Using rel="nofollow"

[TwoPints]

Hello,

Quick question really, as far as the SERPs are concerned If I had a site with say 180 links on each page - 80 above suggested limit, would putting 'rel="nofollow"' on 80 of these be as good as only having 100 links per page?

Currently I have removed the links, but wereally need these as they point to networked sites that we own and are relevant...

But we dont want to look spammy...

An example of one of the sites without the links can be seen here

whereas a site with the links can be seen here

You can see the links we are looking to keep (at the bottom) and why...

Thanks

[Naghirniac]

I think nowadays rel=nofollow there is no meaning. With the changes in google, also the link juice is not been affect by it. You can check some info in this old post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-you-use-nofollow-and-rel-nofollow

But in SEO's live everything is gray, and not black in white. Its better for you using 100 links per page and go with more security.

[RAPPLA]

You should build the site for functionality and if there is a legitimate reason to have all those links then feel free to put them in. I wouldn't over think this.

[fhnhockey088]

Quality is MUCH better than quantity

[TwoPints]

They are all legitimate links, all 74 sites act as one larger site, or a network of sites. But the thing is when I removed the links I moved up in the SERPs...

What would be the best way of showing te links to visitors but hiding them from SERPs?

Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

You've got bigger problems here than 100 links/page (that's just a guideline) - you're cross-connecting enough sites that it looks like a link farm. Having them all in the footer only adds to the problem, and makes the tactic look lower-quality. I'd definitely no-follow these, as you could potentially be penalized.

The nofollow won't really help with the 180 links - it'll still burn up link-juice. It'll just keep these links from getting you into trouble. Realistically, these links are probably already being devalued by the algorithm.

Practically, being in the footer, these links may not have a ton of value for visitors (if you click-mapped the page, I'm betting the CTR is very low). I wonder if there's a way to integrate them. For example, when someone clicks through to a job listing in Kent, having something like "See more jobs in Kent" on that page and link it to: http://www.kentjobsonline.net/.

From an SEO standpoint, these geo-targeted microsites have lost a lot of value over the past couple of years. I've even seen the strategy run into Panda issues. You may want to re-evaluate down the road and consider consolidating.

[TwoPints]

Hi Dr Peter

Thanks for the detailed response. A few questions, you say I have bigger problems than the 100 links/page - is that just that the sites are at risk of looking like a link farm, or are there bigger problems still?

I hear you on the fact that links in the footer carry less weight and on the consolidating aspect, and it is something that we are working on, but in the mean time, I would really like to find a way if possible to keep some form of cross connecting the sites.. We do have the detail pages which we don't need to be SEO primed, really we only need the -

home page

results page 1

results page 2

results page 3

SEO primed, you can see the different phrases (search patterns) that we are targeting; each site has hundreds of pages like this, that we don't necessarily need primed as these are only live for 28 days..

Is there an option to either include these links in either an iframe in the footer area (for user reference only) or on the detail pages?

Any other options that will work, that will not result in the sites being at risk of looking like a link farm?

I appreciate your insight.

Many thanks

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry, by "bigger problems" I just meant the potential link-farm.

The nofollow will remove the SEO risk - you'll still lose a little link-juice to those links, but you won't get penalized down the road for having them. Of course, you won't gain any SEO value from the cross-linking either. At this point, though, I think that's inevitable. The risk is greater than the reward from cross-linking this many domains.

Any other ways to block the links are going to look more suspicious to Google than nofollow (including iFrames). Any I can think of would be best avoided in this scenario.

Any way you can contextually cross-link would create less SEO risk and potentially let you get some ranking value out of the connections. That's why I suggested links at the job listing level. I think that might benefit users a bit more, too. Even then, you don't want to go overboard.