Sitewide Links Question

[roydovaston]

In the past we built a couple of sitewide links. The sitewide links built were directly a longtail keyword deeplinked to the category on our site. The keyword itself is fluctuating between position 10 and 15 for the last few months.

What's the general opinion of sitewide links in today's SEO world?

My question is, shall I contact one of the places we've got sitewide links and ask them to only link once (rather than every page on their whole site!!). If I do this what are the forecasted results be afterwards in terms of position for the keyword in question on Google's SERPs?

 

[Murray]

In the past we built a couple of sitewide links. The sitewide links built were directly a longtail keyword deeplinked to the category on our site. The keyword itself is fluctuating between position 10 and 15 for the last few months.

What's the general opinion of sitewide links in today's SEO world?

My question is, shall I contact one of the places we've got sitewide links and ask them to only link once (rather than every page on their whole site!!). If I do this what are the forecasted results be afterwards in terms of position for the keyword in question on Google's SERPs?

I would avoid sitewide links.

I would guess if the sidewide link is removed it would make no difference because it's probably been devalued anyway.

It's better to get a link from a page that is linked to in the main navigation, that way you're getting a link from a page that is linked to from every other page.

I would also add that I wouldn't want a link from a site that sells links in such an obvious way.

 

[Blossom]

I love sitewide links. Implying they automatically get devalued is wrong - they have their place.

Why not test it yourself to see the impact?

 

[Murray]

I love sitewide links. Implying they automatically get devalued is wrong - they have their place.

http://youtu.be/mTjN9x-by-I

Recent video from Matt Cutts on sitewides.

But I always like to approach things from a logical standpoint.

A link is a vote, why would one site be able to vote for another site hundreds/thousands of times.

Who is a sitewide link usually given to? an advert, a blogroll, or maybe a site you also own. There are probably some more scenarios but I would say they would be the main ones.

An advert should be nofollow.

A blogroll cool if your site is a blog, if your site is a business, why would you be in a blog roll.

A site you also own, you shouldn't be voting for yourself so the link shouldn't count.

So you can imagine it each scenario why google wouldn't like sitewide links, especially if it's done with a keyword.

A lot of sites I've seen given unnatural links warnings had a few sitewide keyword links.

Sitewide links aren't very natural for most niches or circumstances, they stick out like a sore thumb, if it's not natural, avoid it.

I can't see anything to love personally.

 

[murph]

Sitewide have their place. Perfectly natural in the grand scheme...

 

[Blossom]

http://youtu.be/mTjN9x-by-I

Recent video from Matt Cutts on sitewides.

I heard a couple of 'mights', nothing concrete. It's one of those 'We want you to do X so we're going to imply Y is the case' kind of scenarios.

On a side note, if you want to hear Matt Cutts' blagging at its best, take a look at the video where he 'explains' why paid listings in certain directories are fine but not in others - his argument is terrible.

If subdomains and folders are counted pretty much as separate sites (not technically true, but adequate explanation for this purpose), then assuming that a site follows a fairly typical structure, there's no reason I can think of why they wouldn't be counted as individual links.

Sitewides have to be used carefully and selectively, but if you're working with sites that have high numbers of links as I do (850,000+), you need them. Get one link at a time and you may as well be pissing in the Atlantic for all the difference it makes.

 

[Murray]

Sitewides have to be used carefully and selectively, but if you're working with sites that have high numbers of links as I do (850,000+), you need them. Get one link at a time and you may as well be pissing in the Atlantic for all the difference it makes.

Maybe you need to up your quality.

Id be interested to know what standard of site is offering dofollow sitewide links.. the ones that do often are/or will likely soon get penalised because it's very obvious they're paid for.

 

[Blossom]

Maybe you need to up your quality.

Id be interested to know what standard of site is offering dofollow sitewide links.. the ones that do often are/or will likely soon get penalised because it's very obvious they're paid for.

It's pretty much the highest quality I can reasonably get really. They are still more beneficial than one link from, say, a big national newspaper.

But they aren't paid, they're secondary market names I've picked up plus a lot of useful contacts with good sites.

I have no doubt G will be on top of this in the future (that's just the nature of the game), but for the past few years they're claiming a lot more than they're achieving. As much as I love them, they know they can make their job a hell of a lot easier by convincing people to act in certain ways without the actual technical power backing it up. Don't forget Matt Cutts is head of the webspam team

 

[Murray]

It's all about being natural and not creating obvious patterns of manipulation.

If sitewide links are just a small part of your link profile they probably aren't going to do you harm, but they aren't helping either and it wouldn't really hurt you to lose them.

If you get a lot of sitewide links and they do start helping, that is when a pattern of manipulation becomes obvious and you get penguinised.

^ That is apart from maybe bloggers, where it is pretty natural to have blogrolls. I can't think of another niche where it's generally common though.

 

[AuthorityDomain]

From my experience sitewide links still work and will continue to pass on any link juice. However you have be careful because they can affect the overall link profile.

It's all about how an algorithm picks up unnatural links/link profile. A sitewide link could cause over optimisation of anchor text distribution on sites with not many links. Also a sitewide link could cause a spike in new links if too many get indexed quickly.

