secondly, is there software that can check the quality of link partner sites to ensure they are not banned, spamming or performing other "black hat" techniques?

This would help us evaluate whether we should remove site or not; among other criteria. Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide.

[Duncan Pollock]

I'm not sure there is -- or even could be -- a software program you could depend on.
In any case, there's really only one variable you probably need to worry about, isn't there?. Will the link (be it a good, indifferent, or bad one) do anything for your visitor? Is it, in fact, related to the main topic of your own site and therefore provides your visitors with information that expands upon what you offer them in your own pages.
No? Then get rid of it!

Duncan

[Faglork]

I agree with Duncan. If a link does not serve your visitors, get rid of it.

faglork

[spronger]

You can quickly check to see if a site is banned using this tool: http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

I would certainly remove any links to banned sites. Even if the site isn't banned, if it's not in Google's database for whatever reason the return link isn't benefiting you.

Next, I would use a program like SEO Elite (reviewed on my site) to check that your link partners are still linking back. If not, delete those links. Next, delete any links to pharmacy, gambling, adult or any site of questionable quality. There's really no automated way of doing this. You have to check each link one by one. Are you really prepared to "endorse" this site to your visitors?

For the remaining links, it's a judgement call. Keep in mind you entered into an exchange with these webmasters in good faith. Just deleting every unrelated link won't neceassarily improve your rankings. You might want to at least organise your links into categories and limit the number of links on each page. There's nothing worse than a "Links" page with 200 totally unrelated OBLs. That's of no value to anyone.

In future it pays to be very selective about who you exchange with. Scrutinise every site and keep your resourse directory focussed and related to the theme of your site. Make it of value to your visitors.

Cheers

Steve

[bhartzer]

I would first run a dead link checker like Xenu to see if the people you're linking to still have a site up and running.

If the site you're linking to (i.e., outbound links OBL) is off-topic then I wouldn't link to them. If it's a reciprocal link and they're sending you traffic (check your web stats) then I would consider adding a nofollow tag on the link.

If you're optimizing for Google, then you'd better make sure that you're following what's suggested in the Google LocalRank (http://clsc.net/research/googles-2-rankings.htm) patent.

[IIxxVADERxxII]

I thought PR was pretty much meaningless?

I never worry about it at all. If you have a decent PR, linking to low PR sites wont hurt your PR much at all if at all. Links from higher PR sites should raise your PR noticeably. Links from BANNED or NEG. PR sites can be detrimental to a sites PR.

I always thought PR is a flawed system. The internet is too vast to think we are on some kind of google merrit system.

After all when you are talking about backlinks in this fassion, youre talking about google.

I would rather have a PR 0 with 100.000 quality targeted BL's than a pr 6,7 and up. I dont need permission from a once private company that went public and whos stock has been suffering dramatically to give me "permission" or rank my work to have a successful website. That's insane.

[bijunair]

Hi All!

I think the tool is given by 'Spronger' is not correct.

Because I read somewhere that google has banned BMW's .de domain but this tool is showing the site as an unbanned site.

[bijunair]

Hi All!

Sorry for asking a bit out of topic doubt.

Can u anyone tell me how put the anchor text in the forum with a link to our website?

[MtraX]

The BMW.de site has been unbanned by Google according to Matt Cutts (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog).

I also can't see how bad site linking to you can harm your site, since you have no control over that.

MtraX

[bijunair]

Hi MTRAX!

Can u tell me how u have put a link on 'Ringtone conversions & free ringtone downloads'.

Waiting for ur reply.

[davidof]

I thought PR was pretty much meaningless?

I never worry about it at all. If you have a decent PR, linking to low PR sites wont hurt your PR much at all if at all.

Did you read the PR patent. If you have a PR5[1] page and link to 5 internal pages each of those pages gets a PR transfer of 1/5, if you then link to an external site (assuming no feedback from that site which would be the case if its PR is really 0) then your internal pages only get a 1/6 transfer. You have spent some of your sites PR on an external site. In that case you want to be sure that the sites you are spending your PR on are worthy.

I agree with you though, we've all become slaves to Google's merit system. Still no-one in the SE world seems to have a better plan yet.

[1]ok the real figures used int the calculations are not normalized to a 1-10 scale.

[pcm535]

The theme of designing sites with visitors in mind rather than the search engines is common throughout the wpw forums. Do any of you utilize to the links /resource page of a site ? Maybe it because of my own web experience, but I am much more likely to return to google to gain access to a new site rather than to click on a resource page & click through links that way. I find it difficult to keep our visitors in mind when it comes to exchanging links. The bottom line is that we think our visitors ought to call us with their questions rather than clicking on the links on our resource page. Does anyone else struggle with designing a "user friendly" links page?