Need help with big decision

[mauiman]

<sorry for the length of this post!>

I recently bought a Web directory (shall remain unnamed here) and I'm struggling with a key strategic decision and would appreciate input from some SEO-savvy people.

The homepage is a PR5 and Top categories are mostly PR3 and PR0-2's beneath them. The directory gets about 500 visits/day with Alexa ranking now below 50,000 and improving all the time.

The directory had well over 10000 sites in it when I acquired it and I've pruned it down to 8500 or so (with another 2000 in pending) and am always throwing out any trash I come across. Needless to say the directory was free for "all" and "all" came!

I'm now offering paid featured links and free regular links w/ recip links. I actually prefer to get in a volume of links, but I simply can't donate my life to this in a not-for-proft manner so I need some revenues to justify the service and to further promote the site for everyone's benefit.

Here's my dilemma/question:
All new listings whether featured or regular go in FRONT of all former free listings, but the directory is crowded so it may not be very inviting at first glance to a prospective submitter. I'm being advised by some to remove ALL 8500 free links that have been added since last year and only keep paid links so the place is empty and inviting for the paying submitters.

Frankly, I am very uncomfortable doing that as I know how big a pain it is to add a link and to do that to 10000 people just doesn't seem right to me. I should add that the directory is actually pretty interesting because there are enough sites listed in each category to make it interesting for people involved iin those niches.

So... questions I have are: do the search engines reward me or punish me PR-wise for having a lot of links in each category? What might the effect of removing tons of content have on my rankings? If I list newer links in front of older links will the SEO/exposure value be of interest to SEO folks and Webmasters in your opinion?

If you have ANY suggestions on how I might be able to avoid slashing all the current sites PLEASE let me know.

Thanks in advance.

David

[Jesse Vlasveld]

Originally Posted by mauiman

So... questions I have are: do the search engines reward me or punish me PR-wise for having a lot of links in each category? What might the effect of removing tons of content have on my rankings? If I list newer links in front of older links will the SEO/exposure value be of interest to SEO folks and Webmasters in your opinion?

I think it's like this.

The search engines will punish you for linking to bad quality sites.
By having alot of links in one category it gives less link juice to those pages.

Second question.. I can't answer it sorry.

[Manish Pandey]

Well you can't decide which is a bad site and which is a good site...people are building a website to earn some money and they may well put a lot of effort to maintain it...even if they don't it really doesn't mean that a particular website is a "bad" website...well the thing google will look upon is that
1. you don't have more than 100 links per page...well I prefer not more than 40 links per page...looks decent
and 2. it's so obvious...if you have too many links then definitely the link juice be given out..
the 3rd question is not that clear..but to the extent i understand...the newer links would be put in front and the older links be shifted to next page...hence the PR values to the older sites would decrease...as the new page won't have the PR...but it is temporary...after some time the inner pages would also get the PR...and then again making the problem solved...

Take care

Manish

[everypcneed]

Originally Posted by Manish Pandey

the newer links would be put in front and the older links be shifted to next page...hence the PR values to the older sites would decrease...as the new page won't have the PR...but it is temporary...after some time the inner pages would also get the PR...and then again making the problem solved...

I wanted to call attention to this comment. This is very true and can/will increase the PR for the bottom directories of your site thus improving its overall value to you as well. Especially with the PR being higher on the lower directories from the root.

[jakomo]

Hello,
Try to do something, make a test Send a couple of emails and the new sites try to make some money.

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by jakomo

Hello,
Try to do something, make a test Send a couple of emails and the new sites try to make some money.

Oops...what was that??