On-Site Directory - Delete or Keep?
-
We have 2 ecommerce sites. Both have been hit by Penguin (no warnings in WMT) and we're in the process of cleaning up backlinks.
We have link directories on both sites. They've got links that are relevant to the sites but also links that aren't relevant. And they're big directories - we're talking thousands of links to other sites.
What's the best approach here? Do we leave it alone, delete the whole thing, or manually review and keep highly relevant links but get rid of the rest?
-
Were you requiring reciprocal links for a link in your directory? If so, I'd burn the whole thing to the ground and ask for removal of links where possible. If you really think it helps users, you could add nofollow to the links instead. Without knowing more about the directory, how it was run, and your link profile, it's hard to give solid advice.
-
If you want to go through the 1000's of links you have and identify the ones that are bad, or from bad neighborhoods, make sure to spend the 50$ on a report from Link Detox (http://www.linkdetox.com/). This will help you identify things quickly and allow you to make some quick decisions on link profile management. If it's a big project, take a 1 month subscription to the software, and make sure use it fully to identify the entire problem. Don't forget to use the link disavow tool if needed (if you are looking to keep any valuable links) or try to isolate them to contact later and help fix the issue.
If you plan on getting rid of them all - just dump the entire thing and start from scratch, but it'll be a long road back with best practice work.
Hope it helps! It's worth the $$$ and investment when you run into problems like Penguin or Panda
-
Without knowing more than what you've written, I'd first ask if those directories have any back links going to them and before you'd be able to answer, I say just delete the darn things--they're not helping you. 1. If they've got back links going to them, those back links are likely to be of low quality and by deleting the directories, you negate those links 2. Even if they don't have a pile of low quality back links, it sounds like they're poorly curated, they're not doing anyone any good. 3. You've got a Google penalty on both sites, you've got a directory on both sites, you've got to clean house--just get rid of them.
If the sites in the directory are are industry specific but you can't vouch for most of them and your sites aren't about being a resource for people trying to find those industry-specific sites, just get rid the darn things.
-
if you want to pass of google should not care if relevant but.
You say.
"We have link directories on both sites. They've got links that are relevant to the sites but also links that aren't relevant. And they're big directories - we're talking thousands of links to other sites."
Big directories will hurt you unless they help the end user lose them.
I agree that we need to know more about what kind of sites they are to tell you as Moz.com has a directories like recommend seo's, but its relevant to Moz so it will not hurt and helps the end user ask your self if I went here to would this help me?
Hope this helps,
Thomas
-
Firstly I would ask what the purpose of your link directories were in the first place? How do people submit to your directories and what value do they add to your site apart from possibly having too many links on some of your sites pages? Do you have a lot of spammy sites submitted? I personally would look at cutting this facility as Penguin has hit a lot of link directories and as you say there are a lot of irrelevant sites in your directory! Are your directory pages indexed on a "site:" search in Google?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using the same image across the site?
Hi just wondering i'm using the same image across 20 pages which are optimized for SEO purposes. I was wondering is there issues with this from SEO standpoint? Will Google devalue the page because the same image is being used? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
Old sitemaps after site migration.
Hi, I was wondering if it's safe to remove all the sitemaps from the old site in search console? It's been 3 months since site migration from http://sitea.com (301 redirected) to http://siteb.com. Therefore, can I delete the old sitemap from the http://sitea.com from search console? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Why is my site not getting crawled by google?
Hi Moz Community, I have an escort directory website that is built out of ajax. We basically followed all the recommendations like implementing the escaped fragment code so Google would be able to see the content. Problem is whenever I submit my sitemap on Google webmastertool it always 700 had been submitted and only 12 static pages had been indexed. I did the site query and only a number of pages where indexed. Does it have anything to do with my site being on HTTPS and not on HTTP? My site is under HTTPS and all my content is ajax based. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | en-gageinc0 -
301 from one site to another
I have two e-commerce websites and i'm going to remove some products from website as requested by a supplier and sell them only on one site. Is it a good idea to 301 redirect the pages from site 1 to site 2?? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
CSS gallery, directories, infographic anjd video sites?
If we have some good content (info graphic and video) is there anything wrong with submitting to as many video and info graphic directories and video hosts as possible or are 99% of them as bad as submitting to directories and would we be looking at a penalty? Also another side question, are CSS gallery's and niche pacific directories such as running a printing company and finding directories on (graphic design, craft and art) a bad idea to submit to.in any quantity are they as bad as the free for all directories that Google doesn't like. We compete in a not very hard niche and need to build a few low authority links (build out our link graph) but not low enough to be classed as low quality (Google penalty's in the future). Most of our competitors are happy to submit to anything but we wan the site to last.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
New site now links disappearing in Open Site Explorer and GWT
We launched a new site at the beginning of December 2012 and carefully 301'd all URLs from the old site to the new (custom CMS on old site wordpress on new). Our rankings have slipped quite badly but the most worrying thing is that we used to have about 1200 backlinks according to GWT/OSE before the new site launched and now we're down to about 30. Can anyone help shed some light on this please? The site is www.littleoneslondon.co.uk A few things that might help: 1. We were getting a lot of links through our job feeds (it's a nanny recruitment site) on indeed and trovitt, for some reason no new ones from these have appeared in site explorer and all the old jobs are gone completely. 2. We had 1000s of not found errors in google webmaster tools and once these were redirected and marked as fixed this is when the links disappeared. 3. We are getting quite a few 504 errors on the site due to an old proxy redirect (/blog was hosted on a different server on the old site and has not been removed yet), this will be fixed tomorrow but could this be a factor? 4. The developer seems to have redirected all the links through wordpress directly some how (I don't see any redirect plugins but there are lots of pages called 'redirect'). There are no references in the htaccess file for any redirects other than from the /blog folder that the wordpress instance sits in. Sorry for the long post, I hope I've given any details you'd need and I really appreciate any help anyone can give. Thanks, Karl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bdig0 -
Keep multiple domains or combine them?
I need some help figuring out if I should combine multiple domains or if I should let them be separate? I have domain1.com, domain2.com, and domain3.com. Well, domain1.com owns domain2.com and domain3.com. And currently domain1.com points to domain2.com and domain3.com from the homepage. They are going through some changes at their business, and now the option is on the table to combine the domains or still let them be separate as long as they link to each other. What is the best way to handle this and are there more things I should go through before making a decision? None of them have a ton of links to them, and they aren't super robust, but would just to have some advice. Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Things to remember when relaunching a site
We're about to re-launch our site but to think of everything before going live in a week is pretty tough going. Any suggestions or reminders as to what to remember and take care of before going live? What have you found or forgotten in your experience with re-launches? Thanks, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0