Linking to increase rankings

[davehughes]

We are a distributor of promotional merchandise, using the services of one of our suppliers, by linking our site with their on-line catalogue. In an attempt to increase traffic and improve rankings, we wanted to set-up links to different pages in the on-line catalogue as an index on our site. So for example, if a visitor to our site was looking for pens, they would click on the ‘pens’ hyperlink, which would take them to the pens page in our suppliers on-line catalogue. The visitor would still see it as our site.



Can you tell me if this would be frowned upon by the search engines, as there would be numerous links, all pointing to my supplier’s site? If it is OK to do this, do you think it would increase our rankings?



Any comments/suggestions you may have would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks
Dave Hughes
Incentive Solutions

[jestep]

This would be classified as an affiliate site. Google is currently cracking down on sites like these, because they are made up of duplicated, unoriginal content. If you can make the actual content on the site and descriptions unique and original, there shouldn't be a problem, but if you dont use original content, there is a good chance of your site not ranking well or being banned.

[Conficio]

Hi Dave,
I think you are hurting yourself here. If your pages will mostly point into your suppliers catalog, it means he gets the benefit of your actions. Yes inbound and outbound links raise your ranking. But common wisdom says, inbound links carry higher weight.

Also the search engines do not like pages that have not much to contribute but links. If you go above a certain threshold, they are considered link-farms and might get you and/or your supplier penalized. You supplier might be very excited by this !

Your way out, is to provide pages that do contain original content. Write about the best uses for those pens (paper weight, clocks, mouse pads, ...) and how they work in promoting your customer's business. Write about it in your own words. Write about each group of articles on a separate page and in detail.

If you really want to serve your customers and reap the profits, you should consider building your own online shop. Explore how you can get your own software up and how you can get access to your suppliers catalog material (photos, descriptions, options, etc.). See if your contract does license this to you and what kind of software could handle the upload. (May be only th every same software your supplier uses, might do the trick). This sounds expensive, but it is the only way I see to really reap the benefits of your efforts in search engine optimization.

Kind regards
K<o>

[cbp]

promotional merchandise,

This is a very very very very competitive area. It will not be easy to get good rankings.

CBP

[davehughes]

This would be classified as an affiliate site. Google is currently cracking down on sites like these, because they are made up of duplicated, unoriginal content. If you can make the actual content on the site and descriptions unique and original, there shouldn't be a problem, but if you dont use original content, there is a good chance of your site not ranking well or being banned.

Thanks for your reply.
I can make the content original, but could I still be banned by using the links in my index?

[davehughes]

Hi Dave,
I think you are hurting yourself here. If your pages will mostly point into your suppliers catalog, it means he gets the benefit of your actions. Yes inbound and outbound links raise your ranking. But common wisdom says, inbound links carry higher weight.

Also the search engines do not like pages that have not much to contribute but links. If you go above a certain threshold, they are considered link-farms and might get you and/or your supplier penalized. You supplier might be very excited by this !

Your way out, is to provide pages that do contain original content. Write about the best uses for those pens (paper weight, clocks, mouse pads, ...) and how they work in promoting your customer's business. Write about it in your own words. Write about each group of articles on a separate page and in detail.

If you really want to serve your customers and reap the profits, you should consider building your own online shop. Explore how you can get your own software up and how you can get access to your suppliers catalog material (photos, descriptions, options, etc.). See if your contract does license this to you and what kind of software could handle the upload. (May be only th every same software your supplier uses, might do the trick). This sounds expensive, but it is the only way I see to really reap the benefits of your efforts in search engine optimization.

Kind regards
K<o>

Thanks for your reply.
Would my proposal not increase my rankings then?

[Conficio]

Thanks for your reply.
Would my proposal not increase my rankings then?

Minimally. The most effect would be on the site of your provider. I guess that is not worth your efforts and does not bring you revenue or profits.

links are valuable in general. Remember inbound links are more valuable than outbound links, but you get the outbound links and your provider's catalog gets the inbound links. if you have masses of outbound links you might be classified as a "link farm", which will get you and your provider penalized - bad, bad, bad!

Role your own, even if it is painful. If your provider does not allow the use of his pictures and text descriptions, look for another one - he looks only for his benefits and does not value your hard work (unless he gives you an above the industry-standard margin and you are in the marketing business ;-)

K<o>

[jestep]

Yes inbound and outbound links raise your ranking

Actually outbound links drain the individual pages page rank, while they can help if they are linking to internal pages, they will bost that pages rank, but the wont boost the page the link is coming from.

There's really no way of telling if you will still be ok in google, but by providing unique content, you will probably be ok.

Lots of incoming links will also help google think that your site is useful and will also increase your possition in the serps.

[petec2]

Hi
Whilst on topic,any one know if a directory style site like ours www.weddingpages.co.uk which has quite a few inbound links, but by it's very nature has more specific business listings and descriptions with links to their sites be penalised for having more out bound links than in?
Or classed as a link farm?

Peter

[jestep]

I looked at the site. I wouldn't think it would be classified as a link farm. Your site provides usefull content which right away sets it apart from a link farm. Google has already give most of your pages a good Page Rank. More outbound links shouldn't be a problem. There are plenty of directories with more outbound links than inbound, like DMOZ. If your really woried you can always use javascript to creat links that cant be spidered, granted that the people whom you link to, would lose the link from your site as far as search engines are concerned. Unless the outbound likes are extreme it shouldn't be a problem. Just keep working on inbound links and try to keep the number of links per page to within reason. Google reccomends less than 100, but that really is a lot of links, so I would try to keep it to about 1/2 that for asthetic purposes.