Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
-
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin.
My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back.
Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks
-
Hi Matias. Now that it's been a few months, I was curious to see if you were able to get your traffic back. Let us know if there has been some progress and what actions helped cure the curse.
-
Cody, what you explained is kind of similar to my situation, the 11 sites I have are all Real Estate sites and they contain different "area" information (because they cover different geographic areas) but they share the same database of properties for sale.
We do have set different search results pages to avoid showing the same properties on every site, but, there is a link to similar properties on each property page which eventually the crawler ends up indexing all properties within the database so when you mention ..."every site had the same products"... this could be a similar situation.
As of now, I am waiting to see what happens next with my rankings, I guess I am a little lost on how long will it take until some signals are reflected on the serps, any idea?
Cheers
and thanks a lot for writing about your experience with this.
-
"Also, the bounce rate on these referrals was over 50%, compared to a site average of around 20%, so the web visitors didn't enjoy it either."
That's a good point - how do visitor view the links.
-
I've had websites get rid of penalties, with a lower case "p," just by getting rid of their site wide links. When we got rid of the links the rankings jumped from the 100's up to the top 5. When the site owner put the links back up the site dropped back into the 100's. We went back and forth several times with the same effect, so I'm positive that it was related.
Just an FYI, we pushed to get rid of the links altogether because every site had the same products, and sending them to a different website made little sense. Also, the bounce rate on these referrals was over 50%, compared to a site average of around 20%, so the web visitors didn't enjoy it either.
-
Moosa,
Yes, the first thing I did was to remove all these links ...as of now, I am going through all my external links and cleaning some directory links that I had from many years ago which might seem spammy to penguin.
Really appreciate your comments, cheers
-
Michael, these links were on the footer of each site. I think I was hit algorithmically because I haven't received any message from Google but like I said, my organic visits are down by 43% compared to last year.
Thanks a lot for your input, cheers
-
I have answered this kind of question before as well and I will stand on my point even today! Although they all are your website and may be linking them all on each other seems logical and user friendly to you but search engine will still find it questionable and might hit you by some penguin update.
In my opinion, try to remove links if it is possible for you (no-following is not an option in my opinion) and if not at least link to other website intelligently!
Let’s say you have 11 websites and each is targeting to different location so add a link where you are talking about some other location instead of adding them all in footer or sidebar!
Hope this helps!
-
Generally speaking if you have site-wide do-follow links (typically footer) I would switch to no-follow immediately. If you are purely inter linking your portfolio Google is likely to spot those links are there trying to game the system.
Even if those links are offering real value to the visitor I would set to no-follow, but the way you describe that does not appear to be their primary purpose. What context and how do they appear on the page?
Also you say that you have been hit. Was this a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty? So you are fighting the right fight have you compared your analytics with the algorithm history dates?
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
-
Query string parameters always bad for SEO?
I've recently put some query string parameters into links leading to a 'request a quote' form which auto-fill the 'product' field with the name of the product that is on the referring product page. E.g. Red Bicycle product page >>> Link to RFQ form contains '?productname=Red-Bicycle' >>>> form's product field's default value becomes 'Red-Bicycle' I know url parameters can lead to keyword cannibalisation and duplicate content, we use sub-domains for our language changer. BUT for something like this, am I potentially damaging our SEO? Appreciate I've not explained this very well. We're using Kentico by the way, so K# macros are a possibility (I use a simple one to fill the form's Default Field).
Technical SEO | | landport0 -
We have 302 redirect links on our forum that point to individual posts. Should we add a rel="nofollow" to these links?
Moz is showing us that we have a HUGE amount of 302 redirects. These are coming from our community forum. Forum URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/ Example thread URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/ Example URL that points to a specific reply: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewreply/1582/ The above link 302 redirects to this URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/#1582 My two questions would be: Do you think we should we add rel=nofollow to the specific reply URLs? If possible, should we make those redirects 301 vs. 302? Screencast attached. nofollow_302.mp4
Technical SEO | | Bjork1 -
SEO Redirect
If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?
Technical SEO | | mkessler0 -
Pageflip SEO friendly?
Client of mine utilizes pageflip for their product brochures and would love to have this content be crawl-able by search engines. Is there a way to make them SEO friendly so I may utilize this content?
Technical SEO | | richn330 -
Why are my links not being counted?
I have a site that has over 400 links going to it. When I use Moz open site explorer or any other SEO tool its says I have only 12 links. Does anyone know why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | Goopping0 -
Frustrating Local Seo Question
I have just lost the top stop on Google Places (Pack 7) for one of my clients. The company that took it came out of nowhere to take the top stop. Now I don't mind getting out ranked when someone has worked hard to out rank me but what is frustrating is this site scores terrible across the board on just about every score that is supposed to determine on and off page ranking factors. The only place it outscores is in the link department but the site is so new there is no data available in OSE. The site has 0's and 1's for PA, MR and MT plus the keyword (kitchen remodeling) that it is taking the top spot for scores and F in the SEOMoz on page report card while the page that I optimized for this very same keyword scores an A. Plus this site has zero citations according to Bright Local Data. What Gives? Here is a little bit of data: Keyword: Kitchen Remodeling My Clients website is http://www.tandmkitchens.com Competitors website: http://www.njkitchendesigns.com I'm kicking his butt in every category except Domain Age and inbound link total, his inbound link total is 409 but it's only from 2 domains.
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Any thoughts on how this is possible would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all and Merry Christmas!
Gary1 -
Link Building Advice
Hi Everyone, I have just joined the community and am looking for some help regards Offsite SEO and Link Building. I have done some basic SEO on my website 'Marketing Quotes' Added to web directories (although I am told they do not carry much weight) I have written content and articles around them (on ezine, squidoo etc.) I have written unique content for the site I have done guest posting on blogs Not sure what to do next though for high power links. I did notice a Q&A on contacting webmasters and asking for links (after building a relationship) but wondered if there was anything (offsite wise) that I have missed out? Appreciate any advice. Regards, David
Technical SEO | | Marketingquotes0 -
Need advanced SEO help!
Hi guys, This is my last attempt to work out what is up with this site before it goes to the big Flipper in the sky (and even then I doubt it will make much more than £1!) This site was a successful site, then one day Google decided it didnt like it, and I have not had much joy with it for nearly a year now. I must admit I tried to forget about it for a while, but it has always been a thorn in my side due to the fact it used to be a nice little earner. I have SEOmoz crawled it and I cant find any issues that would cause such a severe penalty, I removed many of the affiliate links, clocked the rest of the affiliate links and tried numurous other ideas, but now, as a last ditch attempt I am looking for some help! I tried to avoid the typical thin affiliate site by adding relevant content, but I have seen sites with much poorer design and content rank higher than this one. Any ideas welcome! Thanks in advance My site
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850