Main Forum Links in Footer...

[rob]

To increase PR to main forum pages, put links to main forum sections in your footer....

I actually had this set up to great effect on PHPbb and I'll get round top adding it on vBulletin in a few days.

Thought I would share.

Rob

[john_robot]

yeah but this can end up with Sandboxed your site by google.

[rob]

John....

Please explain your comments.

I've been an SEO specialist for seven years and this is a common practice.

Link to common navigation in footer.... STANDARD!!!

Need I say I've been doing for ages under phpbb before swtiching to vB and I had superb rankings.... your post holds no water.

In my opinion, and that of other SEO specialists, it's only newly established sites that suffer from the sandbox phenomonon.

[john_robot]

In my opinion, and that of other SEO specialists, it's only newly established sites that suffer from the sandbox phenomonon.

Yeah this is the thing I am talking about, our site is new and we have lot of links from our site. So it has been Sandboxed now. If we had few links this will never happened.

[rob]

New sites can be sandboxed regardless of links...
Although I've found two things that can help a new website...

When launching a new site on a new domain:
a) register the domain for a LONG time... 5 - 10 years
b) get LOADS of links BEFORE google discovers you... that means working very very fast upon launch.

[Nicke]

I launched a new site last year and it took Google 10 months to get out of the sandbox for that site, I am sure most new websites have the sandbox problem but the time to get out if it may differ...

[caliman]

If I have links to my specific forums in my left nav, is this the same as having them in my footer?

[rob]

If they appear on every page, yes!

[Anthony Parsons]

Footer links do bugger all anyway with the BlockRank algorithm. You are better off placing them accordingly within your posts, instead of the footer.

In regard to the sandbox, any site at any time can be sandboxed, regardless of age. New sites are sometimes sandboxed for characteristics out of the normal spectrum, though you can quite easily place an existing site in the box by simply changing a lot of content upon the site at once. That one is nearly a guarantee you will go back into the filter for another month or two... possibly six!

[rob]

Footer links do bugger all anyway with the BlockRank algorithm. You are better off placing them accordingly within your posts, instead of the footer.

In regard to the sandbox, any site at any time can be sandboxed, regardless of age. New sites are sometimes sandboxed for characteristics out of the normal spectrum, though you can quite easily place an existing site in the box by simply changing a lot of content upon the site at once. That one is nearly a guarantee you will go back into the filter for another month or two... possibly six!

I beg to differ with you on the footer links. These are internal links and considered navigational elements at the foot of the page. VERY VERY standard stuff.

Also, you are telling me that the vBSEO link on all site running it do not help the PR of this website.... man if you think that, can I suggest you do a little research? Google MAY lessen the effect of these links..... but they ARE counted.

[Anthony Parsons]

Rob, Blockrank differs what you are saying actually, in that they are actually discarded, not just weighted less. The blockrank algo is now in full swing, and sites linking reputation are seeing the affects of this. Pagerank has nothing to do with anything, especially rankings. I hope your not going to try and tell me it does! You stated you have seven years in the industry, so do I actually, well, 8+ now, and whilst PageRank had something to do with rankings some years ago, it most certainly doesn't now. What you are saying is "standard stuff", was actually standard 12 months ago, not now. Footer links can actually do more harm than good now, which you should know, regardless whether internal or external. Anything stuffed in the footer places your site in a position for possible human editing... why do it? The nil weight factor assigned to the footer is also enough to keep links out of there. Why waste time with old stuff like that, when all it takes is half the work to simply incorporate some well placed links within the body content, where your gaining maximum effectiveness for link weight within your own site.

Footer links are very much out... sorry to say that. What Google shows you, and what Google counts, are two very completely different things. Because your links show up in a backlink check, it doesn't actually mean they are weighted. Google have stated this numerous times at SES conferences. This is no secret. You are already concerning me that you somehow thing PageRank has something to do with rankings. If this is the case, then each to their own. Obviously your still doing things the very very hard way.

[rob]

Anthony..... you are right... I specialise in SEO like yourself.

I place very very little weight on the rumours/mutterings in the community (discounting google's own comments from that) and instead rely on my OWN research which is what the bulk of SEO is about.

I can categorically state with 100% conviction that this IS helping (on google). If I proove this otherwise (and I'll very soon see) then I'll be the first to eat my (white) hat.

MSN's Blockrank is a new algo..... it is in it's very early days and I have not researched into it.... I'm a google freak.... but I'll be definitly seeing how things go on the big 3.

[robdog]

In regard to the sandbox, any site at any time can be sandboxed, regardless of age. New sites are sometimes sandboxed for characteristics out of the normal spectrum, though you can quite easily place an existing site in the box by simply changing a lot of content upon the site at once. That one is nearly a guarantee you will go back into the filter for another month or two... possibly six!

So if someone changes a crap load of content on their site and had 300-400 pages index, it is possible to lose your google ranking?

And I am kinda new to SEO, been a programmer for a while but just recently been getting into SEO, what is the "sandbox"?

[Anthony Parsons]

Correct Robdog. The sandbox is a name the industry made up, it is actually a spam filter, nothing more, nothing less. When you change a lot of content at once, you more often than not, trip that filter. From all instances thus far, the filter is of less duration than say for a new site that trips it. Instead of being filtered for 6 - 12 months, it may only be weeks - several months. This stops people changing a quality site, and filling it with rubbish to improved something to manipulate the results.

Rob, Google actually use BlockRank now also, it is not just an MSN thing. Googles main algorithms currently are:

BlockRank
PageRank
LocalRank
Semantic Algorithm

This is G's current main algo's that are deciding the fate of rankings.

[Mike]

Ok, I have made the long awaited addition of my main forum links into the footer. I hope that it will help.

One question - I have a sub-category area that contains 32 links. The main category is "nfl teams" which is listed in the footer. The sub-categories are the 32 nfl teams. Should I add those into the footer as well?