12 replies to this topic

[Pete]

I have a bit of a quandary.

 

A big source of good traffic to my site is coming via my signature links of a forum.

 

I don't want to lose that traffic by deleting the links so I want these to be nofollow, but I have no way to do that, because the forum admin want things the way they want it.

 

So what I thought of doing is to set up an intermediary site which those links go to. 

 

At that intermediary site there are a number of links for users, which are all nofollow.

 

Furthermore, the intermediary site has robots.txt 

 

 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
 

Just in case people are ticked off about  about clicking twice, the pages at the intermediate site automatically redirect after a few seconds.

 

Just wondered what people think of this idea? Or is there a better way to achieve what I want?

[jonbey]

Why not just use a URL shortener like goo.gl ?

 

I am sure some others may even allow you to set nofollow. Bit.ly maybe?

[Pete]

Well, according to this:

 

 

URL shorteners act like any 301, so Google would follow those links and still penalise if there were many and they were "low quality"

[chuckfinley]

I don't think you need to worry about followed forum links.

 

The Quality Guidelines only refer to highly optimized signature links -- signatures with several keywords included.

 

Very likely google has done the work for you by devaluing links from forums overall.

 

I definitely wouldn't do what you are suggesting as it looks like a scheme and google's always talking about how much they don't like schemes ....... I would worry about google misinterpreting my intentions.  Any time someone is going through that much effort, it usually isn't because they want to make sure their methods are "white hat".

Edited by chuckfinley, 01 February 2013 - 05:33 AM.

[jonbey]

Make your own then. I bought a 3 letter domain that has the same main consonants as my main domain and put a redirecting thing on it. Set it up to manage adverts and affiliate links. The whole domain is set to noindex/nofollow, and the robots block all. Got me out of a "bridge page violation" a while back after some scraper (I think) linked my aff links without nofollow. 

 

I used a .im

 

There is a suitable one available for you - ptm.im

[joehall]

Why are you worried about signature links? Have you been notified by Google about them? Have you fallen victim to Penguin?

[Pete]

Why are you worried about signature links? Have you been notified by Google about them? Have you fallen victim to Penguin?

 

 

Because of this:

 

http://support.googl...en&answer=66356

 

Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines:

 

......

 

 

Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have not been notified, but i Certainly seemed to fall a victim of Pengin.

[TheAlex]

How 'optimised' are the links? If you have keywords in the links and you're worried about that, you could just change the link anchor text to your URL. What you're suggesting seems like a lot of effort if you haven't received an unnatural links warning in Google Webmaster Tools, it's a good source of traffic, and you're genuinely posting the comments.

 

Does anyone know what percentage of people get a WMT warning if they've been Penguin'd?

[Pete]

Yes there are specific keywords in the links, because that is more helpful to people than just a URL. I could take out the keywords, but I know fewer people would then follow them. It just seems odd that something I do that helps people know what they a clicking on should now be frowned on by Google. It seems by moving the goalposts, they are throwing the baby out with the bath water. One too many clichés or mixed metaphors there.

[TheAlex]

As with many things it's a minority that spoil it for the majority. Is there enough space to put the useful text next to the URL instead?

[Pete]

As with many things it's a minority that spoil it for the majority. Is there enough space to put the useful text next to the URL instead?

 

Good point. But in this particular forum it would mean probably only two links instead of four as there is a character limit for signatures.

[jonbey]

Did you get that .im domain yet? Missing an opportunity!

[Pete]

Did you get that .im domain yet? Missing an opportunity!

 

 

Thanks but no, but I have set something up with a domain I had knocking around that is also relevant.