Forum Moderators: phranque
Few days ago, here on the Adsense forum webmasters discussed how their earnings were falling down and down, (sorry, don't have the exact link to the thread). Related specifically with traffic and Search Engine results and position, one of the members mentioned having very good traffic and earnings but suddenly a huge drop that wouldn't go away, yes, a drop in traffic hurting his earnings (my question has to do with traffic, not Adsense), this is just to put things in context, maybe someone remembers the thread.
Well, the webmaster mentions the cause of their traffic loss was caused by some links on their links page (some kind of penalization?) so he removed such links and the traffic came back, and then the earnings with AS...
I have several sites, my stronger one has a links page pointing to some related sites and counts with reciprocal links for link building.
How is your experience with the problem mentioned above? (traffic). I'm currently considering putting "nofollow" on all my url links page. Can you give me some light about this?
thanks
But SEs deem you to be responsible for those links (let's face it, you are!), and so linking to spammy, dangerous or other depracated sites can - and will - damage your pages' rankings.
This means that you need to do several things, including (but not restricted to):
1. Think before you link; if you don't like the site, why would you send your visitors there?
2. Check links regularly; sites change, sites die, sites get neglected, sites go bad; you are still 'recommending' them, even if they've imploded.
3. Think very hard before reciprocal linking - there's absolutely nothing wrong with two quality sites, with related content, interlinking. Nothing at all. BUT within a niche, multiple interlinking goes on (naturally!), and if sites go bad, that friendly supportive network can become a bad neighborhood; you may be damaged by sites you have not even linked to - but you've linked to people who have. So reciprocal linking is a calculated risk - always. And in some niches,a high risk.
If you reciprocal link, be sure you are in control; NEVER do it in response to an unsolicited mail without checking the site you are linking to (see many threads on these issues).
4. Consider nofollow, and do use it if third parties can plant links on your pages (eg forums, blogs etc). Bait and switch are big business in blogs and a poorly policed blog can destroy your site. Moderate carefully and thoroughly or use nofollow (but read up on it first - again, there's plenty of threads on nofollow.
Using nofollow for your own links is a different matter, and you really need to consider if that is the 'right thing to do' for your pages - some use it widely, others hate it.
If you choose to have a links page, then - in my view - nofollow is not the best way to manage it; choosing links carefully, and keeping the page up to date (maybe with *some* nofollow), is much better choice, for you and your SE rankings.
But others may strongly disagree!
HOWEVER then people stopped paying their registration costs or moving pages basically leading to bad or dead links. Solution was I wrote a spider of my own which goes through my site map looking for dead links and telltale signs of parked pages. It runs automatically and reports any problems.
I've never been penalized to my knowledge.
[edited by: JerryOdom at 5:49 pm (utc) on Dec. 4, 2008]
Thanks again
