Having a "Links" page

[longroad]

Im about to undertake some SEO services for a client and have a question about something I dont usually come across.

They have a Links page on their site (the site is established) which just link to random sites which their previous SEO company set up link exchanges with.
Many of the links are related but a lot aren't. Ie its a kids related site but some of the links are to poker sites! Gotta love the $500/month SEO company!!

Would I be better off removing this page altogether? From the look of it, none of those sites are linking back to his site anyway (Google is only showing 2 backlinks, Yahoo none - I know they dont show them all but there should be more than that).

The main question I have is would the site benefit more from completely removing this Links page?

 

[shockie]

i say take it down. linking out from a kids' site to poker sites just looks bad enough as it is.

 

[longroad]

My thoughts exactly!
Links pages are so 1990's aren't they :p

 

[DotUSDomains]

early 90's

Take it down.

 

[SSandecki]

Link exchanges are fowned upon by Google, you should have your client review the below URL, which is the Google Webmasters Quality Guidelines and linking quality guidelines.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

 

[weblord]

they have paid U.S.$500/month for it?
you can do the link yourself but not automated but not that excessive

Im about to undertake some SEO services for a client and have a question about something I dont usually come across.

They have a Links page on their site (the site is established) which just link to random sites which their previous SEO company set up link exchanges with.
Many of the links are related but a lot aren't. Ie its a kids related site but some of the links are to poker sites! Gotta love the $500/month SEO company!!

Would I be better off removing this page altogether? From the look of it, none of those sites are linking back to his site anyway (Google is only showing 2 backlinks, Yahoo none - I know they dont show them all but there should be more than that).

The main question I have is would the site benefit more from completely removing this Links page?

 

[longroad]

Yep, you know what unknowledgable people are like.. they get sucked in by big companies sales spiels.
This company is just a web hosting company and their SEO service is an additional option. They don't even do anything, just exchange a couple of links a month for her.
She has no top 50 Google rankings at all! Its amazing the money people can rake in and get away with it.

 

[shockie]

Yep, you know what unknowledgable people are like.. they get sucked in by big companies sales spiels.
This company is just a web hosting company and their SEO service is an additional option. They don't even do anything, just exchange a couple of links a month for her.

it's a shame that there are so many of these people out there that just want to make money doing anything on the internet. truth is that there are very few people can actually be experts in hosting, domaining, forums, search engine optimization, internet marketing, etc, and they just end up making every internet industry look bad.

 

[MrCat]

If you can't take it down for some reason, just make them "nofollow" - just a simple way of saying to spiders/se's that you don't vouch for those sites :D

 

[Mark07]

A links page on a website doesn't look ethical as it simply shows that the website is trying to improve its authority in Google by a collection of links which may or may not be related to the site.

As this kind of linking strategy is not favored by Google it is sure to damage the site position in the search engine and it is best if the page is removed from the site.

The links which are related to the website may be distributed accordingly in the sites pages due to its relevancy factor.