Internal and outgoing links

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  AFSB: What do you do with posts that have not gotten impressions from Google in a month or more? Is there some sort of test to see if they are against Google Webmaster Guidelines? I was thinking of putting internal links to them and outgoing links from them. If they still don't get impressions, I would delete them. Is there a better way?
  
  I have not been able to determine if and why these posts are not getting impressions. In some of them, the adsense ad disappears.
• 
  Jim Munro: Hi +AFSB ;, thank you for your participation here. :)
  
  Would you like to provide a disabled link to an example page?
• 
  Oranjenl Detuokl: Super
• 
  AFSB: Thanks for answering, Jim. I didn't say disabled link, but if you mean about the adsense, here is an example. ;
  
  http://articles4smallbusiness.com/moving-to-a-new-country/
  
  There is an adsense ad on the sidebar. It disappears. But the adsense ad on the article itself remains.
• 
  Jim Munro: OK please disable that link like this: ;http://articles4smallbusiness(DOT)com/moving-to-a-new-country/
  
  I will have a look for you.
• 
  AFSB: Here are a few posts who has not gotten Impressions in the last month.
  
  http://wp.me/p4RDEw-3Ey
  http://wp.me/p4RDEw-6dX
  http://wp.me/p4RDEw-4V
  http://wp.me/p4RDEw-3Hg
  
  Thanks again, Jim.
• 
  Jim Munro: OK - I think this site might be analysed as "low-quality". If that is the case, then no tweaks will help you.
  
  I read 5 or 6 articles, none of them seemed to contain information of any use to me.
  
  I am not an expert and I am likely to be completely wrong, though. :)
• 
  AFSB: Sorry, Jim. I don't know how to do what you ask. I know how to change the permalinks, but not the ;http://articles4smallbusiness.com/ part. ;
• 
  Jim Munro: I can see that you are selling links. If an idiot like me can see them, don't you think googlebot can figure it out?
• 
  AFSB: Jim, I maybe doing many things wrong, but I am not selling links. Not one penny. These articles was from a guest posting site that I closed because it was hit by panda. I wrote my story here:
  
  http://articles4smallbusiness.com/hit-by-panda-2/
  
  You have told me that my site was low quality before. Obviously, I did not believe you, but I do value the other advice you and your panel have given me. I only post now to ask a specific question.
• 
  AFSB: Just FYI. The original links that came with the articles are nofollowed. The rest of the links are follow.
• 
  Jim Munro: I understand, Ben, and I am trying hard to be objective and non-judgmental but am I doing the right thing if I ignore the obvious impediments that you face? ;
  
  Look at this article and the keyword "dream horse" with a dofollow link to dreamhorse(dot)com: ;http://articles4smallbusiness.com/owning-a-horse/
  
  You may not have sold that link for money, but the person who wrote the guest post did or t least someone involved in the process did because there is no other rational reason for it's existence.
  
  This content is toxic. You could make every outgoing link nofollow to have a chance of success, but the  ;problem would still remain that the guest posts themselves mostly have no value.
  
  I think you should start over with a new plan and devote your valuable time to building real content that people want to read. If the current pages were to rank, they would annoy the person landing on them.
• 
  AFSB: I understand what you are trying to say. I will try to absorb. ;
  
  I did post once before to ask you about this, if you remember. It has been a couple of months, so I am going by memory. I asked if Google does not see money transactions, how do they know whether or not you are selling links? ;
  
  You said not to worry about it. You know whether or not you were paid. Do not worry about what Google does. Tim Capper said it was a misconception about the payment. It was whether or not the link it was going to had control in putting the link there. I researched this and that's what John Mueller said. ;
  
  I have those links there because after I nofollowed where the guest post link originated from, the articles had almost no links. What is a post on the web without links? I think these links are helpful to the readers, as it integrates the content of  ;what it is linked to. I have seen improvement on the impressions and clicks since I have started this, although not much. ;
• 
  AFSB: As far as the horse article, the writer is horse photographer, nofollow on the sixth paragraph. ;
• 
  AFSB: I guess my original question is moot. OK, Jim... Thanks.
• 
  Jim Munro: How is the "dream horse" link useful to the reader? I am sorry I cannot provide anything useful.
• 
  AFSB: I don't know why you would think "dream horse" is not useful. Those who are looking for a horse could click on it. It is only useful to those people. Those who are not looking don't have to click.
  
  Sorry. I have not seen nor can I picture how anyone pays for links. At least, I have not thought about it. I don't want to break the rules. Even If I look like a bad guy, at least I am not.
• 
  AFSB: +Jim Munro ;I didn't want this to be an issue of how good or how bad my site is. But since the panel will probably talk about it when they talk about this post, perhaps I should talk about it too.  ;I just did a Google search on the full title of the article you were looking at. , "What You Should Know About Owning a Horse". ;I got this site as the top post on page one.
  
   ;http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2013/10/25/read-this-before-you-buy-your-first-horse.aspx
  
  My article is probably not as good, but it is similar. It covers almost the same points. I was told by one other person that my site was poor. I did the same thing to a dental article back then. The top article on page one was just as similar. ;
  
  You say that it would be annoying to someone who lands on it. The article covers upkeep, expenses, grooming, exercise, nutrition, boarding, training, grooming...... ;I don't see the poor quality that you see, Jim. ;
• 
  Jim Munro: One of the principles this community is founded on is to be non-judgmental.
  
