30 replies to this topic

[Jordan]

Hi there Guys..

I dont mean to bring up the same old stuff but I've seen many threads about sitewides as to wether they are good or bad or just valueless. I have not yet come across a general conclusion as to how to use them, to avoid them, or just use them as you like.

Could we maybe just discuss the conclusions that everyone has had in mind come up with a overall conclusion.

Thanks guys......and girls

[Respree]

<post deleted: question misunderstood>

Edited by Respree, 11 January 2006 - 01:48 PM.

[AltherrWeb]

I think sitewides are referring to links.
Sometimes when you get links from some places they like to throw you into a php navigational bar or something like that and you end up being on all of the pages. I had this happen to me from a news site, and I went on all of the archive pages and stuff. It seemed to have boosted me up really high on MSN (1st place for the anchor text), and a few spots up the first page of Google, then the Google backlink check only counted about 5 or 6 of the links once it settled down.
I don't think it hurts you too much, but I don't have a whole lot of experience with it. Just commenting off of my own personal experience.

If you did mean the page width then I'm sorry for hijacking your thread

[Black_Knight]

Site-wide links seem far more likely to be ignored or down-valued. I'm basing that on what I have seen generally, rather than on a specific empirical test.

So it isn't fact, but for whatever my hunches are worth, I'm personally betting against site-wide links right now except where they are a part of the actual navigation, and even then, am not counting them to count as separate links on each page.

[randfish]

Ammon - My feeling is that it depends on the site. The Wall Street Journal linking to Bankrate.com on every page - maybe not "full value", but definitely lots of value. Same holds true for the Univ of WA linking out to content it has on external sites on every page - valuable.

It's when you get into sitewide links that are, actually "attainable" for an SEO that you'll see more devaluation and less value, IMO. Frustrating to think that if you can get it, it's not worth anything, but that's how it goes.

[Intensity]

In my experience it can raise a flag with Google and might cause the anchor text keyword to overdraw its % allowance threshold. Yahoo and MSN don't seem to care.

[Ron Carnell]

The Wall Street Journal linking to Bankrate.com on every page - maybe not "full value", but definitely lots of value.

How can you tell, Rand? I mean, a single link from the WSJ carries a tremendous amout of pull, and I'm just not sure how accurately one can measure tremendouser.

[AbleReach]

Tremendouser!
:rofl:

Would that be eyeballs plus SERP?

Why worry over SERPs if eyeballs are traversing a site-wide link from someplace like WSJ?

I'd worry less about how Google counts a site-wide link than how tremendouser the association with a site of quality effects readers' impression (half pun) of the linked-to's quality, memory of brand and mouse action.

My humble two cents.

Elizabeth

[Jim_Westergren]

MSN loves sitewides.

My assumptions since some months is that Google only counts for example 5-10 links from the same IP, the rest are devalued. External links that is, not internal. Internal links flows much higher PR and is natural part of the site.

Could sitewide links give penalty?

I highly doubt it. Look at blogs for example and their blog roll which is a default fuction on the blog softwares and is sitewide links. Should they penalize for that? No. But in some extreme cases, yes it could be possible especially when detecting unnatural link patterns.

[earlpearl]

A friend/co experimenting webmaster gave me a site wide on his site(maybe 1k pages).

The anchor text phrase jumped to #1 at MSN. Haven't seen a negative impact on G rankings.

Rankings in Y are also showing (about 15) without any other effort.

To date the sitewide has not had an adverse effect on google rankings.

Dave

[bsaric]

very little value or nothing

i have add my link on 10 000 pages and just nothing after re-indexing (high rankings and high traffic site, PR5)

Edited by bsaric, 23 January 2006 - 03:33 PM.

[fthead9]

I'd be leary of site wide links. After Jagger we saw an immediate drop in rankings for two mini-sites (10-20 pages) we developed for the same parent company that used site wide links. The links went to the parent company as well as the other mini-site. The mini-sites were hosted on a different C block than the main site. The services were all related so we didn't set it up as an elaborate linking scheme but it appeared to raise a red flag with both Google post Jagger and Yahoo after the Oct. update, MSN still ranked first page for major terms on all three sites.

