Backlink Question

[Palmbourne]

I have a backlink on a very popular sports news site PR5 this is a sitewide link. The link is near the top on righthand side. As you scroll down, the page keeps loading more and more information. According to my Google webmaster tools the link is on the site over 21,400 pages. As the stories being submitted are new most of the pages have no PR however there are around 30-40 categories that have PR ranging from 0-4.

According to my AHREFS account on a daily basis it picks up between 100-200 new links with on average around 10-20 being lost as the stories are being removed.

Would anyone advise I just ask for my link to be on the category pages only or should I leave it as it is?

Many Thanks in Advance for any Feedback.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would see if I could get this link nofollowed. Now, that will probably sound counterproductive, but remember, you're not link building for rankings - you're link building to provide a relevant and quality experience - you want to add to the conversation, not distort it. Plus, brand mentions are a great thing.

I'd rather have the link and have it nofollowed than have the link followed thousands of times and it ultimately be considered counterproductive or spammy. That's just me though - it's upto you to research and weigh your actions!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[ATP]

This isn't as simple as just looking at your backlink profile and wanting only high PR links.

There is a diminishing returns effect on anything over 2-3 links from a single website. Google recognises they are all from the same root domain and acts accordingly. I do believe in a penguin update many web hosting companies were affected as many had link profiles with this due to "created by" footer links. However, links like this from a single website shouldnt be enough to arrouse suspicion on their own, it  your website isn't spammy and the website linking to you isnt spammy then dont worry too much.

Ideally yes, you would normally aim for only a couple of links from the highest PR pages on their website but there is a big BUT!

Do you get much referral traffic from these links? If so does this traffic come from the category pages of their site or the news pages? Don't shoot a your own referral traffic in the foot by trying to optimise your back-link profile.

If you have good traffic being driven from this collection of pages.... leave them be and focus on getting more good quality links elseware.

If they dont provide any traffic then look at the rest of your link profile, if this is an isolated case and eveything else meets good SEO standard and isnt spammy. I wouldnt personally worry about it until google gave me a reason to.

EDIT: My terrible english lol

[Palmbourne]

Patrick

Thank you for your answer, being new to link building would my rankings drop if i nofollowed this link?

John

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

While I can't say "rankings will drop", Matt Cutts has stated that this will not hurt your rankings. You can read more on that here.

Hope this helps!

[ATP]

Patrick you may know more than me here but to follow up.

I understand that nofollow link wont hurt his site in anyway, and its a great link to confirm that.

However, he would be loosing the "juice" from the high authority main page and all the cateogry pages. Whilst the nofollow links wont hurt him, loosing this surly could?

[Palmbourne]

ATP

Thank you for replies. I have looked into our Google analythics and it appears iwe had the following visits:

38 referrals from 5th June to 5th July
20 of those were from there homepage
13 from category pages
5 from individual stories

I have contacted the company who we advertise with and they have agreed to place our link on the home page and the highest traffic category pages.

Thank you to all who have taken the time to help me out not only with this question but all of my previous questions. You are helping a small business stay afloat against some very big competition.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

As this is one link that just keeps getting recounted, I wouldn't see this as an issue.

You could also ask for the link to have a more permanent position on a static page that's relevant to your site.

My suggestion is just from the perspective of having a link that's recounted and seen thousands of times.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[MarieHaynes]

I wouldn't worry about the fact that you are seeing hundreds of thousands of links from one site. It's not the number of links that make a link unnatural, but rather, whether the link is there primarily for SEO reasons. It sounds like this link is bringing you good traffic. It's probably a good one. Provided it's not a paid link or one that is there in exchange for something, I'd keep it as is.