Shouldn't there be a guidline for how many links we can use?

I posted a page today which had the same amount of link to one destination as would be allowed on a Squidoo lens. I then received a message asking to make a correction. When I went to my page there was a  message accusing me of spamming!  I found the tone of the message very offensive rather than helpful. I was shocked after having received a helpful constructive criticism on another of my pages earlier today.

Perhaps Wizzley should have a policy about the amount of links we can have to one destination rather than letting people work in the dark and then accuse them of spamming!

Good question, links in general.  

How many out bound links can we have given the new VigLink program.... hmmm 

I never add more than one link to the same destination. 

But, this got me thinking, don't want to go over board on any links.

Hmmm gonna go look see if I can find more on the links concerning viglink.  I'll read it again.

I was a bit angry at being accused of spamming when I started this thread. the was no intention to spam, I just assumed the rules would be roughly the same as on Squidoo. It's not that I was told I had done something wrong that made me angry, it was the tone in which it was said.

 Even so, I think this is an area where there needs to be guidance for members rather than waiting until someone does something Wizzley doesn't like and then accusing them of spamming.

I have calmed down  now after my rant

I think it's hard to come up with a links policy for every situation. If it was 8 links to a merchant like Amazon and you met the 400 world minimum that's one thing. If it was your own .com and you put 8 links to a single .com address, I get the accusation of spam. But it's hard to know without seeing the article.

It was 6 links to IBOToolBox.com  on this page http://wizzley.com/ibotoolbox-a-free-business-social-network/. I have reduced them as requested.

if things are left vague, like they are at the moment, there needs to be constructive help not an accusation of spamming.

Kaazoom, you have brought up a good point, and the message is probably from before the new program.  My guess is that the powers that be missed this when they instituted the new program, and they will have to consult and let us know.  In the meantime, I am sure that chefkeem or anne will get back to you shortly.  They are probably eating dinner (imagine that) or something like that. 

Just looked at the article.  Did you get the tinyurls from Viglink?  I had assumed that we had to use the full url, but I haven't read the rules yet.

We don't have any hard rules on this because we trust your judgement as experienced online marketers. You know very well that too many links to one and the same URL may look spammy to Google and readers alike.

We try to be at our best with regard to a good reader experience, which, of course, is in your own interest as well as ours.

This is what I wrote to Paul in my correction notice:

"We don't have a hard rule about the number of affiliate links on a Wizzley page, but 6 (!) of the same destination is a bit much and totally unnecessary. It looks spammy. We recommend one at the beginning and one at the end."

I don't call him a spammer - I say, too many links...look spammy. Big difference, well-meant advice, no reason to get all flustered about it.  

I explained it a bit further in my answer to Paul's angry support email.

If you guys think I'm overreacting, let me know.

If you think that we should have hard rules about this whole thing, I'll discuss it with the team.

Friends again, Paul?  

You're not over reacting. Six links on one page to one site is way too many. I can only imagine in this post-Panda world what G thought. It's not just the OP's work that you're protecting, it's all of us. I'm planning my Wizzley portfolio for the long-run.

You probably will have to put rules in place, given the nature of many affiliate marketers. I think a maximum of two links to the same site is generous. I'd probably limit it to one.

FYI, I have 7 links to the same domain here, http://wizzley.com/mustache-cakes-cookies/.  Does this page look spammy to anyone?

Paul, were all of you links to the same landing page?  Maybe that is the difference.

Janet, yours is a sales page with product links. That's different. As far as I can tell, you're advertising different products with Shareasale aff links.

I just found that 6 affiliate links to the same social network site are overkill. 

Nelle, thanks for your input. 

chefkeem: 24. Feb 2012, 23:15

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Janet, yours is a sales page with product links. That's different. As far as I can tell, you're advertising different products with Shareasale aff links.

I just found that 6 affiliate links to the same social network site are overkill. 

Nelle, thanks for your input. 

Okay good. :)  Yes, my links go to different products.  

Okay, from the OP, I was assuming that the links were for Viglink, and therefore would be in text for that.  Nelle is right, you will probably have to set a limit, but if you don't see too many problems with this, then use your own judgement.  The thing about product links is that the page will be clearly showing that they go to different places, even if they are on the same site.

Having slept on it, I agree that I did put too many link in the article, but there was no intention of spamming Wizzley. I over reacted to the comments because it looked like an accusation of spam to me. But reading it again I can see I misunderstood. I can be a bit thick sometimes.

 The reason I had to use Tiny Urls is Wizzley kept saying the url wasn't a real one and would not let me post it. This happened on another of my articles. It accepted the Tiny one though. I'm not sure why this is.

 Anyhow, the page I am working on at the moment is a personal one, so there shouldn't be any chance of this one looking 'spammy'.

Paul

Don't worry, Paul.  We all have days like that.  I take things too personal sometimes myself. 

I like the policy as you have it.

People design their pages and sites in so many different ways, its quite impossible to make a hard set rule that is intelligently designed.

There are many legitimate and helpful reasons  to link to a single domain on multiple occasions, especially when creating legitimate resources!

The net is based on links, a proper and comprehensive navigational resource/article that focuses on a service that is offered by a specific site should include varied links to specific locations of said site.

The moment you begin to limit links you begin to limit possible utility.

Creating rules based on assumptions about google and possible panda influences is an exercise in futility.

I like ChefKeems statement on "judgement as Online Marketers"  .. it reminds me of Justice Stewarts statement on "what is obscenity (us law) .."I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . but I know it when I see it "

The links dont make it "spammy" the author, their approach and their design make it spammy!

Plus, its a whole lot of work to set link rules then create a whitelist, then add to said list, I expect  most of you wouldn't want to be limited to say 1 or 2 links to amazon? 

Limiting links tends to just create a climate of fluff, where people dont bother creating comprehensive resources and just post short, pointless adbait 

I just found this thread because I was searching for information about policies on Wizzley about links to the same domain.  I have a couple questions:

1. Is there an official policy?  You all seem to be mentioning a policy, but I can't seem to find one.  I would really appreciate having a limit like this explicitly spelled out.  I think this would both help us to not waste our own time, but also, to understand the spirit of the policy so we're not just following rules, but rather, creating the best pages we can so the site thrives.

2. I'm currently adding photos to a page, and I have a photo album on one of my sites.  Is it okay to include photo credits linking each image to its originally-published source?  If I include 8 or 12 images, each of which links to the original page where the photo was published, is this going to trip some sort of automated spam filter because I'm linking back to my own domain?  Or is this going to be okay?  If this isn't allowed, I might forgo the links, but I think I'd prefer to just limit the number of photos I upload because I really want to direct readers to my main photo album as the place I publish photos online.

Thanks!

Alex - put yourself in the shoes of a reader.

Would 12 links to the same site be useful? Of course not.

Would you get 12 valuable back links out of it? Of course not. (Google counts only the first one.)

Why not upload all your fine pics and then give your readers one link to the album? Makes sense to me.

It's all about common sense and a good user experience. In some cases, it may be useful to place one link at the beginning of an article, and another link (to the same domain) at the end, as a reminder for the reader. More than that is useless to both readers and authors.

PS: Also, consider all that leaking link juice when you have a ton of outbound links.

I totally agree about having a whole bunch of links to a single domain being a poor user experience in most cases.

From my experience as the reader though, it's a lot less important how many outbound links there are, and a lot more important how relevant they are.

I think it would be really different for links that occur in text, vs. links that occur under photographs as credits of the source.  For example, if I'm viewing small photos and want a high-resolution to download from another site, I might only want one photo, but the author doesn't know which one I want ahead of time.  If they only link once to the album, and not individually, that might cause me extra work in the case where I really want to click through to the original.  It wouldn't seem strange to me to see even dozens of links to the same domain if it's in a case like this.

On the other hand, a single paragraph with 2 or 3 links to the same domain, often looks suspicious to me.

I don't tend to buy into the whole "link juice flowing out of pages" thing.  That to me seems to be based on speculation, and the recommendations I see people make about that do not fit with my own experience.  My experiences have been that the pages that rank best in Google are ones that make liberal use of outbound links--but that link to a diversity of domains, and show selection of high-quality, highly relevant pages.

I also know that as a reader, if I'm visiting a page and it's written about a specific topic, and it links to very few pages, or it links to some pages but doesn't link to resources that I know are high-quality and highly visible, then it makes me suspicious.  But I think that's a separate issue--kind of off topic to this post (because if a person is selecting high-quality outbound links, they're not going to be linking to the same domain over and over again, but rather, to a diversity of domains).

There's another aspect to that "useful links" thingy: it invites the writer to settle for shortcuts.

Instead of a thorough treatment of the topic, writers may resort to the totally overused "for more info, go to...".

Often I see something like this: "you can easily google (this or that)." That's ridiculous. People did exactly that and came to our page. Why would we tell them to google something? 

A great article offers a comprehensive response to a search query - all on one page. Linking out to more info should be more of an icing on the cake, not a substantial part of the article.

People know how to look up stuff on Google. We don't need to tell them that, over and over again.

Let's satisfy readers and Google (and our pocket books) with well-researched and complete reports on our topic. We have enough link directories already.