I discovered something lastnight that I have read nothing about (yet). I was on Google's webmaster section, looking at the pages that they have discovered on freeLandlordSoftware.com and I noticed only default.aspx has been indexed though I have many links on the public part of the site. I realized, these links are in an ASP.Net link button control which posts the page back then redirects after the post back. Then I viewed the source code of default.aspx, did a find for Public_Weblog_Default.aspx, the blog link, and nothing showed up. Knowing that outbound links hurt your PR rating, would this be a way to keep Google's webcrawler from seeing your outbound links? I'm not trying to get over on google's PR system, it's just something I have found interesting. Anyone know about this?
Outbound links do not hurt your sites ranking or your PR. Linking to relevant sites improves your rankings. In the same way linking to viagra spam sites and free ringtones sites will harm your ranking.
Google can still see them. If you mean rel="nofollow" then Google can see those as well but will not pass any weight to the site.
That does not hide links. In fact rel="external" on its own does nothing. If you meant rel="nofollow" then that does not hide the links from Google either. - Michael
I am changing the navigation bar and replacing the link button controls with hyperlinks but i'll leave the blog link a button control so you guys can see what I'm talking about.
I have read that if you have more out bound links than inbound links your PR will be lower... Is that not the case? I'm new to this SEO thing... Am I correct in assuming Google's crawler can't see these link button control links?
Would this .net control be a good place to put an outbound link to a link exchange/ web directory site that has nothing to do with my site content then? I don't know why, but i'm fixated on this issue...
If you link too many times out from a page, you can dilute the PR to the point it will drop, I've experienced and corrected this first hand.
Google won't follow button links. Forget about lowering your PR. PR has nothing to do with SEO anymore. If you are hiding the link then why bother linking to it at all?
I didn't know PR doesn't matter. There's more involved here than I ever imagined with SEO. you have a point about the hidden links. Not that I like to shady sites, I was just wondering if I should put reciprical links in button controls but I guess it doesn't really matter after all. Slowly I'll get this SEO thing...
If you hide reciprocal links you will piss off quite a few link partners very quickly. The best thing you can do is forget about SEO. There are only 2 rules you need to worry about. 1) Create a really great site that people actually want to visit. Fill it with good content. 2) Build links to your site from loads of other sites. Don't get any links from crap sites and don't ever link to a crap site.
mad4, a lot of SEOs say the same thing... But, for example, in this thread, APEHCTAHT shows that a website ranking #1 out of 137,000,000 (!) other websites uses mostly non-organic techniques - they buy site-wide links, buy links from homepages, use reciprocals, and they're still #1. What do think of this?
Mad3 I like your two rules... that simplifies it quite nicely. I have had almost 10 members join since opening on the first of the month. I'm adding content every chance I get. I have so many ideas it's just finding the time to code them. Do any of you have property rentals? Any ideas on content to add?