Are Website Wide Links Truely A Problem?

First, let's look at what website wide links are. After all, if a 2,000 page website has links on half of the pages and a 10 page site has links on every page are both of these truly "site wide"? Well, there are a few ways of getting site wide links:

1 - asking a favour of another site owner

2 - providing a template, or being the site designer for the site

3 - having a connected, probably a sister, company

If any of these apply, then it is possibly true that the search engines would want to ignore the links. But why do people think that web site wide links are a problem?

Well, heaps of people will link between their own web sites using website wide links. Some of these have noticed that when the site wide link is cached by the search engines the results for the recipient site suddenly get masses worse. So the theory starts that these links cause damage to the web site.

But, is there another answer? Frequently these people are defensive of their web-sites and do not publicise their web site adresses. So it is not likely to fully check their theories. Let's say, I read yesterday of a web site owner with 5 websites. One site linked to the other 3 and it was the standalone web site that did well in the search engines. When he added that to the links on the first website, this web site also dropped in the results.

However, would a respectable search engine really drop a website through the rankings only because of site wide links? I think not, else anyone can destroy any other site's rankings by listing it across their full site. And off web site effects are not supposed to negatively impact search engines.

So, what might be going on to these example people? I think it is quite straightforward. What if the person above, who's main web site he said had a good page rank, had the other web site linked to from 1 good page and it was that link that gave the good search engine position? Then, when the website wide links were put in place, rather than just destroying the web site's optimisation the search engines decided to ignore all of the links from that website?

It is definitely a possibility and a worring one as a site designer. Why? Well, like a good artist, I like to sign every site that I create and this gives a link back, typically from every page of the website. If website wide links are not valued, then I am not there a trick here.

This can mean that side wide links are a problem and something that we need to sort out. Probably they are ignored, or maybe people are right and they act negatively, but I very much doubt this. It is difficult to say for sure and something that needs investigating. But, there are very good reasons for them not to give any benefits at the very best.

So this is an investigation that I intend to follow up with a series of experiments. I will be purposely trying to get web-sites optimised for 'random' phrases and then seeing if they might be destroyed with website wide links.

Article Source: http://gamblingarticlessite.com

Written by Keith Lunt who own Promotional Gifts Items and Promotional Flash Drives.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated