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
-
Our new site will be using static site generator which is supposed to be better for SEO?
Hi folks, Our dev team is planning on building our new marketing webpages on SSG or Static Site Generator(we are stepping away from SSR). Based on my research this is something that can help our SEO in particular for site speed (our site has a poor score).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Are there any challenges or concerns I should be aware regarding this direction? If so what are they and how can this be addressed? Thanks0 -
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 -
Transferring Domain and redirecting old site to new site and Having Issues - Please help
I have just completed a site redesign under a different domain and new wordpress woo commerce platform. The typical protocol is to just submit all the redirects via the .htaccess file on the current site and thereby tell google the new home of all your current pages on the new site so you maintain your link juice. This problem is my current site is hosted with network solutions and they do not allow access to the .htaccess file and there is no way to redirect the pages they say other than a script they can employ to push all pages of the old site to the new home page of the new site. This is of course bad for seo so not a solution. They did mention they could also write a script for the home page to redirect just it to the new home page then place a script of every individual page redirecting each of those. Does this sound like something plausible? Noone at network solutions has really been able to give me a straight answer. That being said i have discussed with a few developers and they mentioned a workaround process to avoid the above: “The only thing I can think of is.. point both domains (www.islesurfboards.com & www.islesurfandsup.com) to the new store, and 301 there? If you kept WooCommerce, Wordpress has plugins to 301 pages. So maybe use A record or CName for the old URL to the new URL/IP, then use htaccess to redirect the old domain to the new domain, then when that comes through to the new store, setup 301's there for pages? Example ... http://www.islesurfboards.com points to http://www.islesurfandsup.com ... then when the site sees http://www.islesurfboards.com, htaccess 301's to http://www.islesurfandsup.com.. then wordpress uses 301 plugin for the pages? Not 100% sure if this is the best way... but might work." Can anyone confirm this process will work or suggest anything else to redirect my current site on network solutions to my new site withe new domain and maintain the redirects and seo power. My domain www.islesurfboards.com has been around for 10 years so dont just want to flush the link juice down the toilet and want to redirect everything correctly.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isle_surf0 -
301: Delete old page, or keep?
Hey everybody! So, for those who have followed some of my posts I have myself in a bit of a quagmire that I am not going to get into. Some solutions have come to light and others are still pending and I will update my past questions with solutions! On the safer side of things I have a new situation. As I am going through our pages we have three different pages for "Admissions" Admissions Admission Guidelines Admission Information The "admissions' page has no link or feed to the other admissions page, and actually has no content on it at all. The "Admission Guidelines" page feeds to the "admission information" page, which although is extremely redundant is a different project for a different day. I am planning on putting a 301 on the "admissions" page and sending it to the "admission guidelines" page. When I do so, should I delete the old page? Does it matter? Is there a pro or con for either? Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Mission Possible? You have 3 hours to do Local SEO. Which top 5 sites do you go Social Bookmark, Local Search Engine Submit and Directory List.
Mission Possible? Here is a test. Suppose you had 3 hours (okay 7) to go and submit links, etc, on Social Bookmarking, Local Search Engines and Directories, which top 5 or more of each would you do? (Assuming your on-page is already sweetened). I just got 2 more clients and I need to get started on a few things for each. Thankful for all your advice.............
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Merging three sites to one
Hi guys, I just wanted confirmation if this is the right way to go about doing this. I need to merge three websites and I've never done three websites in to a brand new site before. Ok so we have Sitex.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero
Sitey.com
Sitez.com We've created a SiteB.com SiteB.com has SiteB.com/SiteXCat
SiteB.com/SiteYCat
SiteB.com/SiteZCat Each X,Y and Z have over 1,000 pages. They only have about 10 pages each with Page Authority above 10 and the domains arn't that strong. What i plan to do is: 301 redirect each site domain (X,Y,,Z) to it's corresponding category. e.g. Sitex.com > SiteB.com/SiteXCat 301 redirect each page off X,Y,Z that has a Page Authority above 10 to their new pages on SiteB.com Then, I'm unsure if i should 410 every other URL... I don't think its worht 301 every single URL if they arn't in search results much - but maybe it is if they have a lot of inbound links even with low page authority? Any ideas and does the above seem the best practise? Thanks.0 -
Are there any concerns moving a site to https?
I am currently having analytics issues where the non-secured (http) front end of my site is not properly communicating to the backend (https) of my site. When a user jumps between the the secured and non-secured, it will display as a bounce in GA and I get duplicate visits. GA has a work around for this but it is messy and not working. So my question is, has anyone had good/bad experiences moving a non-secured site over to the secured side? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0 -
How to see which site Google views as a scraper site?
If we have content on our site that is found on another site, what is the best way to know which site Google views as the original source? If you search for a line of the content such as "xyz abc etc" and the other site shows before yours in search results, does that mean that Google views that site as the original source?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0