Google's 950 Penalty

[Ms Naughty]

Before you start pulling links and pissing off link partners, let me say that I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites, so the "link farm" thing may not be the problem. In my case it could be interlinking between my own sites that's done it, although I'm only guessing.

I feel like I should start a new thread about this, but I'll write it here anyway. It feels as though we as adult webmasters could start using the "nofollow" attribute to distinguish between links for traffic and what we could call "full links".

Pulling link trades is not a good idea because you piss off your partners and you also lose a source of traffic. But if you think it's a problem you could contact your partners and inform them you're going to nofollow the link.

If reciprocal links are no longer much use under the new algorithm, then a link trade to improve ranking is not as appealing and the focus becomes traffic.

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

I'm talking out of my arse here, just thinking out loud.

[spacemanspiff]

I'm not sure I've understand what you mean by this - "changed his anchor text recip page after every trade" - could you explain this a bit more.

Bill, I think you answered your own question with your next paragraph. Change the links that trade partners use when doing cat trades, or better yet just let them supply their own anchor text (assuming they'd use something relevant).

I also agree with your next post about the links at the bottom of pages. I'm sure they can detect this. Whether or not they will "penalize" for it is unknown, but it can't hurt to assume they do.

It needs to be tested. Some folks should file reinclusions and see what happens. Some folks should make changes without reinclusions and see what happens.

I'm pretty sure someone is doing this.

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

I think Google has pretty much said that they don't care for reciprocal linking for the purpose of manipulating PR. But in a "natural" linking scenario among relevant sites within an industry where no one is doing any link exchanges, there is going to be some reciprocal linking. Maybe the algo looks are the percentage of recip linking on your site compared to the percentage of recip linking on other sites across your sector of the internet. Just a thought.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Originally Posted by grandmascrotum

Before you start pulling links and pissing off link partners, let me say that I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites, so the "link farm" thing may not be the problem. In my case it could be interlinking between my own sites that's done it, although I'm only guessing.

Grandmascrotum, would you care to share a few of the above referenced url's with us where we could take a look? Worst case scenario, we may be able to help you determine why your sites have tanked.

[Halfdeck]

At the same time, reciprocal linking between similar sites is still a good idea, I think.

There's nothing inherently wrong with reciprocal linking. If I link to you one day because I like what you wrote, and then you link to me two months later because you liked something I said, that kind of reciprocal linking happens often and its not a problem.

It's also not about relevance; it's about intent: why are two sites linking to each other? If its an exchange to boost traffic or increase brand awareness, Google's recommendation is to tag the link with nofollow. If its an exchange to improve search engine ranking, then Google's recommendation is, again, tag it with nofollow.

Using nofollow is a last resort. A smarter approach is to reduce the chance of detection by making links look more organic.

As spacemanpiff said, Google doesn't mind a moderate level of exchanged links. If a large percentage of your IBLs is organic, a few link trades aren't going to hurt you.

This being so, is it enough to move the links from the bottom of our pages to somewhere in the middle (or put them all over the page) and, of course, change the anchor text and put a description to each site...or to be reincluded must we pull all of those links to show that we are not a part of that link farm anymore?

If you want to take a conservative approach, you might try emulating a directory-type layout. For example:

"http://www.business.com/directory/accounting/employment/"

Still, you might not see any improvement until Google is convinced the entire network is clean.

Though artifical links like cat-page links are potential problems, I think a bigger problem is the lack of organic links. Many mainstream sites rank using artifical links but they also have natural links as a supporting backbone to create a balanced link profile. We don't have that luxury.

I have a number of sites suffering from this "penalty" and none of them have link trades with other sites

Msnaughty has a few exchanged links (blogroll, links to free sites, sugasm links). On the other hand, forthegirls don't link out, and it ranks on the first page for its target keyword.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

If its an exchange to improve search engine ranking, then Google's recommendation is, again, tag it with nofollow.

My understanding is that if you tag a link with "nofollow" then it will not improve search engine ranking. Is that not the general consensus?