Google and CGI links

[Guidepost]

Hi,

I have read a number of threads regarding CGI links, and SEs dislike of the same.

Does this mean that the links I have to pages and products in my site from my affiliates -

e.g.
http://www.guidepost.uk.com/cgi-bin/...log/anqnp.html

are damaging my search engine ratings?

Thanks,

Rosalyn

[Mike Hughes]

I would have to say that those kind of affiliate links (groundbreak ?) won't hurt your pages but may not be counted as links for link popularity or pagerank.

If I were you I'd stop worrying about the complex things and get the basics right. Your earlier post about the 'lancashire walking books' page (if I remember correctly) was worried about it not ranking well. Looking at it though I'm not really that surprised:

- The target phrase ("lancashire walking books" ?) only appears in the title.
- 'Books' doesn't appear in your keywords meta tags, and the only reference to Lancashire and walking is "walking in Lancashire".
- there are very few links to that page (only the sitemap and a section page three clicks in from the homepage) and the anchor text is just 'lancashire'.

There are lots of good threads about SEO on this forum that will help you do better in the search engines. My advice would be to focus on the basics first and only worry about the complex stuff after that.

Mike

[Guidepost]

Thanks for your comments and advice. Looks like I'm giong to be busy!

I hope this isn't a really dim question, but do internal links from one page to another help with ratings? e.g. the links from the Lancashire books page to appropriate maps?

Rosalyn.

[Mike Hughes]

Yes, internal links count as well as external links. So a page that only has a single link from another page buried deep within the site won't be seen as being as important as one that has a link straight from the homepage and every other page.

Mike