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Thoughts on Allowing Users to post links? (12 posts)

  1. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    What are your thoughts on allowing users to post links to other websites on their blogs? I have many users who are constantly posting links to different material and even though the links are legit and to good content, do you ever feel like all of those links would ultimately hurt you in the long run for Search Engine rankings, etc...? I believe the goal with SEO is to get more INBOUND links then OUTBOUND links, and this seems like it would degrade the quality of the site.

    Any thoughts?

  2. theapparatus
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Depends on if you're running subdomains or subdirectories. If it's subdirectories, it'll hurt since Google sees it all as one single site. If you're doing subdomains, each blog is seperate. (You do have a link back in the footer or elwhere back to your blog, right? That way your main blog gets links.)

    You could come up with a plugin that adds in a noindex,nofollow to each outbound link. Gotta admit though that that will probably annoy some endusers though.

    Folks are going to be linking in as well to the blogs. You do get credit that way I would think.

    Hmm....

  3. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Hmm as well! I am a bit lost on this subject, as I don't want to hurt my site ultimately, and don't want to annoy users by not allowing them to post links. And I guess it is working both ways as well; the users are creating unique content on my site, which search engines rank high on the list too.

    My blogs are installed on subdirectories, so I guess links would hurt me.

    And I don't want the blogs to jeopardize my entire site either; the blogs aren't the only thing offered on my site. (the blog directory is in a subfolder itself)

    Any other thoughts? What would anyone recommend regarding the noindex,nofollow plugin? Any ideas of how to implement that, its implications, etc...?

  4. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Also, is there any way to code the noindex,nofollow meta tag so that it only doesn't follow EXTERNAL links? Because I would still like the robots to index and follow INTERNAL links and pages, just not external links and pages. Any thoughts on this as well?

    I believe if the attribute rel="nofollow" was applied to each anchor link, that link wouldn't be followed by the bots. Do you see any options as to how to automatically set every outgoing link to rel="nofollow" or should I just go through and manually fix each link for now?

  5. mark-k
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    hhuskies, you are wrong in so many ways that it is hard to find were to start.

    Imagine a world in which every one had adopted your point of view, and every link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute. In this world how would search engine will be able to rank pages? surely the end result will be that the SE will ignore this attribute.

    That being said, there are two places in which PR is being needlessly leaked - the footer and blogroll. The reason it is "needless" is that those links are not related in any way to the specific content of the post/page.

    My own strategy for stopping the leakage, while being fair toward the linked sites, is to use rel="nofollow" on the footer and blogroll at all the pages except for the home page.

  6. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I am not saying I want to add the rel=nofollow tag to every link across my entire site; that ultimately would ruin the value of search engine rankings. I have hundreds of links on my website, and would never think of adding that tag to ever link. I am JUST talking about adding that code to the links my USERS post.

    I mean, wouldn't that ruin the link integrity of my website if my users were posting links to let's say: Aunt Betty's new cooking site, or Uncle's new Automobile website? If these links just aren't related to my site in the least, why would I want to allow these links to be coming from my site?

    Also, when some of the users don't take care of their comments, I don't want hundreds of links to random pharmaceutical companies coming from my site, or to spam websites, etc...this would ultimately hurt me in the long run as well.

    Just like I would add the rel=nofollow tag to the footer and blogroll as you suggested, I would like to apply the attribute to USER posted links as well in the blogging area. I would have to say that a good portion of the links users post just aren't related to my site topic in the least, and don't want this to hurt me. Is this still a wrong route to go? Should I maybe just suggest to users to not post links of unrelated content?

    Thank you for your thoughts!

  7. andrea_r
    Moderator
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I think you're really over-thinking this. :) Any linking restrictions imposed on users defeats the purpose of blogging entirely. What's the difference between your users linking all over, and, say, a long-time blog that has literally years of content and thousands of posts, and links?

    "Also, when some of the users don't take care of their comments, I don't want hundreds of links to random pharmaceutical companies coming from my site,"

    Then get a better spam management tool. Also, I think no-follow is already on the links in the comments.

    It;s alreayd been determined that Google sees the subdomain blogs as *different* sites, so what your users are linking to isn't hurting you any.

    (And really - I have the opposite problem. Google LOVES my site and won't leave me alone, even when I tell it to go away.)

    I think you're barking up the wrong tree here, and if you followed through, you'd be hurting yourself more in the eyes of your users, and lose some integrity to boot.

    If you are bulding up a good site with loads of content and *happy users*, then Google will follow.

  8. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Thank you for the thoughts. I really appreciate it; and yes, I think I am over thinking the whole deal as well.

    And even though I use subfolders, I am thinking now that things will be okay.

    Thank you BOTH for your thoughts, and for showing me what I truly need to focus on. :-)

  9. theapparatus
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    If spam is the issue, you can quickly run through your most recently updated blogs fairly easy. Go Dashboard -> Site Admin -> Blogs and sort with the updated column. It's easy as pie to do right clicks off that column and check to see what's been posted on those blogs.

  10. hhuskies
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Thank you for the idea on how to moderate comments!

  11. honewatson
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    I agree with andrea_r. Also I'd like to say that one of the biggest misconceptions about getting better search engine results is that outbound links are bad. Quality outbound links actually help your search engine results.

  12. theapparatus
    Member
    Posted 16 years ago #

    Thank you for the idea on how to moderate comments!

    That's actually for moderating posts and blog content, not comments.

About this Topic

  • Started 16 years ago by hhuskies
  • Latest reply from theapparatus