A question about website which use "Zuse" for link Options

[abesilverman]

Many offers to link have come my way, and I always check out the site and it's links page.

What I've noticed is that many websites use "Zuse" for their linking pages, and none of those "links" pages have backlinks showing up at Google NORE are they ranked.

So my questions are:

Is it still a good idea for ME to link to them, even if their home page is ranked well?

Why are none of their "links" pages indexed into Google?

What benefit do I receive in linking to them?

Do search engines exclude Zuse linked pages, or penalize sites which use them?

Thanks for your time, insite and advice.

[Black_Knight]

Do you mean Zeus? The link directory management software and robot from CyberRobotics ?

If so then this is an issue that has been discussed many times over the years. The big problem was a thing called 'The Collective' which was a massive reciprocal links program that got heavily penalized.

Other problems with Zeus are simply that you need to take the time to personalize everything. Too many users have mis-used Zeus in the past so that many webmasters will auto-filter out the default messages, etc from their email.

If you discard the templates, etc, and use Zeus solely as a management tool, building your directory by hand, then it can still be a very useful tool indeed.

If you are aiming to build link-popularity, rather than to build a web directory because your customers want or need a web directory, I'd advise you to look at more effective and efficient measures.

[abesilverman]

Thank you, Ammon.

I guess what I'm concerned about exchanging a link with website which utilize Zeus (major finger mixup in initial post - sorry), is that NONE of them show either backlinks OR page rank on their "doorway" link page nor on any of the following "categorized" link pages.

So if I do reciprocate with these sites, will MY site be "drained of page rank" and since their link pages HAVE no page rank, what benefit do I derive from it?

Currently, my "links" pages have page rank of 3-2 and 2 respectfully, home page of 4, and their "links" pages have 'El Zippo.

I don't technically NEED to reciprocate with these sites, but would like to link to at least a handful of them if doing so will not harm me either in page rank or SE placement.

Thank you in advance for any additional advice or insite into this phenomenom.

[Black_Knight]

Google gives a vague but frighteningly firm statement regarding this matter: "Don't link to bad neighborhoods".

Their definition of a bad neighborhood isn't anywhere near as clear as we'd like, but in essence it comes down to sites that engage in excessive cross-linking or reciprocal linking in an attempt to manipulate their PageRank score.

On those grounds, the only clear, catch-all advice I can give is to avoid reciprocal links altogether. If you'd not link to that site without them linking to you, then don't link to them at all. Your links should be there for your users benefit, not for your PageRank.

There's a thread at Cre8asite called Linking Strategies that is well worth reading for ways of building up links that work very well. Your timing in asking this is actually very good because I'm currently working on a massive article about linking strategies which I hope to finish shortly. In the meantime, I posted my very first blog entry (at the Cre8tive Flow blog) which is all about linking and links. Could be worth a glance.

[abesilverman]

Ammon-

Again, my deepest appreciation for the information and the links. You've left me LOTS to read, obsorb and contemplate.

My best to you on your article.

[Black_Knight]

You're very welcome, Abe.

Hope to chat with you in other topics over the coming months.