Links Pages, can google penalise you? your thoughts please

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
I was wondering what the seo bods on here thought about links pages and whether google penalises sites for having one? I have one but the links are only to gift sites and was wondering whether i should take this down but worry that if i do then i will lose what little rankings i have and can't afford to lose those during these hard times.

A couple of key players in the industry were on page 1 for a long time but one is now on page 2 and the other page 3 and they rely alot on link exchanges, could just be a coincidence?

without the link exchanges i will only have the article submission and directory listing links which after reading hobo-webs site aren't very good.

I read a lot on the web and here about content is king and linkbait etc but when you sell branded products and don't make your own or offer advice or a service then you can't really write about anything interesting that people will want to link to. I have less than 10 links from blogs or forums where people are recommending me for products etc but these links are just urls so doubt they carry much weight.

I am struggling to rank for the non-competitive keywords and don't want to waste yet more money on a so called top seo company who are more than happy to take your money but don't have any interest in the site or improving rankings so was hoping that some of you nice seo people on here might offer some free advice / tips to help me on my way, bit cheeky I know but if you don't ask you don't get!

Thanks for your time.
Lianne

[TheSlackers]

Short answer is no, Google wont penalise you for a links page. it sounds like you're being responacable with it so I see no reason for any issues.

One thing you could try to encourage more links is to give some items away via compatitions on forums & blogs. I think your site looks great to be honest although some thumbnails seem very poor quality? "Gifts" is a very competative market so longtail is the key here. You have some very good onpage SEO already to be honest so adding more quality links would serve you well.

[LandingNet]

Reciprocal linking - you link to me if I link to you - can be bad news to your ranking (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356). If you have relevant backlinks to you then that's all good.

The question I have to ask though, is if you intend to make money from your site, why would you want to link to other sites and send your visitors away? Just food for thought

Shaun

[GNU]

I think your quite safe, there would not be much left in Googles index if they dropped every site with a links page.

Penalties / bans only reallyl apply to link farms... sites which are built solely or predominantly for the purpose of creating links. Even these are acceptable in some cases, directories for example.

On the flip side.... is your link list actually doing anything for you? I don't use or advocate these lists as I rarely find the link exchanges on these lists beneficial. If you find good sites to partner with, then it is better to exchange links in context on relevant info pages within your site.

A link on a page which is nothing but a list links is not as powerful as a link on a page with content and fewer links... and the best place for the link is within a block of relevant content.... not in the sidebar, or God forbid the footer...

Think of it another way... a plug within a magazine article is far better than a small add at the back of the magazine in the classifieds section with hundreds of other adverts....

A similar principle applies to your link X's...

Jez

[allthingsgifts]

Thanks to everyone who has replied.

re the blurry thumbnail images, i was told this was only me who could see this as the images were fine before the new site went live last week so have asked my website guy to look into this.

i'm not looking to target the single phrase keywords like gifts as that will cost tens of thousands and conversion would be really low but trying to get the no. 1 spot for the brand names i stock which i'm struggling to see where i'm going wrong as they aren't that competitive which is why i thought maybe the links page was a problem.

When i first had the site built i was told that the only way to help with rankings was to get links so i spent absolute ages in getting links through link exchanges, have deleted a lot since then as they were rubbish but just too scared to delete the page just incase i lose the rankings i have.

GNU - like your idea re linking text within content, articles etc but how do i start, should i email the sites who i already link with and hope they will change the link to within content instead of the links page or start my search again and look for relevant sites who have lots of content and or articles, blog etc?

another thought was that my meta descriptions are really long, would google penalise me for this, i am working on these though and all product descriptions etc and including text links in these to the main page for the keyword i'm trying to rank for as i was told that as i have so many pages with the keyword on that google won't know that the category page is the most important page.

Thanks
Lianne

[LandingNet]

Don't worry too much about your META data as the major search engines tend not to weight these now

[TheSlackers]

Think of it another way... a plug within a magazine article is far better than a small add at the back of the magazine in the classifieds section with hundreds of other adverts....


Agreed, very difficult to get though.

re the blurry thumbnail images, i was told this was only me who could see this as the images were fine before the new site went live last week so have asked my website guy to look into this.


lol, who told you that!? The designer by chance? :rolleyes:


i'm not looking to target the single phrase keywords like gifts as that will cost tens of thousands and conversion would be really low but trying to get the no. 1 spot for the brand names i stock which i'm struggling to see where i'm going wrong as they aren't that competitive which is why i thought maybe the links page was a problem.

When i first had the site built i was told that the only way to help with rankings was to get links so i spent absolute ages in getting links through link exchanges, have deleted a lot since then as they were rubbish but just too scared to delete the page just incase i lose the rankings i have.


Agree, good idea and links will be the key to that. Good quality links however, not ones you get through link exchanges. Rule of thumb, the harder a link is to get the higher the value.

[sksservices]

I personally think that links pages are a waste of time and lost any value a while back. Although Google wont penalise you, they will also not class the links with any importance.

The best way to link to another site and get a link back and the key to a successful optimization campaign is the proper utilization of text link ads within the content.

If your linking to a website that adds value to your visitors (ie. a printing company linking to a paper supply company) then even better.

[allthingsgifts]

According to yahoo i have 639 incoming links but when using linkdiagnosis i only have 156? Is there another tool out there which i can use so I can start deleting the link exchanges which aren't helping me much? and then work on getting better links through content.

[TheSlackers]

According to yahoo i have 639 incoming links but when using linkdiagnosis i only have 156? Is there another tool out there which i can use so I can start deleting the link exchanges which aren't helping me much? and then work on getting better links through content.

Yahoo is the tool I use mostly, there are various and you'll get different answers from them all! Personally I wouldn't spend any time deleting the links you have, just look at how to get much better ones.