Keep then natural and relevant and generally these should be ok. Just be careful to not get too many sitewide links they could cause an imbalance with overall linking root domain links. Also be careful on usage of anchor text used. Go for brand term or URL

Just my 10 pence

 

[roydovaston]

OK this seems to have sparked a debate!!

Here's my current profile:

Sitewide: 7,094
NotSitewide: 3,499

It might not be much in terms of links but we've only been working on this for the last 18 months.

Anyway, the sitewide link i'm considering would add about 18k sitewide links to this which will unbalance our link profile somewhat. With this in mind what do you think?

I'm particularly interested in your comments Blossom. I've seen a lot of your posts and answers and agree with almost everything you say! Just in this case I want to agree with you because it's the answer I want but I value the counter responses too. The problem I have with the 'do it and see' approach is that if it damages us we've already got some good rankings that I can't afford to lose!!

I'm assuming most people would agree that the URL or our brand would be more beneficial than the anchor text of a keyword we're interested in?

 

[AuthorityDomain]

Hi roydovaston,

If its the domain I'm thinking it is (in your signature) then to me the link profile looks pretty natural.

Looking at some of the sitewide links, they are coming from related sites so generally these should be ok. My only observation is some could look unnatural and appear to be used to manipulate the rankings if a manual inspection was to oversee your links, 1 example is a blog that also links to several poker sites. I'd just be a bit careful with where the links come from and make sure those external sites don't look like they're offering paid links.

Generally your anchor text distribution is pretty good and you have some authority links. Well done. Did you do the seo or outsource it?

 

[roydovaston]

My only observation is some could look unnatural and appear to be used to manipulate the rankings if a manual inspection was to oversee your links, 1 example is a blog that also links to several poker sites. I'd just be a bit careful with where the links come from and make sure those external sites don't look like they're offering paid links.

Thanks for taking the time to look. I'm aware of the site you are making reference to, i wasn't expecting at the time when our links placed there that poker sites were about to pop up!! One positive is that the site doesn't discuss any pricing etc so it's not clearly obvious whether they're paid for links or not. We are trying to keep everything ethical.

We've done our own SEO but it's hard work!!

I may as well be more open about the link we're considering. It's on www. bridalwave. tv -one of our competitors is advertising using the Personalised Wedding Cards anchor text. I wasn't sure to do Personalised Wedding Gifts linked to the appropriate category on our site or to use our URL or our brand name... Suggestions please

 

[Murray]

the link profile looks pretty natural.

I honestly don't know how you can say that.. It looks obviously unnatural

I may as well be more open about the link we're considering. It's on www. bridalwave. tv -one of our competitors is advertising using the Personalised Wedding Cards anchor text. I wasn't sure to do Personalised Wedding Gifts linked to the appropriate category on our site or to use our URL or our brand name... Suggestions please

I wouldn't do it.. not if you want to achieve and hold rankings with any kind of longevity.

If you're happy to take your chances until you get penalised either by algorithm or manually then that is a different matter.

 

[roydovaston]

Thanks for your comments Murray - i'll certainly take your advice into consideration.

Are you saying all the companies listed in the footer of bridal wave are at some point going to lose rankings because they have their links there?

 

[AuthorityDomain]

I honestly don't know how you can say that.. It looks obviously unnatural

.

From the quick 5 minute look I had, I couldn't see how it would look unnatural, nice steady climb of links, mixture of link types/anchors, fairly good distribution of authority.

If you know any different I'd be glad to hear your view

Me I would go for url as anchor under 'sites we like' but I'd go homepage only as the site has 17k pages!

 

[roydovaston]

Thanks for your input. I don't want this turning into a complete review of our SEO and i certainly don't want this to become an arguement!! Ideally I just want the question answered and i can then take on the comments and put them to good use at our own risk of course!!!

 

[Murray]

Are you saying all the companies listed in the footer of bridal wave are at some point going to lose rankings because they have their links there?

It's very obvious they're selling links..

That is the sort of link you would do very well to avoid if you want your site to have any longevity.

From the quick 5 minute look I had, I couldn't see how it would look unnatural, nice steady climb of links, mixture of link types/anchors, fairly good distribution of authority.

I don't want to publicly tear into anything too much.. but If you think that is a natural looking link profile then I bet a lot of spammers wish you were in Matt Cutts place

 

[roydovaston]

I don't want to publicly tear into anything too much..

I'd much appreciate if we could stick to the original question - like i said, i'm not looking for an appraisal and especially not a 'tear into', just an opinion on whether sitewide links are good or bad and a viewpoint on the Bridal Wave sitewide link i mentioned.

 

[Murray]

I'd much appreciate if we could stick to the original question - like i said, i'm not looking for an appraisal and especially not a 'tear into', just an opinion on whether sitewide links are good or bad and a viewpoint on the Bridal Wave sitewide link i mentioned.

I will modify my posts if you want.

Do you do any social media? youtube, pinterest etc, with something as popular as weddings if you can create some interesting content you will not only get visitors but big legitimate sites talking (and linking) to you.