Alex Jeffreys students Blogroll Removed
Thanks for visiting, why not download my free eBook, "Google Adwords Demystified" click here.
Yesterday, I removed my Alex Jeffreys students Blogroll from this blog.
Before I did it, I e-mailed everyone (I think) that was on the Blogroll and informed them of my decision. I received many replies to that e-mail, wanting to know why I decided to do it and why I didn’t just use a “No Follow” PlugIn for the Blog.
This post is to explain why.
Why I removed the Alex Jeffreys students Blogroll
I decided to remove the blogroll when I realised there was no SEO benefit and when Alex revealed that our blogs are supposed to be Stand Alone and not a group.
Why bring people to your site, so they can go to another students site?
From my experience and the feedback I’ve received from the SEO experts I rely on for up to date information, the only way we would have had a major problem with Google, is if we had tried to put a few 100 links on it.
If we had been able to keep the number of links low, and because we clearly marked our Blogrolls, Alex Jeffreys Students, I would expect that any investigation would have seen that we were not trying to deliberately do anything wrong.
In that situation, the most Google would probably do is give no “credit” for the backlink.
I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s the best I could come up with, as we wouldn’t know for sure unless Google decided to take action.
‘NoFollowup’
I don’t agree with a blanket ‘NoFollowup’ policy, if I decide to link to a site in my blogroll, I want the site to get any benefit it can from the link. The same way that I would like to get the benefit of any backlink to my Blog
There is a built-in No Follow to the parts of Wordpress that I want a No Follow on and I’m happy with that.
Backlinks
One Way Backlinks are links to your web site or blog from another web site, blog, Search Engine, etc. That your web site or Blog does not link back to.
One Way Backlinks to a website are the strongest links you can get, especially if the link is from an authority site.
Two way linking, I link to you, you link to me, are of little value, so I actually want one way backlinks to my site.
So our Blogroll links wouldn’t be worth a lot, as they were two way links.
That’s it, it was a business decision, nothing personal.
Eoin
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Hi Eoin
Read this post on the students blogroll and I was always weary about adding loads of students and the effect so I tend to agree with what your saying.
Keep it up
Cheers Tony
Tony Rogan’s last blog post..How do I start blogging?
February 4th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi Tony,
Thanks for your comments.
Eoin
September 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Hi Eoin,
I respect your decision of removing the Alex Jeffreys students blogroll. (I am not certain as to the value of it one way or another but it can hardly hurt you).
But perhaps you may want to think of having a blogroll with links to your favorite sites.
I am convinced that Google wants to see interaction and sharing.
Besides, you may not get much benefit from having a blogroll aside from my point above but having someone else, especially a site that Google values add you to their blogroll will pull your blog or site up.
No site is likely to do that unless you add them to your blogroll first.
Being completely on your own and isolated from the internet community, having no links to it is likely not a good idea.
Vance.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Hi Vance,
Thanks for your comment, interesting insights.
From what I have learned since I removed the “Alex Jeffreys students blogroll” it can hurt your blog.
If Google sees 80 plus links in a blogroll,
linking to 80 plus other blogs,
that all link to each other ….
it could (in theory), be seen as an attempt to manipulate Google to get backlink “credit”.
I do agree that I should think of having a blogroll with links to my favourite sites, so that’s on my To Do List now
… and I agree that I think that Google wants to see interaction and sharing.
I also agree that having a blog that Google values add you to their blogroll will probably pull your blog or site up, but I disagree with
“No site is likely to do that unless you add them to your blogroll first.”
One Way links are far, far, FAR better than reciprocal linking.
So I think it’s better to build a Blog that people want to add to their blogroll, rather than adding sites you want to link back to you.
It depends what you mean by isolated from the internet community.
I put more trust in Twitter, FaceBook, Google Friend Connect, MyBlogLog, RSS, etc., to accomplish that task, but I do agree that a Blogroll can’t hurt
Eoin
September 9th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Hi Eoin,
Very interesting post you have here, and re blog roll, I totally respect your decision, after all, if it is of no value or it would pose a risk of jeopardizing/ compromising one blog in anyway with regards Google / SEO etc… then it’s entirely justifiable.
As for the suggestion of a favorites list to various sites buy Vance – that is a very good idea.
Anyway best regards
Nigel
September 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Thanks for dropping in Nigel and for your comments.
Eoin
October 13th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Hi Eoin,
I would love to add some comments here.First off,in theory, any artificial link building is considered a no-no by Google’s guidelines.In reality they are a bit more tolerant than their official position. Meaning to say,in theory, the best way to GAIN links is to produce quality content, get some initial exposure and then others will link to your content on their own.In my opinion, the student blog roll is definately “doing nothing at all” for search engine optimization purposes.Food for thought guys,
Cheers,
Ariff
October 14th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Hi Ariff,
As I wrote in my blog post “there was no SEO benefit “, which is one reason I did it, but the second reason was the potential damage.
So I agree, quality content is the way to get good links, but who wants their Blog sandboxed, because Google thinks you are trying to build artificial links?
Eoin