An SEO & Web Marketing Blog: Scatterings - Latest comments on Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Mark R [Visitor] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Mark R [Visitor] — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:36:05 +0000

Hi there, Stephan;

Thank you for the article.

I know it's been a while since you posted, but I FINALLY made it through your post and the power point slides. It raised up a few questions.

You mentioned that site-wide incoming links are bad. My question is how bad? If another person's site has 500 pages that link to you in the footer, should you ask them NOT to link at all (so you aren't "penalized" by google)?

In essence, is it better to have NO links from a site than to have several hundred?

Or are you saying that ONE contextual inbound link with relevant anchor text might be better than 100, or 200 or however many incoming site-wide links?

You also mentioned in the Power Point presentation that when asking for other sites to link to yours, that it is a bad idea to provide them with the text / code to link to your site. Why is that? Is it because you want a certain amount of diversity in the anchor text when sites link to yours? Or is it an etiquette issue where you think it is more likely to have a favorable response if you allow the webmaster to write whatever he or she wants when they link to you?

Thank you in advance for any more insights you could share. And thank you again for the article and the slides.

Lisa [Visitor] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Lisa [Visitor] — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:13:18 +0000

Great Post Stephan, very informative. I think links from inside an individual blog post are better than site-wide links

Affan Laghari [Visitor] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Affan Laghari [Visitor] — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:38:21 +0000

Though I'm new to SEO, I have been following many blogs in the last few months and never got this tip about the site-wide link being discounted, which will definitely save me a lot of time.
I guess another reason can be that links from inside the post (or article) are normally set in a favorable context, where the text surrounding the link would also be topically relevant to the link.

Anyway, thanks again, Stephan!

Stephan Spencer [Member] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Stephan Spencer [Member] — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:05:50 +0000

Affan, indeed you are correct - links from inside an individual blog post are better than site-wide links. This is because Google prefers links that appear to be earned by merit.

Craig, being 1 link out of 10 total links on somebody's page is better than than being 1 out of 100 because the PageRank on that person's page is divvied up amongst all the links on the page.

Craig Tomlin [Visitor] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Craig Tomlin [Visitor] — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:17:14 +0000

Great stuff Stephan! The way you share information in easy to grasp bits is very nice. Quick question, when you say "Remember that the more links on the linking page, the less PageRank you'll get." I'm a bit confused. Is this a reference to Google not liking a page that has too many links, or is there an issue with your linking page "sharing away" your link love, which impacts your own site's PR?

Affan Laghari [Visitor] in response to: Natural Search Tactics for Retailers

Affan Laghari [Visitor] — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:17:33 +0000

Excellent post Stephan and thanks for the information-rich presentation. It's a gem for anyone who's new to SEO.

One thing that I am not clear about is that you mention site-wide links get discounted.

Do you mean that links from the blogroll (which are on all pages of a blog) are not good. Or at least I get that links from inside an individual blog post are better than site-wide links, be they in the blogroll or elsewhere. Am I getting it right?