Keep or remove a link directory with 700 entries?

[GeorgFranz]

Hi,

I've a site which has a link directory included. About 700 entries. Each entry has an own page with a title, description and of course a link to the extern site. The link is not marked as "nofollow".

The site is only linking to similar / relevent other sites.

Now the seo question:

1. Keep the link directory as is?
2. Add a nofollow to the links?
3. Remove the link directory? (and about 700 pages)

Best wishes,

Georg.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Georg,

It really depends what the link directory consists of.

From what you have said, as they have their individual page with all of the information about the website, title, etc, then this seems like a very legitimate directory.

What I think your task should be is to police the information on the individual pages. Look to see if there is use of the linking website's keywords on there, and if so, remove them. Keep only content that is relevant to the website that is being linked too.

You could add on the 'nofollow' tags to the links if you like, however, I think the most important thing is to just manage all of the pages to ensure that they are serving their purpose as a directory and not just a link network. If this is done then it should be perfectly fine.

Hope this helps

Matt.

[AlanMosley]

do the pages generate any traffic? do they attract any links? if so keep them,

A nofollow will make no difference, nofollows use and much link juice as any other link, it just not pass it to the linked page, it just gets wasted. They do not save you anything.

The only time to use a no-follow is when you are linking to a spammy site,a nd you dont want to be connected to it.

You should also look at your internal linking, having a lot of pages can be an advanatge if lined correctly
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

[GeorgFranz]

Hi Matt + Alan,

thanks for your fast answers!

Well, the directory only gets 0,33% of all traffic. So I will delete it, that saves the maintenance time + cost.

Best wishes,
Georg.