Pagerank theft and protecting this forum.

[spank]

This forum has an exceptionally high footprint on the web.  Many searches about BT products and problems now rank first in google which makes it a good resource.

However it is also open for some serious abuse and it's fairly obvious from a couple of recent posts just purely advertising their business'.

If someone puts a link on this forum it's a massive boost to their pagerank.  Once word gets out all your going to get is adverts to websites.

In order to preserve pagerank theft on this forum and avoid  it become another abused resource I suggest that some form of protection is employed.

One way is to add this to the start of every link rel="NoFollow", however this is not a very visible deterent and won't stop annoying links.

A better way is to have every link a sublink of this forum.

[naples12345]

Spank

I can't see the problem, especialy when the site is hosted and developed by BT????

[Fiona]

Hi

I think what Spank means is instead of putting a link such as http://www.btbroadbandoffice.com onto the site, it may be better to put a hyperlink in for the page.

To do this, in the message type the word you want to be a hyperlink
Highlight the word and click on the link (chain) icon on the toolbar
That will open a box which allows you to type in the address you want to be a hyperlink,

You can also choose to have the link open in a new window if you want.

This may go somewhere towards preventing people coming onto the site and putting Spam or advertising posts on every thread. The moderators do look for posts that are blatent advertising and remove them, but this can take time to go through. Which can result in customers looking at 20 old posts that have no new information or questions on them, just an unrelated advert or a dubious Link.

Kind Regards

Fiona
BT Business Forum Moderator

[spank]

Kind of on the right track.  To boost your site in google  you need pagerank, to get pagerank you need sites to link to you, to get lots of pagerank you need good sites to link to you.  There are a million directories out there offering this service usually at a cost.  Allowing people to put pure links on this forum without constant policing just attracts dodgy adverts that give nothing but take pagerank.

I have noticed the admins are very good at removing these posts but detterring them is a better solution.

If you add rel="nofollow" to any links then google will not treat it as a rankable link saving the forums pagerank.

That isn't a visible detterrent and it's better to change the link to a sub link like this http://btb.lithium.com/link:"http://www.mydomain.com/index.htm" which still retains the forums pagerank.

There has been some thought put into it as you can see from your signature Naples1234 as you can't add links to signatures.

[Fiona]

Thanks Spank

I think I understand it better. I'll raise this with the forum team to see what we, as moderators, can do to help. It is definitely an interesting topic and we have noticed that there are more and more people posting spam on the site. Anything to deter this is always a help.

Kind Regards

Fiona
BT Business Forum Moderator

[naples12345]

Firstly, Fiona thank you for the information. This is why I visit forums like BT, to get good advice to help me make improvements to my own site. You learn something new everyday

Secondly, The reason I responded to the post initially was because I saw no value in Spank's posting. There are 1000s of sites where webbys are welcome to put in back links. 100s of these being PR3 and above. Even Google PR10, Yahoo PR9 & BingPR8. (BT PR7). Just join their forums, put your site as signature, if you want, freely ask questions and include your full web URL even deep links, no skin off their nose.

It makes no sense in trying to drop a link in a site where you are not welcome, as you will be removed and banned. And to be honest it would be very hard work trying to maintain the levels of back links required to improve your own site's PR.

If there are people reading this that would like know where they can find quality relevant back links, please feel free to ask me for the name of a site that I use. Or just Google backlinks. Try and find sites that show the PR against the blog or Business directory. Oh and only place relevant back links  to your site. I.e. linking balloonking to BT would be considered a very poor quality link and would add no value to your site. What's the link between telecommunications and balloons?????????

Maybe the only value to this posting is to Spank's ranking as a "GURU"!

And please don't respond with the old chestnuts about link farms and so.

Info on backlink sites is given freely and is readily freely available through any search engine.

[Fiona]

Thanks Naples

I really do feel what both you and Spank are discussing is very interesting and definitely something I will be looking into more, and I'm sure that is the same for a lot of other users. Anything that helps to improve the forum for everyone is always a bonus.

Off to do some reading!

Kind regards

Fiona

BT Business Forum Moderator

[spank]

Your really missing the point.  And my ranking as Guru is down to the amount of posts I have made, not my knowledge level so don't feel bad/sad/angry about it, whatever that face was.

Backlinks are all good and well but it is very rare these days to find a forum that allows you to put a link in as a signature and even rarer to find a free site that offers backlinks without reciprocation.  Pagerank is big money, why would anyone give it away for free? If you have some sites I would be very interested, I'm always on the lookout for free PR.

Anyone shaping their pagerank with an ounce of sense looks for forums where they can post backlinks to their websites unhindered, you have basically said this yourself in your last post, that this is what you do, but I am sure your posts are relvent to the forum so it's not a problem.  Anyway the point is it attracts people that post with absolutelly no relevance to the forum which is an increasing problem for the forum mods.  Yesterday the front page was filled with posts on how to rip a DVD.

The value of this post was a suggestion on how to reduce spam posts.

[shenzhen]

hello, your site is good and really it has a good footprint wab thanks for creating this wabsite this is very helpful to us. thanks!!  <Link removed by Moderator>

[SeanC]

lol it had to happen.