  I should have avoided your question because I cannot be objective. I don't want to see you wasting your time because I believe that googlebot already has the ability to filter guest posts like these from the index. A common trait is that they are innocuous, they do not lead to a conclusion. I think this might be because they are mostly shallow re-writes of something else that has already been published.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: What is high quality and what is not high quality is hard to determine. And it does come with some subjective point of views. However, as SEO's we have to look at it because search engines are looking at it. The best example where Google stated that it will look at quality is Panda.
  
  I have read a couple of articles and they are quite self-explanatory or too obvious. ;
  
  For example take a look at ;http://articles4smallbusiness.com/trade-show-booth/
  
  " You need to make sure that you choose the booth that will meet your budgetary and marketing needs "
  Does this contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? [1]
  
  I think if you take a fair look at the articles, you will find articles where you have to say no to the questions listed on: ;
  
  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
• 
  Dave Elliott: Some.of the links do come across as spam but for me a bigger issue is how general you blog is. Clicking around I found articles about sexual positions during pregnancy, owning a horse.and using an ipad for business and a lot more seemingly unrelated articles.
  
  Being this general will make Google suspicious of.your content and makes me wonder how many of these articles are spun or appear on other sites.
  
  If.you want to rank more effectively id suggest to keep your focus a lot narrower and stick to one main subject.
  
  I see you being fustrated by Jim 's answers but until the foundation of your site is right it is very difficult to give effective on page or ethical link building advice.
• 
  Tim Capper: I have to agree with the above comments, I feel that this site kind of has a scattergun approach to the content.
  
  If i wanted to learn about horses, i would probably go to a site that has a lot of content about horses, fitness, carpets etc etc
  
  This very wide variety is diluting the impact of the site and the potential to appear within a genre.
  
  I would probably focus on a handful of "related" content  ;>> try and become more focused.
  
  I am wondering if your title is also putting of traffic.?
  
  Take the pull ups article >>
  
  Bodybuilding with Pull Ups | Articles for Small Business
  
  A person looking for info on pull ups may skip yours as the title >> "Article for small bussiness"  ;is probably putting them off clicking it
  
  They want to know about pull ups, not small business, which the title suggests. ;
• 
  AFSB: When I first started this, I watched a question and answer video by Matt Cutts. I will not look for that now, and my memory may not be exact. The question was if a site with multiple subjects was possible. Matt said, yes, but put them in proper categories. I have thought about taking each of this categories and putting them into relevant URL's. ;That is an advice I can work with, although it was not my original question.
  
  +Dave Elliott ;I did mention and +Jim Munro ;touched on it, that I probably got hit by Panda. It was discussed in one of the panel sessions. I watched another Google Video, this time by Maile Ohye. She said to get my high ranking articles and link them to the others. My problem was I changed the words to highly optimized key words, and used them as anchor words. This is clearly a link scheme as defined by Google.
  
  My impressions went way down, but did not disappear. It started to move up again when I linked them as I have. These links are mostly on the top page of Google search on that anchor word. I looked for posts relevant, and that would be the reason why some of the links are not page one Google. My conclusion with my research beyond the panel said that making these links helps the reader by integrating what the article linked to your own article. This would fill in what is missing on that particular article. Although I have not looked at them closely yet, the links actually helped these articles. ;
  
  We have strayed from my original question which I still want an answer. ;What do you do with posts that have not gotten impressions from Google in a month or more? My direction is outbound links and internal links as I have stated. Out of 180 articles, 35 have no impressions at all from Google in the last month. Some of them did have impressions in previous months. This is perhaps, because of Panda.  ;One article in particular seem to annoy Google because Adsense disappears on the sidebar. Strange, because it doesn't disappear on the article itself. ;
  
  http://articles4smallbusiness.com/moving-to-a-new-country/
  
  Lastly, why is that  ;+Jim Munro ;cannot be objective? You are all answering SEO questions in blogs in which you have no stake in. Can Google detect guest posts? With any blog, how can Google filter guest posts out? There are millions of search results from Google with each search. With just ten of them you can find similar things written. Can Google also filter these?
• 
  Tim Capper: So an impression would be if Google decides to show the article in search results for a number of search queries.
  
  1) no one is searching for anything related to the article
  
  2) Google does not think the article is good enough to be displayed for a search query.
  
  I probably would not decide over 1 months impressions.
  
  Are you going to have more articles in that area, in which case the sites authority for those articles will increase.
  
  If not then just 404 it and be done with it
• 
  AFSB: +Tim Capper  ; Yes. I have a few more.
  
  At one time, I had nearly 1,500 articles. Then, Matt Cutts article on Guest Posting came out. My site was de-listed shortly thereafter. I thought it was because they were Guest posts. If you care to read, here is what happened. ;
  
  http://articles4smallbusiness.com/hit-by-panda-2/
  
  I have about 500 articles that are offline, which I am slowly bringing back up after close scrutiny. A lot of them were duplicates. Those are gone. ;