Thread: Edu/Gov + FB/Twitter Links

I don't beleive that Google gives any special benefit to the .goc and .edu tlds. That generally, the .gov and .edu sites are more trusted and have authority inbound links etc. But as TopDogger said MC is a spokesman. So take what he says with a grain of salt.

Sitewide links are o.k. Signature links and blogrolls are in a way a forms of sitewide links. IMO, it's about having a balanced link profile. But, a site that has an "unnatural" weight of sitewides will throw up a red flag. It's about balance.

Originally Posted by Aquarezz

Thanks for clarifying it, seems interesting to know that stuff!

And wow, 50,000 paid links? Should've costed a lot Even at 1$ per link it is a lot

The were sitewide links, so they were not paying "per link." These guys had a $5,000 per month budget that they were spending on links, but a top 5 position was worth $10,000 per day in business.

They got hit for buying obviously paid links because the universities were openly selling links, plus G discounted the value of sitewide links.

IMHO, Google does look at sitewide links with suspicion. It draws attention to the links, especially if they are on a large site. If the link is unrelated to the site, they are likely going to correctly identify it as a paid link.

BTW, you do not get 1000 valid links from a 1000 page site selling sitewide links. About 3 or 4 years ago, G discounted the value of sitewide links and 1000 sitewide links is generally considered to be comparable to a single link. You a much better off getting a single link on a site's home page.

When G discounted the value of sitewide links, a lot of sites that relied on sitewide links dropped like a rock in the SERPs.

Originally Posted by bogart

Sitewide links are o.k. Signature links and blogrolls are in a way a forms of sitewide links. IMO, it's about having a balanced link profile. But, a site that has an "unnatural" weight of sitewides will throw up a red flag. It's about balance.

Ditto

So, if I have a debate forum on one IP, and a business blog on another IP, and I gave my blog a sitewide link on my forum - will Google think there's something fishy going on?

Originally Posted by Kovich

So, if I have a debate forum on one IP, and a business blog on another IP, and I gave my blog a sitewide link on my forum - will Google think there's something fishy going on?

I think the real issue is sitewide links to unrelated sites. That is the red flag that links are being purchased. In the case of the links to my client's site, it was obvious that they were purchased and the site tanked when sitewide links were discounted, which meant that they lost almost all of the link juice for tens of thousands of links.

Matt Cutts has said that footer links to unrelated sites (I think he specifically cited links to a ring tone site in a site he was reviewing) can raise flags and contribute to de-indexing, but that was related to the site with the links in the footer, not the receiving site. I suspect that you would not have a problem if an auto forum links to an auto site, or a tech forum links to a tech site. Designers commonly place links to their sites in the footers of clients' sites and I have not seen a problem with that.

Like I said, that was one of the rare times when we did get a response from a breathing body at G who confirmed that the links were the problem. They never responded again after repeated messages were sent to G confirming that the links were dropped.

The moral of the story is: Don't buy sitewide links because you think you are going to gain link juice from hundreds or thousands of links. It doesn't work that way any more and it could create problems if G flags them as paid links. You are not innocent until proven guilty when a spider doesn't like what he sees.

Originally Posted by Kovich

So, if I have a debate forum on one IP, and a business blog on another IP, and I gave my blog a sitewide link on my forum - will Google think there's something fishy going on?

The issue is whether they believe that the sitewides are a "link scheme" and apply a penalty.

I have some sitewide links between a couple of my sites and I'm using the rel="me" attribute to define the "me" relation. There's no reason that you shouldn't link sitewide between your websites. Many of the bigger networks do this. It's up to Google to determine how the value the links. So using the rel="me" attribute will allow them to make an association. I believe that rel="me" is a better solution than using "nofollow". Why should you tell the spiders not to follow? It doesn't make sense to me.

May be. But as gov and org domains. always have high PR.

Originally Posted by nux

No Kovich. He's saying that his friend bought 20,000 links, and I assumed most were sitewide links.

Do this and you're asking for trouble.

i don't think that will create any trouble to u, else everyone can sabotages ur site ...

I try once, basically it don't kill your site, penalty goto the site provide site wide link ......