Does your site have a feed? A feed can connect you to your readers and keep them returning to your content. Most blogs have feeds, but increasingly, other types of sites with frequently changing content are making feeds available as well. Some examples of sites that offer feeds:

Does your site have a feed? A feed can connect you to your readers and keep them returning to your content. Most blogs have feeds, but increasingly, other types of sites with frequently changing content are making feeds available as well. Some examples of sites that offer feeds:

• News sources such as the New York Times publish feeds of their latest stories
• Companies like Apple publish feeds of their press releases, as well as a few other feeds.
  
• Blogs including the Official Google Blog publish feeds with their latest posts
• Shopping sites like Buy.com publish feeds with noteworthy deals

Find out how many readers are subscribed to your feed
If your site has a feed, you can now get information about the number of Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage subscribers. If you use Feedburner, you'll start to see numbers from these subscriptions taken into account. You can also find this number in the crawling data in your logs. We crawl feeds with the user-agent Feedfetcher-Google, so simply look for this user-agent in your logs to find the subscriber number. If multiple URLs point to the same feed, we may crawl each separately, so in this case, just count up the subscriber numbers listed for each unique feed-id. An example of what you might see in your logs is below:

User-Agent: Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 4 subscribers; feed-id=1794595805790851116)

Making your feed available to Google
You can submit your feed as a Sitemap in webmaster tools. This will let us know about the URLs listed in the feed so we can crawl and index them for web search. In addition, if you want to make sure your feed shows up in the list of available feeds for Google products, simply add a < link> tag with the feed URL to the section of your page. For instance:

link href="http://www.example.com/atom.xml" rel="alternate" title="Your Feed Title" type="application/atom+xml">link

Remember that Feedfetcher-Google retrieves feeds only for use in Google Reader and Personalized Homepage. For the content to appear in web search results, Googlebot will have to crawl it as well.

Don't yet have a feed?
If you use a content management system or blogging platform, feed functionality may be built right now. For instance, if you use Blogger, you can go to Settings > Site Feed and make sure that Publish Site Feed is set to Yes. You can also set the feed to either full or short and can add a footer. The URL listed here is what subscribers add to their feed readers. A link to this URL will appear on your blog.

More tips from the Google Reader team
In order to provide the best experience for your users, the Google Reader team has also put together some tips for feed publishers. This document covers feed best practices, common implementation pitfalls, and various ways to promote your feeds. Whether you're creating your feeds from scratch or have been publishing them for a long time, we encourage you to take a look at our tips to make the most of your feeds. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Keyword Rich Internal Anchor Text - How Much Is Too Much?

We’ve heard and seen evidence that internal anchor text over-optimization (sorry, Jill, but this has really become a generally recognizable term) can result in Google penalty. Rand Fishkin, for example mentioned this issue in PRO tips as well as on the blog.
Still, while we are pretty sure, this penalty does exist, we don’t know how many internal keyword-rich links are actually too many.
Another great WebmasterWorld thread shares some results of experiments regarding this issue and while you are free to argue the overall accuracy of such tests, I thought it should definitely be brought to discussion here.
The test involved different patterns of linking from subpages to the home page which yielded the following results:

Inter-linking pattern	Google’s reaction
Every site page (~90 pages) links to the home page in the sitewide nav bar using the same keyword.	6 page drop in Google rankings.
Every site page (~90 pages) links to the home page in-content using the same keyword.	6 page drop in Google rankings (after the short period of improved rankings).
Every site page (~90 pages) links to the home page in-content using variations of a keyword.	3 page drop in Google rankings.
The first 10 pages listed in google.com for site:domain.com links to the home page.	Increase in Google rankings (from #5 to #3).

Just a few notes:

• As to the last point, I suspect that any 10 pages (not only those listed top 10 in Google) should be OK with Google (as long as these pages are crawled regularly and frequently enough).
• As CainIV states in the thread, the drop in rankings was easy to cope with: as soon as he removed the keyword-rich links, rankings were back (and this probably accounts for the domain trust;
• Both the effect on rankings and the penalty may largely depend on the terms: how competitive and also how “shady” they are (I imagine sudden heavy optimization for ‘poker’ related terms can result in quicker and more serious penalties).

User Generated Content, SEO & Branding… Work It!

Consumer - or User - generated content (CGC / UGC) is becoming more and more important to the success of online retailers, and to businesses who rely on their website to drive brand exposure and generate contacts.

What is Consumer Generated Content?

It is content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be:

·         Product reviews (e.g. Amazon.com)

·         Service reviews (e.g. Google Local)

·         Seller reviews (e.g. ebay)

·         Blog comments

·         News comments

·         Forum posts or comments

·         Video/Audio and Photo sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr)

·         Social networking sites comments or posts (e.g. Twitter, SecondLife, Facebook, MySpace)

·         Wikis

·         Composite review sites (e.g. ConsumerReport.org)

Is Consumer Generated Content (CGC) Really Such A Big Deal?

The data is two-sided; and both sides of the coin – Consumers and Marketers – answer with a resounding ‘Yes!’:

1. Consumers are relying more and more on UGC:

·         According to Rubicon, ‘online comments and reviews posted by the enthusiasts are second only to word of mouth as a purchase driver for all web users. Those personal reviews are far more influential than official reviews posted by a website or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer.’

·         The Rubicon data also indicates that around 80% of all UGC is contributed by around 9% of the US online population. This 9% is in the majority impartial, honest and equally likely to post both negative and positive comments or opinions. In some cases, such as on Amazon, the reviews themselves are open to voting:

·         As of October 2008, almost half of US online adults read ratings and reviews at least once a month, and 19% post them. Nearly twice as many read reviews compared with 2007. (The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, Forrester, 2008)*

·         Satisfaction for those who recalled customer reviews on the retailers’ site is 10% higher than those who said there were no reviews offered. (30 UK Online Retail Satisfaction Index, January 2008, ForeSee Results)*

·         83% of shoppers said online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on their purchasing decisions. (Opinion Research Corporation, an infoGROUP company, July 2008)*

·         74% agree—including 14% who strongly agree—that they choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experiences, the survey shows. (Society for New Communications Research, May 2008)*

·         70% of online consumers said they use the Internet to research everyday grocery products. (Prospectiv, 2008)*

·         91% of millionaires say they always or often look at reviews before buying luxury goods; 68% of ultra-affluent shoppers use consumer reviews. (Unity Marketing/Google study, reported in AdAge October 2008)*

2. Marketers are relying more and more on UGC:

·         The Shop.org State of Retailing Online study, conducted by Forrester Research, found only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, but 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an effective or very effective tactic at driving conversion. (Forrester)*

·         68% of online marketers believe “media is in big trouble and will lose dollars to user-generated content.” (iMedia Connection, February 2008)*

·         By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing. (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April, 2008)*

·         11% of retailers reported a 20% or more overall increase in conversions as a result of adding reviews to their sites, 21% reported an 11% to 20% increase and 5% reported a 1% to 10% increase. (eTailing Group, 2008)*

·         Consumers were willing to pay between 20 to 99% more for a 5-star rated product than for a 4-star rated product, depending on the product category. (comScore/Kelsey, October 2007)*

·         Reviews usage drives higher spending: 27% of users report an increase of 5-10%; almost 7% report an increase of 20%+. (Avenue A/Razorfish “Digital Consumer Behavior Study,” October 2007) *

·         In a study of a major electronics retailer site of 30,000 search visitors landing on user review  pages converted 60% more often, spent 50% more, and viewed 82% more pages than search visitors to other pages. (Bazaarvoice case study with major electronics retailer)*

Case Study: PETCO (2007)*:

• Shoppers who browsed the site’s “Top Rated Products” page, which features products rated most highly by customers, had a 49% higher conversion rate than the site average.
• Giving shoppers the ability to sort products within a category by customer rating led to a sales increase of 41% per unique visitor.
• After their order, PETCO asked customers, “What online tool most influenced your purchase decision?“ The Number 1 answer was product ratings and reviews, with site search coming in a distant second.
• PETCO realized a 5X increase in email click-through rates by including relevant ratings and reviews content in the campaign promotion.
• Products with reviews have a 17% lower return rate than those without reviews.

…But, the impact of UGC doesn’t stop there…

UGC Influences Offline Commerce

·         For every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales. (eMarketer, 2007)

·         24% of internet users reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         More than 75% of review users in nearly every category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase, with hotels ranking the highest (87%). (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         97% of those surveyed who said they made a purchase based on an online review said they found the review to have been accurate. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         Consumers who shop online for digital cameras and TVs spend 10% more on in-store purchases than consumers who do not search online. (ChannelForce for Yahoo Search Marketing)

·         90% of those surveyed say they have a better overall shopping experience when they research products online before shopping in-store. (Harris Interactive, October 2007)

“But What About Negative UGC?”

If people are researching a product online, they are looking for what might be wrong with it. If you can be transparent on your own site about your product or service by offering reviews, then you can be sure that both positive and negative feedback (if warranted) will be included.**

1. Negative Reviews are actually of interest:

Based on the fact that folks are likely to continue searching if there is nothing negative about a product, just to make sure, especially with electronics or high-end purchases, if you don’t offer a transparent insight into your offering on your own site, by people who have actually bought from you, these researchers are very likely to go elsewhere to keep researching.**

·         “As for the product(s) with negative reviews … my experience is that negative reviews do not hurt a product as long as there are also positive reviews associated with it.”  - Don Zeidler, Director, Burpee.com**

2. Negative reviews provide helpful feedback to consumers and R&D:

·         “For example, what’s one of the best selling products so far this decade? The Apple iPod. It gets a ton of positive reviews, but one negative comment you’ll see over and over again is that the surface of the iPod scratches easily. Customers say things that the retailer and Apple can’t say: “When you buy this, get a case”. Obviously this is not stopping customers from buying the iPod, but this constructive advice is getting them to buy a case.” – Sam Decker, VP Marketing, BazaarVoice

3. Negative Reviews provide authenticity:

Why would a well known, enormously powerful and successful online retailer continue selling a product that had far more negative reviews than positive? Should they? Yes!

·         Case Study**:

·         Product: Hot Wheels Slimecano

·         Reseller: Amazon.com

·         Some Review Titles:

o        “Junk, not worth any price”         

o        “I wish I could give it zero stars”

o        “If you want your son to cry, buy this toy!”

o        “If you want your husband to cry, buy this toy!”

·         Reseller Objective:

If the retailer’s mission is to be a trusted editor of its assortment, then products with overwhelmingly negative reviews will prune the assortment quickly for the best products. But the reseller needs to continue selling the product as an ‘objective provider’ and let the market forces, or in this case, parental voices, have their impact. After a year and half, Amazon stopped selling the toy, but kept the reviews, the image and the page… Good Job!

4. Positive Reviews Outweigh Negatives:

·         62 percent of brand-related talk features products in a positive light, while less than 10% of conversations feature products negatively. (KellerFay Group)

·         60 percent of online shoppers provide feedback about shopping experiences, and they are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one.  (Jupiter)

Conclusion

If you sell products and services, and if you have a web site, make sure you allow for reviews. If your products are great to mediocre, you should get far more positive than negative feedback, and a resultant positive impact on sales and revenue.

If you sell a crappy product – in the words of Sam Decker:

1.  Without reviews, you keep selling the product and risk costly returns and low customer satisfaction

2.  With reviews, you can use the leading indicator of negative reviews and quickly remove this product from inventory to reduce returns and improve satisfaction

3.  Or, just allow the negative reviews to steer customers to a more satisfying purchase within the category. Let the best products win, and you will win.

Therefore, make sure you enable and allow feedback, optimize your review pages, and get traction for them in the search results by supporting brand evangelists, and answering detractor issues promptly and diplomatically.

Happy UGC integration!!!

Rating Tactics With The AM Marketing Cube

Bottom Line First

What’s most important to you in your Internet marketing campaign? Quick results? Long lasting results? High ROI? Use the AudetteMedia Marketing Cube to identify what tactics to use:

The AM Cube Live - Try It Yourself

Then head back here for more detailed information on what went in to building Da’ Cube.

Behind the Building of the Cube

Internet marketing offers a number of powerful tactics that can be employed to maximize the attainment of campaign goals. To use them most effectively, it’s important to develop an integrated strategy in advance that does the following:
1. Defines specific goals
2. Establishes a baseline
3. Defines specific tactics
4. Defines budget allocation
5. Defines implementation milestones, metrics and measurements
Steps 1, 3 and 4 will be discussed here. Steps 2 and 5 pertain to analytics and will be discussed in another post coming soon.
Step 1: Define Specific Goals
Measurable Return on Investment (ROI)
There is always a goal to achieve some type of return on investment (ROI). But that can vary, depending on the type of the ROI desired. For example, a focus on building brand awareness will employ different tactics than a focus on building immediate bottom line sales. And it is more difficult to establish a measurable ROI with a branding campaign than with a campaign that is more direct marketing oriented.
After establishing measurable ROI goals, two other variables that should be identified are related to time:
Time to Results
This is defined as how long it takes to achieve measurable results after launch of a campaign. There are times when Time to Results is of the utmost importance, as might be the case where an initial marketing campaign is used as a pilot project with future efforts based on the early results.
Persistency of Results
Persistency is defined by how long results are produced after a formal internet marketing campaign is ended. This is an often overlooked aspect of Internet marketing tactics and can be a real added bonus to ROI. Tactics such as SEO and Content Development rank high on the Persistency scale, whereas display advertising and PPC rank low.
Although there is undoubtedly a subjective element in grading one tactic versus another using these criteria, it can still be a useful tool in designing an Internet marketing strategy tailored to match specific goals. In the AudetteMedia Cube we rate the following internet marketing tactics as to the three elements of ROI, Time & Persistency:
• Search Engine Optimization (On-page)
• Pay per Click (PPC)
• Display Advertising
• Blogging
• Content Development
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Networking
• Online PR
• Email Marketing
In building the AudetteMedia Cube, we use a scale of 1 to 100 and rate each tactic on each of the three criteria using subjective judgment based on our experience:

Time to Results: 1 is slowest, 100 is quickest
Persistency of Results: 1 is least persistent, 100 is most persistent
ROI: 1 is lowest measurable ROI, 100 is highest measurable ROI

As mentioned, these ratings are based on our subjective judgment. We would like to hear from you if you disagree with our numbers (or even if you agree!). For example, we rate Organic SEO 25-90-90: relatively slow to produce results, results that persist for a long time, and high measurable ROI. Do you agree?
How about Display Advertising? We rate it 90-5-50: quick to produce results, little or no persistency, and medium measurable ROI.
Or PPC? We rate it 100-5-60: immediate results, little or no persistency, and relatively high measurable ROI.
What do you think?
Step 3: Define Specific Tactics
The next step is to rank the priorities of the marketing campaign on a scale of 1 to 10 and to plug them into the AudetteMedia Cube worksheet. Here’s an example of a campaign heavily focused on direct sales results and the two highest priorities of the campaign are Persistency of Results and ROI. Time to Results is of lesser importance as this is budgeted as a long-term campaign and there is no pressure to achieve short-term results:

You can see that Content Development and SEO (Organic) run a close first and second when these are the priorities.
There are times when Time to Results is of the utmost importance, as might be the case where a marketing manager is using an initial campaign as a proof of concept in order to justify a more extensive campaign. Here’s how the tactics rank under such a scenario:

Pay-per-Click (PPC) is ranked as the #1 tactic when the goal is for quick results and not much importance is placed on persistency of results. Unlike in the first example, where there wasn’t much concern about quick results, SEO and Content development are further down the scale.

The Cube Live! - Try It Yourself - Interactive Worksheet

Step 4: Define Budget Allocation
Once these priorities are set, it is possible to make an initial budget allocation of resources to the tactics that are most likely to produce desired results. This will inevitably shift over time as results are monitored and measured, but it provides an informed way to begin the implementation process.

Keyword anaysis with Advanced segments and custom reporting

In the first part on Google Analytics for SEO we looked at advanced segmentation and custom reporting for search traffic analysis. This time around we’re going to look at different metrics and key indicators for keywords and phrases that are being used to reach your site.
What’s important with this is that we’re looking to adapt our SEO programs by better understanding how various keywords/phrases are performing.
Before we get going, it should once again be stressed, be creative. These are but some examples to start you down the path of crafting approaches that best work your situation.

Engagement by keyword

Right away, to get us started, navigate to ‘Traffic Sources > Keywords’ this is our main focus for this round. Now, last time we created a custom segment to measure our prime engagement visitors by segmenting those that went 3 pages or more into the site.
We can now use this segment on our keyword report;

And of course the ‘Goal Conversion’ tab –

There are a few things we’re looking at here;

1. Level of engagement – which terms are bringing in the visitors that engage with the site the most. You can then do some deeper analysis as to why a target is performing well or why it isn’t. This can be used to better adapt the over-all keyword targeting of the SEO program.
2. Engagement V. Conversions – As you can see above, some terms are going to accomplish your goals better than others. This begins to help focus future efforts as far as where you invest your resources in your SEO program.

What we can see from that above is that while some terms to have some great traction engagement wise, they don’t always ultimately lead to the best conversions. Another evident factor is that it re-affirms our desire to engage visitors on this particular site as deeper engagement does show itself to lead to higher conversions ultimately.

At a glance

Now, using the default report can give us some in-depth understanding, but I like to have an over-view; so let’s create a custom report. Go to ‘Custom Reports’;

This will give us a report which is more of an ‘at a glance’ view incorporating engagement metrics AND conversions data as well. Using our earlier custom segment we’d have this;


Once more, I normally add other conversion points, but I leave that to you. The main thing is we can look at some of our core keywords to gain insight into the engagement and conversion points related to them. If I am deciding where to concentrate my efforts ( as far as something like link building is concerned) on terms that are performing best. This is essential to an effective SEO campaign.

Geo Targeting

Last time we also created an advanced segment for our Australian visitors since this program is specifically targeting this market. So now let’s apply that to our Keyword Engagement Report – and we’d have something like this;

Once more we’re looking at not only the efficacy of the keyword targeting but also how well the geo-targeting efforts are going. I this case, it’s going well and we can drill down other ‘at a glance’ engagement metrics for each term.
By creating segments, that are important to your site, you can have a nice set of engagement metrics to better understand the performance of your core terms. Now let’s look at primary and secondary terms.

Primary and secondary keyword targeting

I don’t know about you, but we generally have primary and secondary targets with each SEO program. These are essentially groups of terms that have been identified as the money terms and secondary ones. For this we’ll be creating some new segments…

Depending if you want to track ‘just’ the primary terms, or inclusive of connectors (used in long tail) you can use either ‘matches exactly’ or ‘contains’ – it’s situational.
Now if we go to ‘Traffic Sources > Search Engines” and then activate our two keyword segments that we just created. We’ll get something like this;

This shows us that our primary terms are certainly not only pulling greater traffic, as expected, but also engaging the traffic better. It’s worth noting I am using constructors ( inclusive of primary targets). As always we also want to look at the conversion data to look for weaknesses which can be further mined.

Engagement by query type

Another area worth having as an overview on is query types, that is the general nature of a keyword/phrase. Common ones are transactional (seeking a purchase, support information and so forth), informational and geo-modifiers (location specific). So let’s go create a few more advanced analytics.
Transactional query modifiers

This time, add the following one at a time as shown above;

Find Get Buy Purchase Locate

Compare Shop Store Services

…and so on. Try mining your keyword referrer data for transactional terms related to your market. Once done, we can name this (KWs Transactional) and save.
Now create one for informational queries. This time use this list;

Information Website Help Resources How to Tutorial Guide

Samples Examples Ideas News Tips Learn Site

… and mine your keyword data as always.
If we return to our ‘Traffic sources > Search engines’ report and apply our new segmentation; we have something like this;

After that? Well you can also create another segment for geographic triggers that you may have as well as one for brand related searches (company name, product names, your name..etc..). By looking a search traffic engagement and related conversions a deeper understanding of your over-all content creation and term targeting invariably emerges.

Dig in and muck about

It should be noted that you should be cross referencing your mean average rankings and geo-targeted rankings with ALL kw analytic data and analysis. Often times we find that certain search types (transactional, informational etc..) can lead to deeper engagement. This data is but starting point for deeper research.
The easy access across reports for cross referencing with conversions, make these advanced segments and custom reports quite useful. Each website and market is going to have different key indicators, by playing with the goodies we looked at here you should be able to get your own creative juices flowing into ways to best identify keyword interactions produced from your SEO efforts.
Next time we’re going to look at the content engagement from an SEO point of view. We shall then be able to wrap all our new ideas up and how each can be analyzed for adaptation of ongoing search optimization programs.

