Opinions

[mtgman]

Hello Guys.

I have learned a lot on this forum and before this forum, I pretty much linked with anything I guess you could have called me a link *****.
I wanted to get others opinions as far as going through my site and deleting all the worhtless link partners/pages. Would you all "clean house"? I mean I have people I linked with a two-three months ago and their pages still are not cached.
The next question, would you send an email to all the links you were deleting and maybe give an option to place your link on a better page or not? Or Just delete em.
My experience is when you request that they get huffy and do not respond anyway.

Just looking for some input. Ben, B.

[Jenny Barclay]

Can't offer advice, but having now deleted over 2,000 links I can say that sending e-mails was a waste of time.
They were either business owners who did not understand the problem, or webmasters who had no intention of putting the matter right or playing the game.

[mtgman]

Jenny,

My thoughts exactly, I was considering making new link pages but decided that would be a bigger waste of time since I had junk links that I could delete. Also would that help or have no effect on PR since I would have fewer outbound links?

[beachgal]

I have to agree with Jenny on this one. I've recently cleaned up my link pages and have probably deleted around a third of the links I had. I was amazed at how many sites that were supposed to have exchanged links with me, actually hadn't .... or had, but then gone back and deleted my link. I didn't bother to email any of them, as in my opinion they knew what exchanging links was all about. As far as removing links from pages with no PR, well I have to admit I'm a bit of a soft touch here. It depends on who the webmaster is, and how nicely they've asked for a backlink. Also, I think I read somewhere that as far as Google is concerned, it's good for you to have a few links on your site that aren't reciprocated.

[mtgman]

as removing links from pages with no PR

Hey BEachGAl,

Not that I would remove links with no PR but remove links that had not been cached after several months. I do not care about the pr but obviouisly if the page has not been cached after several months something is amis.

Ben B.

[LPass]

BenB,

Okay, a bit of a different opinion here.

Yes, you should clean up your link pages as it seems you have lived and learned.
I personally would contact the webmasters and let them know, I feel this way because when you have a link exchange, you should have a link partnership. When you are ready to sever that partnership, it is only right IMHO, that you let them know you are doing it.

Take what Beachgal says as an example here:

I've recently cleaned up my link pages and have probably deleted around a third of the links I had. I was amazed at how many sites that were supposed to have exchanged links with me, actually hadn't .... or had, but then gone back and deleted my link. I didn't bother to email any of them, as in my opinion they knew what exchanging links was all about.

Now she is right, they did know (or should have known) what linking was about but they deleted her links without notice.....not much of a partnership. By going through and deleting links from your site without notice, you are doing the same thing they were probably doing.....cleaning house.

It could be that they were just scummy, however, it could also be that they had a particular reason for doing it and just didn't bother to let their "partners" know. Not nice!

And you know, some of those webmasters may LEARN from you if you bother to let them know the problem.....just as you learned, they may be willing to learn as well and COULD become some of your best partners (some won't care, some will).

Of course, once you get the clean up done, it is good to always consider quality over quantity. 20 quality links are worth tons more than 2000 junky links.

I guess it all depends on how you look at it. The easiest way isn't always the best way, but that's just my experience.

Leann

[apascu]

I would have to agree with Leann - just cause others do it, doesn't mean you should, too =)

I have found that the best thing to do is to know why you are linking to someone's site to begin with - I would imagine you could send the same info to people you are already linked with and get some good responses. If there is a problem to begin with, I have found that most agents are very receptive to learning. I simply tell them I would like to link to them, but am concerned about their site because of X, Y, Z reasons and I have scripts to explain to them why. The 3 most often are:

1. their links pages aren't indexed because their site is built poorly for it
2. they put too many links on one page
3. I can't find that they are doing reciprocal links

these are the main 2 issues I find. If someone obviously has a template without the flexibility to fix these issues, I just skip over them and don't contact them to begin with. If they contact me, i reply with one of my pre-written scripts that applies to them.

adam pascu - Mira Mesa Real Estate