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[ypl]

We are re-design our home page, one are of the current home page has a drop down window called "popular products" .  We wrote short articles for our keywords and have them linked to product page. In the past, it has helped us rank.

However, with new Google rules, our feeling is that such practice is no good.  So, we lean towards to remove it.  Still, we'd like to hear some opinions and ask some questions too:

www.butterflycraze.com

1. is it clear to you that this is not good in Google's eyes?

2. how do I determine if these links serving any SEO purpose now after Panda?

3. depend on the answer to 2), what should we do about these pages?  shall be re-direct or shall we remove them from Google index?

[RuthBurrReedy]

Hi - I didn't see the drop-down window called "popular products" on your page so it looks like you've decided to remove it.

I think a "popular products" section can be valuable for users.  If you do decide you want to direct users to your most popular products in the navigation or on the home page, doing so shouldn't give you too much of a hit - although I agree that creating short articles about them just for SEO purposes is probably something you want to stop doing.

After Panda/Penguin, it's unlikely that having a ton of keyword-anchor-text-rich links from one page on your site to another page on your site will do much good, so if your users aren't really using them to travel from page to page, I'd remove them (which it looks like you did).  If your pages didn't take a rankings hit after you removed them,  you're probably fine.  Let me know how it went!

[RuthBurrReedy]

Did you receive the answer you were looking for?  I'm going to go ahead and mark this question as "Answered," but if you need more info or help please let me know.  Thanks!