Same-server, Same-Market, Micro-Sites backlinks.. good or bad?
-
Hi there,
We are a real estate listings portal and we also create micro sites for real estate agents.
These micro-sites are hosted on our same server, similar in structure, different in design... different in content. They all link to us but not within each other.
They all link to us because they have to access our login system in order to manage their property listings on their own micro sites (which updates on our own website too). (Also as marketing for others to see that we have built their sites with our engine).
Would all these backlinks be considered to be coming from the same c-block? Thus, being sub-optimal for our SEO efforts? Should we worry about grouping them and giving them separate IP addresses?
Should we add nofollow tags to these links or are there any other things you would worry about?
Many thanks.
-
Hi Errol,
Yep, these links all come from the same c-block.
As Mary says, it's likely that Google is well aware that these sites are related. I disagree that that would automatically put you at high risk for a penalty, given that interlinking owned / managed websites is common practice, even amongst people who are not doing so for SEO purposes. Unless the network of sites appeared very manipulative, it is likely that the links would be discounted and no benefit passed between them rather than you being slapped with a bad penalty... however, nofollowing the links between each site and your hub site is the best practice when it is done to any extent / large scale, just in case this was viewed as manipulative. Since I do not know how many links / sites we're talking about here, I would certainly say that nofollowing these links would be the safe thing to do.
Even if you were being super-sneaky with the hosting of these sites, disguising Whois information, making changes to your template, etc., Google is incredibly good at figuring out which sites are related to each other. They've been good at this for a long time, so it's always best to assume that they'll know about professional networks like yours and follow best practice with linking.
Hope this helps!
Jane
-
Any second opinions would be appreciated..
-
I am sorry, could you clarify what you mean with the last sentence? Are you saying that by nofollowing those links I may see an SEO benefit so as I would potentially be "de-penalized"?
-
double post meant the same sorry
-
Even if you moved them to different IPs and c-blocks, it's highly likely that Google can tell they are related. Chances are good that Google sees this as some kind of link "scheme". If you no-follow the links, you may be spared the gelding that other link "schemes" have suffered.
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
-
Competitor on same server (so 2 domains in same branche on same server, also same technique)
Hi, To holding of a client of ours, has bought the webshop from a competitor. They have moved the domain of the competitor to their own server, and also changed the technique so both sites have the same CMS and also same technique on the front-end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dennis1992038
How bad is this for SEO? Should they change from server ASAP and are there solutions to do stay on the same server but use something like an CDN? Looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks!0 -
Links to my site still showing in Webmaster Tools from a non-existent site
We owned 2 sites, with the pages on Site A all linking over to similar pages on Site B. We wanted to remove the links from Site A to Site B, so we redirected all the links on Site A to the homepage on Site A, and took Site A down completely. Unfortunately we are still seeing the links from Site A coming through on Google Webmaster Tools for Site B. Does anybody know what else we can do to remove these links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pedstores0 -
Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords
For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63
META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17
META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27 There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.0 -
Is this site worth subscribing to?
Hi everyone is, the below site worthwhile submitting to? I see one of our competitors is on here and the article they have published has in turn be picked up by other sites. Is the financial cost worth the back link reward? https://app.prweb.com/Main.aspx?Entity=Home
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hardley10 -
Bad links
Well just set up SEO Moz to find out someone thought it funny to build a load of links to our site http://bluetea.com.au/ with the anchor txt "Buy Cocks" .... PLEASE PLEASE let me know how much I should worry about this and how can I get rid of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intrested0 -
Redirect micro-niche site to bigger niche site?
I have a micro niche site that performs reasonably well (page 1 at least) for it's main keywords. It is an exact match domain. To save the ongoing maintenance of a site that gets less than 10 visitors a day, I was thinking of redirecting this micro niche site to a bigger site (a niche site that the micro niche fits into, if that makes sense!) Would I lose rankings because of the power that the EMD provided? Would it be better keeping it there for the backlink it provides to the bigger site (although on the same C Class IP)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigMiniMan0 -
Translated site on same server as English version
Hi We are in the process of getting our .com (English) website translated to Chinese. My question is, what are the pitfulls if the site is hosted on the SAME server as the English version. So the server would host both .com and .com.cn versions Thoughts ?? Thanks Neil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
Site speed - query
When you say site speed, does it mean speed of loading of each of the pages of the website or speed of home page loading. What do site speed tools measure ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050