We changed the links to home page only and the rankings have been climbing in both Google and Yahoo, although still not where they were before. Granted this is a slightly different scenario than just get a site wide link from a totally independent site but I think in general site wide links can raise red flags with Google and Yahoo. It is best to way the marketing/branding value of a site wide (WSJ extemely high, Joe's Auto Detailing probably not so great) versus the potential increased scrutiny the site will likely get from the SEs.

[bwelford]

Perhaps I can be devil's advocate or from Missouri or whatever you say on this one.

If you have the same template and navigation bar for most of the web pages on your website, does this site-wide concept still apply. Say you have 90 web pages and on every one there are links from the navigation bar to the 6 main web pages you have in the root directory. (These might be About Us, News, Products, Customers, Downloads, Contact Us.) Does this mean that these web pages have a lower Page Rank than if the navigation bar didn't exist? That doesn't sound at all right. So is it a question of the number of 'site-wide' occurrences you have? Is 300 OK but 3,000 isn't.

If this 'site-wide' concept is true, then how does this work out with blogs. Every post you make has the same template and mostly the same set of links. You can very quickly get up to a very large number of occurrences for the same set of links.

My own explanation of a gradual decline in PageRank, even though there was a gradual increase in numbers of incoming links, is that this is the long-term average trend. As the total number of web pages in the databases rise, then the average PageRank goes down given that it probably is a long-tailed statistical distribution going from PR 0 to PR 10.

What do others think of this alternative explanation?

[earlpearl]

Saw this topic in the forum lead...so I looked at my site and keyword phrase with the sitewides pointed at it 2 weeks later.

MSN still #1
G serps has dropped from 4 to 7
Y serps has dropped from 15 to 18

Haven't done anything on the phrase in the last 2-3 weeks.

[Alan Murray]

Web design companies that are linked site wide from there clients sites are still doing well in google. I know of one web designer site that nearly all his backlinks come from clients sitewides. He ranks for a few medium competitive keywords. The argument that all sitewides are bad is false in my opinion.

It’s just like the argument that reciprocal links are no good – it’s just not as simple as that.

[IrishWonder]

I did a post about it on my blog some time ago after seeing a post by Patrick Gavin here. His explanation and reasoning seems very logical, and the drop after Jagger can be easily explained by this very theory: you used to have 100 links from one site counted as 100 links, now they all count as one link. And I'm with AbleReach on "eyeballs plus SERP" observation when it comes to really big and popular sites giving you sitewides.

[bigdoug]

The question is, is it worth the MSN traffic for maybe a loss of 2 or 3 spots in G?

I don't think so

D

[Jordan]

The question is, is it worth the MSN traffic for maybe a loss of 2 or 3 spots in G?

I don't think so

D

I understand what your thinking is but then how does one explain the situation with seochat.com and all their sites that are interlinking via sitewides at the top of all their sites and they are ranking #1 in Google and #4 in MSN.

Im not throwing your theory out the window, just using a live example as this is the example that I looked at before I interlinked all my ecommerse sites.

Is there maybe a certain way inwhich seochat.com did their linking that I should know of that makes them so successfull in the SERPS.

[Ruud]

Is there maybe a certain way inwhich seochat.com did their linking that I should know of that makes them so successfull in the SERPS.

Nope. In fact, those links carry the CSS class "network"

I have seen a boost from site wides and I have seen no boost whatsoever. I have not seen sites which went down sufficiently to say "dang, we shouldn't have done those site wides".

I think search engines try to come up with anti-spam/SEO solutions these days which can't be played too easily. Making site wides hurt would just be way too easy to be played.

[Mike521]

I look at it as a traffic issue more so than a google and a pagerank issue. I'd rather have a link on every page of a site, so the chances of someone clicking it to visit my site are increased

screw google if they don't like it