Big Site Wide Link

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Guys,

I've noticed that Google is starting to de-value site-wide links...

Our previous SEO agency sourced us a site wide link on a big website and at the moment within Google Webmaster Tools its showing 749,726 links from this 1 source.

Do you think this is too many?

Could this be being flagged by Google?

Here is the site: http://tinyurl.com/7bttw3b

Cheers,

Scott

[Dr-Pete]

The recent crackdown on link networks has been pretty harsh in some cases. Unfortunately, there's not a ton you can do about bad links like that, especially if the sites have been de-indexed. Cutting your links from pages that aren't indexed probably won't have much impact (and often isn't even feasible). In that case, you're going to just have to focus on positive link-building tactics for a while and hope to turn it around.

If you do suspect a link-based problem, then switching your paid links to nofollow might be a good bet. I would especially suggest this if you're going to file for reconsideration with Google (otherwise, they'll probably see those links and ignore the request). It's tough, though, since it's possible those links are also helping you right now. At the level of any one link, it's almost impossible to tell.

I think this recent interview with Jim Boykin has some good advice. He's definitely dabbled on the black-hat side, so I think it's an honest appraisal of the situation:

http://www.seobook.com/jim-boykin-interview

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply.

We have seen a significant drop in rankings other the past few months, we have dropped from 3rd to 13th... I'm just trying to figure out what has happened and how we can get over this drop.

One thing that I have noticed when looking at our link profile our old SEO agency has signed us up for alot of Link Directoires - when I've been running this sites through Netpeak checker I can see that alot of the sites have been de-indexed via Google.

I personally feel that we just need to improve our link profile and we should see a rise in the SERPS.

If you could shed any light on this it would be great Peter.

Thanks,

Scott

[Dr-Pete]

Typically, "devalue" just means that the links don't count as much as they might under other conditions. Obviously 750K links from one site don't count nearly as much as 1 link from 750K different sites (by a huge amount), but that's just because site-wide links are relatively common and Google knows to weight them a bit differently. That shouldn't be confused with a penalty.

Agreed with Julie that, if this is one of the sponsor banners, it could be seen as a paid link. By itself, I don't think this poses a threat, but if you have a weak link profile otherwise or are getting a lot of similar sponsorships, you may want to nofollow some of these links down the road. If you're not seeing any danger signs, though, I suspect you're ok for now. There's nothing spammy about the site, and all of the sponsors seem relevant.

[Ecreativeworks]

I don't think it's true that Google is devaluing site-wide links (at least not recently); however, Google has been sending out warnings about unnatural links, which in our observation is tied highly to unnatural anchor text profiles -- and of course your 750k sitewide link is an anchor text rich link.

I work with a couple of sites where nearly all of their links are sitewide links, because within their niche that's just how the sites link to each other. These sites ranks well and will no doubt continue to do so. However the anchor text is almost always the name of the site, and typically link to the site's blog.

Ultimately just about any link that was paid for is a link that you have to worry about on some level. I'd worry more about the fact that it's an anchor text sitewide than the fact that you have 1 sitewide link. At the very least I'd try to get the anchor text changed to a branded term, if you don't want to remove it entirely.