Effects of Bad Outbound Links
One of Rand Fishkin’s posts at SEOMoz.org, discussing some issues about Google with Matt Cutts, got me thinking.
A week ago, one of the sites I was working on promoting suddenly dropped in rank. It was rather… annoying, since things were just starting to get rolling. I couldn’t really figure out why. I had been out getting inbound links for the site. Why would it suddenly DROP, if inbound links were supposed to be GOOD for a site.
In Rand’s post, one of the issues discussed was the effects of bad outbound links. The question revolved around the usefulness of generic web directories. Including the ones designed just to help webmasters increase their rank and relevance.
Matt’s statement was that: Google still feels that directories are valuable. Even ones that are generally built for SEO purposes. Google treats all directories the same. If their authority/PageRank is high and content relevant, they can still pass a lot of link value.
But here is the kicker. Rand: “Directories (and all websites) that link out need to be very, very careful of who they link to, as this is a big way that Google’s algorithmically identifying and discounting paid and other types of links they don’t want to count.”.
Basiclly, if a site or directory is linking to lots of low quality or spammy sites, Google will consider that directory or site less authoritative. IE: Sites listed there get dinged. So, with my drop in rankings, I must have listed my site in a directory that Google considers “spammy”.
Bummer.
Directories that have an editorial process and keep those spammy sites out, can better maintain their level of authority with Google. So I guess you really have to watch WHERE your site gets listed.
Posted: August 30, 2007 | Under: SEO
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