SEO Tools & Tips

In my day to day SEO for my clients and for myself, I’ve come across a number of tools of the trade, some really good, some, well, not so good. Here are a few items in my geek toobox that I use daily and highly recommend.
1. Keyword Tool - I have tried them all and this is the one I always go back to for my keyword research. Not only does it give you variations on the keyword phrase you are searching for, but also provides the WordTracker count and daily estimated searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN along with shortcuts to various tools like Google Trends, Keyword Discovery and several other online tools. And, you can export the thing as a CSV file. Way to go Aaron!
2. Check Server Headers Tool - Quick and easy way to check on whether your URL is being seen and followed properly by the spiders. For instance, I recently installed a WordPress plugin which appeared to work fine in a browser, but when I checked the page URLs that it produced here, I found that those pages were producing 404 errors, meaning the web surfer could see the pages, but the spiders couldn’t. Naturally, I ditched the plugin. The site also includes a batch URL processing capability (up to 25 URLs at once).
3. Web Page Analyzer - This online tool checks the speed of your site and lets you know what the download time would be at various connection speeds. Granted, most folks have broadband these days but you still don’t want a page to take several minutes to load on a 56k dial up connection. The test gives you suggestions on ways to speed up your site for visitors and spiders. Both will go away if your site is too slow.
4. Yahoo Site Explorer -Yes, Google gives you some information on sites that link to you, but not like Yahoo’s Site Explorer, which is easy to use and just requires a Yahoo login. You can filter inbound links to see internal or external linking, number of pages Yahoo sees and more.
5. Spider Simulator - Just one of many free online tools offered by this site, I jump here when I need a quick look at what the spiders are seeing. A more comprehensive spider simulator report is available in the iBusinessPromoter client software on my PC, but this online utility serves my purpose most of the time.
6. Tweetscan - These days keeping up with what is said about you and your clients is a must. I use Tweetscan to search for references to me or my clients in Twitter for reputation management, goodwill and networking opportunities.
7. SearchStatus - This is a Firefox plugin that, among other things, allows you to highlight and see nofollow links. This comes in real handy when checking backlinks or sculpting the links on your own site. The plugin includes utilities to check backlinks, Alexa rankings and so forth, but I primarily use the nofollow highlight feature.
8. MyBlogLog - Although the community aspects of the social site are free, I do use one paid service that this Yahoo owned site offers - statistics. For about $25 per year, I can get almost real time traffic stats coming off of web sites. I can see my site traffic nearly as it happens, where surfers are coming from and where they are going. From this, I can see if there is a trend or if something is wrong on a site now, not tomorrow when my Google Analytics stats are refreshed. I mentioned this service in my post on Web Analytics. This is the only non-free tool I mention in this list, but it’s such a bargain, I had to include it.
9. Google Chrome - Though not technically a tool, Google’s first attempt at a web browser has one feature that keeps it open on one of my monitors all day - the ability to log into different Google accounts in different tabs. I keep my domain e-mail, which is hosted through Google Apps, in one tab and Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for my work accounts in other tabs. Now, if Chrome would just pick up some cool plugins!
10. Google Webmaster Tools - For something that I paid little attention to when first released, Google Webmaster Tools is now also open on one of my monitors all day. It just keeps getting better. From tracking down dead URLs on my sites to testing a robots.txt file, I can locate site issues that I wouldn’t otherwise know about. Though far from perfect, it’s just about the most valuable online tool I use these days.

Using X-Robots HTTP Header To Sneakily Delete Your Link Farms

Zoe asked a question this week about the best way to remove old link exchange pages. I responded on Twitter but wanted to post about it as well.
It’s well known that having loads of links pages on your website isn’t a good idea. One links page with 20 links is fine, 10 links pages all with 100 links will probably do more harm than good.
If you have been given a penalty in Google then deleting all these links pages is the first thing you need to do. But what if your site is ranking well but you want to get rid of the pages before Google gives you a penalty? Surely if you remove the pages everybody will stop linking to you and your rankings will fall?
The key is to find a way of silently removing your links pages, without alerting all your link partners to the fact that their link has gone.
My solution is to make use of the X-Robots HTTP header that Googlebot is now supporting. This allows you to add the noindex meta information to a page server side so that visitors can’t see any traces in your robots.txt or your source code.
header(’X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow’, true);
This will remove your links pages from Google and probably won’t alert your link partners.
You might also like to cloak the X-Robots tag so that it only appears to Googlebot - you don’t want people to be able to run a header checker and see your sneaky plan.