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Thanks Keri, I have heard that when engaging in such nefarious practices webmaster tools should be avaoided like the plague!

Thanks for that Josh...good point about the sidebar content, heads and footers. They will hopefully appear to a user (as well as Google) totally unique. I guess paranoia is the name of the game...hence the question in the first place!!

Hi All

A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche...

If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern?

Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours.

NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked

Hi Journeyman

Many thanks for the reply and the advice, which begs another question!

If Google can still see the road that the visitor takes to the no index no followed page where I intend to place the affiliate links will it restore the authority and therefore ranks of the parcel related landing pages where I originally placed the links, or will it still devalue these pages on account of the fact that we are linking from them to pages with affiliate links?

I have no intention of trying to achieve rankings for the no indexed page where I want to place the affiliate links but I desperately want to restore the parcel related pages for which previously I had some good rankings.

My understanding was that Google determines the value on a page by page basis so my thought was that if I remove the affiliate links from the landing page and then provide a to an internal page with the affiliate links it might restore the authority of the landing page even if it attributes zero value / authority to the other internal page on which I want to place the links?

Hope that makes sense!

Many thanks

Hello all, my question relates to the recent panda changes and the subsequent impact on pages with affiliate links.

I have a hub of pages on my website talking about parcel delivery. Each page has unique, quality content and up until about 3 weeks ago they were starting to achieve strong rankings. We then decided to add some affiliate links (just 3) on each of the 5 parcel related pages we have. The rankings for each of these pages have tanked completely; rather than top 20, we're now outside of the top 100 for all of them.

When we noticed this we masked the link, changing it to domain.com/index/affiliate; we also no followed the link. Alas this has had minimal effect in restoring the rankings.

What i'm now thinking of doing is removing the affiliate links from the parcel landing pages altogether and instead providing users with a no followed link to another page within the site upon which we would have the affiliate links. This page would also be no indexed as well.

My question is: Is this a good idea and if so will it restore my previous rankings over time, or have those pages (as a result of the affiliate links) been permanently down graded?? Any assistance would be gratefully received!