[GUIDE] Cracking the Penguin

manny521 said:

Good read and informative, gave you thanks and rep...

You mention to watch how many OBLs you have on your site and this is something I have been studying by looking at other "authority" sites and one site I looked at was matt cutt's blog...If you take a look, he has a very healthy number of backlinks per blog post, to me it seems a bit excessive, but he would probably not do something that is excessive...

Also, I took a look at searchengineland.com and danny sullivan adds a very large number off internal links to other blog posts along with a smaller number of outbound links per post...

The last example I will mention is wikipedia, basically search for anything in wikipedia and you will see a ridiculous number of internal links to other pages on its site and a much smaller number of OBLs per page...

The reason I mention this as I have been studying this and adding a huge number of internal links throughout my authority site as I had NOT done this previously and I have been adding a smaller proportion of OBLs to authority sites in my niche (not necessarily my direct competitors by very relevant sites and every so often I link to a competitor too)...

The reason I am writing this, do you have an idea of what is an excessive number of outbound links? percentage vs text on page?

From what I can observe, you can do an unlimited number of internal links to other pages on your site (it seems more the better) and OBLs, not so sure...

Now, if you are going to be doing a lot of internal linking within your site, you want to be linking to relevant pages from the anchor text, don't just randomly link wherever you want. Usually, I try to add a few internal links per paragraph, but this really depends what relevant topics I have on my blog so I could have three internal links within one paragraph and then not have any links in the next three paragraphs....Just trying to keep it normal looking and when I have relevant text that could point to other blog posts, I link it up...

Well, thanks for the wright up, its a good reminder for many and a better guide for those getting started...social signals are important and will continue to be important...

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MicrosoftPoints said:

You are looking at very established, authoritative sites. Although I have not conducted any tests to draw any conclusions, I can safely say that the more outbound links you have, the less linkjuice is going to be shared between your internal links unless you add the nofollow attribute. However, it may be deemed as spammy if you have 200 OBLs on your site, especially if they are all no-follow. It really is a matter of numerous factors in determining what an excessive amount of OBLs is and if many OBLs is "good" or "bad". Much of Google's assessment can't be determined without another dependent piece of the puzzle. For example, if you have an EMD and have good content you will rank a bit better than someone that may have a site just as good but without a "perfect" domain. Thus, in determining if the EMD should receive extra weight, Google looks to the site's content first. So I wouldn't automatically say that having a lot of OBLs on your site is "bad". I would just say that having less is probably going to be the safest and best option for your site and maintaining its PR. And to be clear, I am not talking about one page with a lot of OBLs necessarily, but having many OBLs on nearly every page of your site. It just doesn't look natural or proportional especially if you don't have a large amount of content and a decent amount of internal links to match all the external linking. Thanks for the detailed response though.

Any other questions, bring them on.

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MicrosoftPoints said:

• Link diversity is huge. Divide your anchor text into ratios. Do 50% of it as promotional text and 50% of it as random "what would someone linking to my site have for anchor text" text. Also, balance the amount of d0follow and nofollow links you get. Don't screw nofollow over; they may not pass PR but they still give juice.
• Do not bother with linkwheels. Do not bother with anything that can be traced back (circles, squares, whatever). Go after a flow-chart type of link scheme. You will need, other than social backlinks, Web 2.0s, forums, blogs, guestbooks, articles, videos, photos, pdfs, and everything else in your arsenal of links.

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manny521 said:

I agree with your assessment...

I have 100% original articles on my site and these blog posts are written at a very high education level (post graduate)...

If I have a 1000 word article, I try to have as many internal links as possible (wikipedia being the template for this), and I sprinkle in a few OBLs only linking to super high authority sites...

I am sure there is a formula for this, but only google knows this...so I won't speculate on percentages or anything like that...

I think the bigger issue is that if you have an authority site, you need to have internal link structures, and sprinkle in some high authority OBLs...

My theory on this is "link love" and what goes around, comes back to you...I could be wrong, but what I have read is that google likes you to link out, especially to other authority sites...

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manny521 said:

Also, I do NOT "no follow" any of these OBLs...from what I have read, this isn't necessarily the best idea...again, "link love"....

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Sampler said:

I reckon these two points are so underated, hopefully everybody picked them up. LinkWheels just don't seem to work as well as a straight flow/tiered approach I reckon.

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