Best possible linking on site with 100K indexed pages

[richardo24hr]

Hello All,

First of all I would like to thank everybody here for sharing such great knowledge with such amazing and heartfelt passion.It really is good to see. Thank you.

My story / question:

I recently sold a site with more than 100k pages indexed in Google. I was allowed to keep links on the site.These links being actual anchor text links on both the home page as well on the 100k news articles. On top of that, my site syndicates its rss feed (Just links and titles, no content) to this page.

However, the new owner made a mess, and now the site could possibly be seen as bad linking to my site. Google tells me within webmasters that this particular site gives me more than 400K backlinks.

I have NEVER received one single notice from Google that I have bad links. That first.

But, I was worried that this page could have been the reason why MY site tanked as bad as it did. It's the only source linking so massive to me.

Just a few days ago, I got in contact with the new site owner. And he has taken my offer to help him 'better' his site.

Although getting the site up to date for him is my main purpose, since I am there, I will also put effort in to optimizing the links back to my site.

My question:

What would be the best to do for my 'most SEO gain' out of this?

The site is a news paper type of site, catering for news within the exact niche my site is trying to rank. Difference being, his is a news site, mine is not. It is commercial.

Once I fix his site, there will be regular news updates all within the niche we both are in. Regularly as in several times per day. It's news. In the niche.

Should I leave my rss feed in the side bars of all the content?

Should I leave an achor text link on the sidebar (on all news etc.)

If so: there can be just one keyword... 407K pages linking with just 1 kw??

Should I keep it to just one link on the home page?

I would love to hear what you guys think.

(My domain is from 2001. Like a quality wine. However, still tanked like a submarine.)

ALL SEO reports I got here are now Grade A. The site is finally fully optimized.

Truly nice to have that confirmation. Now I hope someone will be able to tell me what is best to do, in order to get the most SEO gain out of this for my site.

Thank you.

[richardo24hr]

Thank you

[richardo24hr]

I guess my question was too hard to answer?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy richardo24hr,

One of articles that changed my SEO life was written by Rand back in 2010:

All Links are not Created Equal

The article is still valid today, and update link Panda and Penguin have further changed the landscape of links. Here's a few important points to keep in mind:

1. Multiple links from the same domain don't always help. It's better to have 50 links from 50 domains than 10,000 links from one domain. After the first link, other links from the same domain may pass value, but that value tends to diminish.

2. Since the Penguin update, sitewide, over-optimized anchor text can lead to penalties and/or filters targeting your keywords.

For example, a sitewide footer link (or sidebar link) that pointed to your site with optimized anchor text is often seen as non-editorial (as it's placed automatically by your CMS) and this could actually hurt you.

3. Google is getting better at sniffing out site with "administrative" relationships, and tend to devalue these links. So a site that links to you from 100,000 pages is likely to broadcast a relationship between the 2 sites to Google, so Google may possibly devalue these links.

Links from this site can help! But the danger is to overdo it in a way that can actually act counter to what you're trying to achieve.

The best links from this site, from an SEO point of view, would be:

• Editorial. Meaning they are linked to in the body of a text article, and not auto-generated by a CMS
• This means the links are varied in thier anchor text, and not over-optimized
• I would avoid sitewide links
• RSS links are tricky, but in general I don't see them adding much value. Although these links are often scraped and posted on 3rd party sites. In this case it's best to use generic or branded anchor text like the full url of your site: example.com

If I had to choose, one link on the homepage may well give you more value than 100,000 RSS links. There's probably an opportunity to do more than this, but I'd do a thorough link audit to look for as many over-optimized links from this domain as possible.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.