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Hi, I just got a link back from one of the largest poker directories, one that usually ranks 1st or 2nd on google for many of the same search terms I’m hoping for. The thing is, my link is *buried*, like on the 15th page of poker directory listings. I was wondering if this helps me at all for google, or if people actually have to click to my site via the link for the reciprocal link to be useful? Thanks.
What’s the PR of the link page that you’re on? How many other links are also on the page? Is it a static link or a redirect?
The PR is 4, accorfding to my google toolbar. There are 20-30 other links on the page, I would guess. It looks like a php redirect.
The concern I would have would be with the php redirect, because I’m not sure you’re going to get backlink credit for the link from the search engines. But a link from a quality site’s PR 4 page with only 20 or 30 links on it is a pretty good link.
You might want some other opinions about the php redirect though, because like I say, I’m not entirely sure.
Isn’t a php redirect pretty common these days? I mean, that’s what all my links are. It makes db management soooo much easier.
PHP redirects for links are kinda unethical, similar to sticking a “nofollow” tag on the links. It does nothing for PR and SERPs, and is usually a sign of a greedy website that doesn’t want to risk passing any PR whatsoever (for example, pokerlistings.com).
Of course, there are those who simply like the simplicity of having an automated PHP program for links and don’t know any better.
I ran into this problem with my directory which I do use php redirct for counting outbound hits and ranking the site according to that. So I created 4 separate pages for each link that was added to insure they had proper outbound links. The extra pages were user reviews, site profile ( example profile page: http://www.freepokerleague.com/viewlinkdetails-542-Casino-Affiliate-Programs.html ) and so on. On each of these pages I give a h2 link to the actual domain. While this is a little further down than an outbound link in the actual listings ( example listing page: http://www.freepokerleague.com/link-5.html ) I reason that at least I give the outbound link and optimize a good situation for the submitted site and my listing for the words in their domain name. I never require a link back for a directory listing.
So my link with Poker Listings (how did you know?!
) is basically worthless? Well, that sucks.Also, I use PHP redirects for everything, as my web designer friend who built the database said it would be easiest. Should I get rid of them?
There is a little twist to my situation, the php redirct is masked as .html through mod_rewrite. I hope this allows for the redirct to be of value also.
PHP redirects are fine, as long they are 301 Permanent Redirects (not 302).
PR is passed through a 301 permanent redirect. PR is not “lost” with this type of redirect; it carries through to the final end page, wherever that may be.
People who use php redirects to count outbound links are not greedy or unethical, in my opinion. They are simply keeping track of the number of outbound clicks. However, many webmasters won’t trade links with a site that uses redirects on the links pages, because they don’t know exactly which type of redirect is being used — e.g. meta refresh, 301 permanent, 302, javascript redirect, etc. (PR is not passed through a javascript redirect, btw).
Sisko — your link on pokerlistings is not necessarily worthless. And no, you should not get rid of all your php redirects. It makes good sense to track your outbound clicks. This way, you can compare your stats to the stats of the affiliate program. If you see 100 clicks on your end, and the aff program says you only sent 12 clicks, then you know there’s a serious problem somewhere.
Mod rewrite shouldn’t pose any problems to the redirect either. In fact, using mod rewrite might be a good idea for sites with dynamic URLs. For some reason, Google doesn’t give visible PR to the dynamic URLs on my main site. Example of a dynamic URL:
[HTML]http://www.choicegambling.com/casinos.php?name=roxy-palace-casino[/HTML]
So, if you mod-rewrite the dynamic url into a static URL (i.e. one with that ends with .php, .asp, .html, etc., then the PR should show up in the toolbar after the next PR update.The above example could be rewritten to appear like this, for example:
[html]http://www.choicegambling.com/casinos/roxy-palace-casino.html[/html]Pokerlisting’s link is far from useless. I get a few hits each month from mine… but I’m fairly sure I’m getting no PR.
I won’t usually exchange links with someone using PHP redirects, myself, but it’s the webmaster’s choice. As I said, I don’t think every webmaster who does these redirects is unethical or greedy, but I think it’s certainly a common reason.
Also, I doubt most of them are permanent redirects, since whatever page they’re redirecting to may cause duplicate content issues for their website (there’s a large dicussion about this). But perhaps some are permanent. I just can’t imagine a website having hundreds of permanent redirects not being penalized in some way by the SE’s.
My main site has thousands of permanent redirects, and it’s alive and well.
To clarify — the redirects are used only on affiliate links (to count the number of clicks), and each redirect link has the rel=”nofollow” tag in place. I don’t use redirects or rel=”nofollow” on my links pages, because then nobody would want to exchange links with me.
So is there a way for me to examine the Pokerlistings link to see if it’s the no follow type? Will a view source give me the information I need?
Yes, that will work. View source, then search for nofollow.
Engineer wrote:To clarify — the redirects are used only on affiliate links (to count the number of clicks), and each redirect link has the rel=”nofollow” tag in place. I don’t use redirects or rel=”nofollow” on my links pages, because then nobody would want to exchange links with me.I’ve been wondering about this one. Is it a good idea to put rel=”nofollow” onto affiliate links? Would that help “leaking” PR and other SEO factors?
