Linking strategy between my own sites
-
Hi,
I have one main site, let's call it food.com
I also have 10 smaller sites, let's call them mexicanfood.com, indianfood.com, italianfood.com etc
food.com is on its own separate dedicated server
the 10 smaller sites are all on a shared IP in hostgator
I don't want Google to think that I have created the 10 sites for only purpose of creating links to each other.
So, would you recommend that all those 10 sites link to each other? or should there be no interlinking within those 10 same IP domains?
What about linking from those 10 sites to my main site?
How should I structure my own backlinks not to get penalized by Google ?
-
I have a very similar situation to Limens.
Are you guys saying that i should have sites such as:
http://goo.gl/RxU9M & http://goo.gl/AbUKV
redirected (via a 301 redirect ) to my main site which is: http://goo.gl/JgK1e ?
If the answer is yes, should they be redirected to the home page (http://goo.gl/JgK1e) or to the specific pages they are about such as http://goo.gl/oiEeG & http://goo.gl/7nA9E
Sorry if this got a little confusing. Thanks in advance for any advice you guys may have...
-
I was going to create a few small sites that were specific to a service. I was too lazy to do multiple sites so I only did one bigger site. Now everytime I make a new page, it starts ranking immediately on the lower part of page one for my targeted keywords. The site built strength overall. I would probably do exactly as EGOL says and redirect everything to one site.
-
I agree with EGOL; for a few years it seemed that 'microsites' were the way to go, especially in regards to B2C sales. You would have operations like CSN Stores and Net Shops all with hundreds, if not thousands of bizarrely specific domains (e.g. I believe Net Shops had something like LeatherCounterHeightBarstools.com or the like). But now, they've mostly stopped doing that.
In part, it's because they realized that having an individual brand was far better than hundreds of tiny sub-brands (they became WayFair.com and HayNeedle.com respectively). But it was also because having multiple domains increased the headache of maintenance, introduced duplicate content problems, and simply added costs. And lastly, just as EGOL says, once they 301's all those little domains back to their main one, they got tons of link juice and relevance.
-
Good point EGOL.
-
Not an answer to your question... instead saying what i would do if I had a lot of small websites that were variants of a single theme....
I would redirect all ten of the satellite sites to food.com and have a huge kickass site there.
I would do that because all of that content and all of those links likes and tweets happening for a single site would make it very powerful and hard to beat.
You will do more damage with a pump shotgun than ten slingshots.
I would close the hotdog stands.
-
I'm not sure if you should worry about interlinking the sites together. While you might not get extra benefit from them if Google sees that they're all coming from a known network of sites that are interlinked, I would hesitate to believe Google would punish you per se.
For example, Expedia.com has a ton of sites within their company. So does Amazon. Do they get punished for interlinking them all? No.
However, if you're trying to secure extra credit for the links, you might have to get somewhat smart about how you link to each other, but there's plenty of documentation online to explain some of the strategies you can apply to do that.
-
Hi Limens,
Good question. It's not unreasonable to say that this sort of thing happens entirely innocently all the time. For example, I work for a company that has one main site about the company as a whole, and seven other sites to advertise the company's services in different niches like content writing, SEO and web design. So all seven smaller sites will link to the main site and some will link to other small sites.
But when that's all you have, it starts to look suspicious. If your sites all share a Google AdSense account, that's a good way to get caught and penalized by Google. Same thing goes for the IP.
Don't be afraid to interlink the smaller sites to the main cooking site as long as it's natural. In other words, don't get too greedy with anchor text.
As far as interlinking the smaller domains with each other, it's a bit dangerous no matter what you do. Link a few where it makes sense then fill up on good quality links from other unique domains.
Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Links in other language than site's language
I have a quick question regarding usage of links in my articles or website. As I already told in my last night question, I drive 2 french blogs. I'm wondering if putting on english sites links in my articles or pages to add complimentary infos on a particular topic would be useful or messy for my SEO. In other words, will Google be misled by the fact that I write in french and that I put english links ot ressources in my texts even if they are on a related topic
Link Building | | MarcoBernard0 -
Links Removed from Site but not Google Webmaster Tools
I have a new client who has been fighting to get past an unnatural links penalty. One of the biggest reasons behind it was that they paid to get a followed link/ad on a blog network, well this ad ended up being a site wide link which ended up giving them thousands of back links within a few days. After getting the owner of the blog network to remove the link i manually spot checked a handful of pages and used screaming frog to crawl looking for a link referencing their site. From what i can tell they are all gone. However they are still in Google Webmaster Tools as well as Google's index and it has been a couple months since they have been removed. Does anyone have any advice on getting them removed from Google's entities even though they are already off of the website? Thank you in advance,
Link Building | | kchandler
Kyle0 -
Creating your own blog for back linking to your site
Our competitor seems to be linked to a blog that they have created themselves. From an SEO perspective is it worthwhile creating a blog that is related to your particular industry and then only including links back to your site. Also is there any way to upload ,articles etc automatically to the blog to cut down on the people hours involved in updating content?
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Backlinks from PR sites not showing in Open Site Explorer
Hi, Over the last year I have used a range of different PR sites to post news articles that link back to various pages on my site. However, barely any show up as link backs on Open Site Explorer, neither follow nor nofollow links. Can anyone explain why this is and whether or not the dofollow links count towards SEO if they are not picked up by OSE?
Link Building | | pugh0 -
One client, one b2b site and one b2c site - linking relationship
I have a client that has 2 websites in a particular industry. The first website concentrates on advertising services and products to other organisations/companies but does not sell anything online. The second website is an ecommerce site with many products from the same industry and is more a b2c operation. Would it be considered ok to add maybe 5 footer links from one to the other and vice versa? considering that they are footer links and will ultimately increase total links pointing to both site exponentially. Both sites are hosted in the same location.
Link Building | | Gareth_Cartman0 -
Link Building: Asking for links versus building links
I am currently delving into link building for SEO having started out from a social media marketing side. From that angle, it was always my belief building high quality links came from engaging targeted bloggers and sites in my market and related verticals for product reviews and/or providing expert advise and opinion for posts they are creating. As I am learning more the "technical" side of SEO, I've read a lot of posters on here talk about asking from links from websites. While I get the concept from a strategic stand point, are links really asking for or is better to continue to pursue the long term investment of pitching to get coverage from well known bloggers and sites?
Link Building | | joshuaopinion1 -
Link Building - Natural - My site is the best to rank #1
Hi, I like to ask the mozers. Write here, the link building methods, the most natural way, with 0% spam. Tell us, i make an example, on a small competition on the internet, i see competitors with 100 - 120 backlinks from root domains. Tell us, the best tips, to use and to build 50 - 80 backlinks for a month, on the most natural way, nothing is too much, so write here, demonstrate!
Link Building | | leadsprofi0 -
Any good content sites with good quality links?
I have some content which is still relevant and interesting but not really suitable for my current websites. I have been thinking of using this on an article site to generate some links back to my sites, but I am wary about this due to Google's targeting of content sites. I currently have good PR's on Squidoo and Hubpages which link back and work quite well. Can anyone suggest any others or any ideas how to use this content for SEO purposes? Is using it for article submissions to get links short sited?
Link Building | | JohnW-UK0