Are widgets dangerous after the Panda update?
-
My site provides widgets (online polls) which were developed so that each one would embed a do follow text link into the customers website.
With Panda's unnatural link algorithm now in place should I modify these links to be nofollow and give up on this strategy or alternatively just set the text as my sites domain name?
The only other option I could think of was to only embed links where the customers site had a certain page rank or above?
Any thoughts?
-
I wonder if it is actually wrong to generate backlinks in this way though? I know there was some guy who used the widgets to advertise unrelated products but that's not what I'm doing.
I had two, one one the front of the poll with our domain name, and a second with "Create your own free poll" on the results (displayed initially as a hidden div which appears once the vote button is hit)
Well I chickened out today and set both links to nofollow as the sites already ranked well before the polls were launched and I don't want to risk it.
I just wish there was some official guidance on this.
-
Been wondering about this myself. Did anyone who had a site that was otherwise clean get slammed by Penguin because of IBL's derived from widgets?
-
Just for the sake of clarity I think you mean the Penguin update.
And I would definitely recommend changing the anchor text to either your brand name/domain name.
You could only embed links when the site reaches a certain PR threshold and while this might help you against any algorithmic penalities/devaluations it must be pretty easy to spot on manual inspection.
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
-
Internal Duplicate Content - Classifieds (Panda)
I've been wondering for a while now, how Google treats internal duplicate content within classified sites. It's quite a big issue, with customers creating their ads twice.. I'd guess to avoid the price of renewing, or perhaps to put themselves back to the top of the results. Out of 10,000 pages crawled and tested, 250 (2.5%) were duplicate adverts. Similarly, in terms of the search results pages, where the site structure allows the same advert(s) to appear under several unique URLs. A prime example would be in this example. Notice, on this page we have already filtered down to 1 result, but the left hand side filters all return that same 1 advert. Using tools like Siteliner and Moz Analytics just highlights these as urgent high priority issues, but I've always been sceptical. On a large scale, would this count as Panda food in your opinion, or does Google understand the nature of classifieds is different, and treat it as such? Appreciate thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers1 -
Rankings drop from the new update
Hello, I've noticed some big ranking downs on important keywords, from the last Google update, and don't really know what seams to be the problem, but have an assumption. In April 2015 we had 3.000.000 pages indexed by Google, and 80% of them had duplicated content for about 90% of it. The site I'm talking about is http://nobelcom.com/. The duplicated content came from variations between calling from and calling to selections, because each of this selection was making a new url (ex. nobelcom.com/caling from/calling to). If "calling from" and calling to were the same country the url was nobelcom.com/calling-from, but after you chosen another calling to, the url become like the one in the example. To solve this I've decided to keep the nobelcom.com/calling-from urls and for different calling to country to display the content trough a javascript, because it was the same, it changed only the country names and the rates. I thought that this change will help us with the duplicate content, and still deliver our client what they are interested in, without affecting the UX, and also reducing the link juice dilution because we had 3.000.000 indexed by Google and most of them with no added value Can this be the reason for the drops? Now we have 590.000 pages indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silviu1 -
How to update campaign product on google merchant xml feed?
Hello Guys, I am using google merchant xml which updates on every morning 12 am, now many times we run campaign which starts at 8 am and for that product price differ due to that google reject such products. So my query is, is here anyway to set campaign start and end time in xml? Note - In API we can update product price anytime but in xml it can be done at one time only that is 12 am only. right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | varo0 -
Panda 4.0 Update Affected Site - What should be a the minimum Code to Text Ratio we should aim for ?
Hi All, My eCommerce site got hit badly with the Panda 4.0 update so we have been doing some site auditing and analysis identifying issues which need addressing. We have thin/duplicate issues which I am quite sure was part of the reason we were affected by this even though we use rel=next and rel=prev along with having a separate view all page although we don't concanical tag to this page as I dont' think users would benefit from seeing to many items on one page. This led me to look at our Code to Content Ratio. We have now managed to increase it from 9% to approx 18-22% on popular pages by getting rid of unnecessary code etc. My question is , is there an ideal percentage the code to content ratio should be ?.. and what should I be aiming for ? Also any other Panda 4.0 advice would also be appreciated thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Internal linking using exact keywords Bad – Post Panda
Internal linking using exact keywords Bad – Post Panda Any tips for internal linking ,how can we target landing pages to rank well using internal linking. Use of Keywords in within site links, is it bad? Are footer links bad? Use of Siloing artichture bad or good? What a best linking model for Ecommerce Site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Google Algo update for over SEO'd sites: Is this a game changer?
This must be on the forum somewhere already but I cant find it. Google are updating there algo to penalise over SEO'd sites, is this a game changer? http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/373630/google-to-demote-seo-heavy-sites Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Were small sites hit by Panda?
It seems that primarily large sites were hit by Panda, but does any one know of / own a small site that was hit by Panda?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Has there been a 'Panda' update in the UK?
My site in the UK suddenly dropped from page 1 and out of top 50 for all KWs using 'recliner' or a derivative. We are a recliner manufacturer and have gained rank over 15 years, and of course using all white hat tactics. Did Google make an algo update in the Uk last week?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0