I have 2 E-commerce sites - Can i cross link?
-
Good Morning Everyone,
I have 2 e-commerce websites that are similar and sell the same products.
The content (text/descriptions/titles) is different so the content is not duplicate.
SITE A has a ton of blog posts with highly relevant information and we frequently update the blog with posts about the types of products we carry and how it can help people in their daily lives...
SITE B has no blog posts, but the content on the blog from SITE A is extremely relevant and helpful to anyone using SITE B.
My question is, do you think it is frowned upon if i were to add links on SITE B that point to specific posts on SITE A...
For example, if you are browsing a category page on SITE B, i was thinking of adding links on the bottom that would say
"For More Information, Please Check Out These Posts on our Blog"
I think this would seriously help our browsers and potential customers get all of the information that they need, but what do you think Google would think about this cross-linking and if it violates their guidelines?
Thanks for any opinions and advice.
-
Yes correct, I was talking from a purely SEO perspective
-
Hey Alan,
Thanks for the input
I understand what you are saying but here is why i think it is beneficial:
For argument's sake, let's say both SITE A and SITE B sell Hammers...
Site A sells hammers of all kinds and Site A also has a blog full of useful and frequently updated content about all different types of hammers and how to use them and where to use them and how they can help people in certain situations etc...
Site B sells hammers of all kinds, but does not have all of the blog posts that contain the useful and helpful information that may help a consumer make their decision. We were thinking taking a category page from SITE B (for example, wooden handled hammers) and adding links to roughly 2-3 blog posts from SITE A that talk about Wooden Handled Hammers, specifically.
Wouldn't you agree that these links would help the user/consumer? While it may pass link juice, the main goal is to help get the helpful information in front of the consumer.
Thoughts?
-
no problem at all with google.
The only problem I see, sending link juice to SiteA from SiteB.
To the search engine its like following a sign saying elevator, going into a room and seeing another sign that says elevator and so on, until your in the elevator and no more signs to follow, they think well this must be it. If your page is about dogs, you don't want to link out from your page to another page about dogs. -
Thanks for the feedback guys - appreciate it
-
I think that as long as you no-follow the links so that Google doesn't think you are trying to gain benefit in this manner, then it should be fine. The links as you suggest, are towards the bottom of the page, and Google should see this - perhaps mention that the blog posts will open on a new site and keep the anchor text neutral.
"For More Information, Please Check Out These Posts on our Blog (__Opens up new site)"
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your input -
The blogs posts originate on SITE A.
However, some visitors find us through SITE B and therefore we want to help those on SITE B get all of the relevant information that we have available (the blogs from SITE A).
So - anyone who comes to SITE B will now be able to find all of our relevant content that is on SITE A and it will help them learn more about our products and make a decision.
Make sense? Your thoughts on how this would look under the Google microscope?
Thanks
-
Think about how this would look to Google if they were to inspect the site under a microscope. Would they question why the blog posts are on site B and not posted on Site A? What is the reason for not posting them on Site A? Are you wanting to cross-link for no other purpose other than for the benefit of the site visitors?
-Andy
-
It's perfectly normal to link two sites together like this. It can be useful to site visitors, and it's also very common. The problem comes when you have dozens of websites cross-linking together in some sort of link network.
More information
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
-
How GOOGLE can re-index my site as possible as?
I have facing the question about re-indexing in the google search engine, the case is: i have changed my site meta description but google indexed display part description why?? my site is http://www.green-lotus-trekking.com/everest-base-camp-trek/ whats the problem in meta tag description? Please let me know about this?
Technical SEO | | agsln0 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Linking shallow sites to flagship sites
We have hundreds of domains that we are either doing nothing with, or they are very shallow. We do not have the time to build enough quality content on them since they are ancillary to our flagship sites that are already in need of attention and good content. My question is...should we redirect them to the flagship site? If yes, is it ok to do this from root domain to root domain or should we link the root domain to a matching/similar page (gymfranchises.com to http://www.franchisesolutions.com/health_services_franchise_opportunities.cfm)? Or should we do something different altogether? Since we have many to redirect (if this is the route we go), should we redirect gradually?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
Does rel= canonical combine link juice for 2 pages?
If two pages are very similar, and one should rel= canonical to the other, will the page authority pass from the page with rel= canonical to the target page? Also, what happens when you a page rel=canonical's to itself?
Technical SEO | | SkinLaboratory0 -
I cannot find a way to implement to the 2 Link method as shown in this post: http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218
Did Google stop offering the 2 link method of verification for Authorship? See this post below: http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218 And see this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-passive-link-building-to-build-links-with-no-budget In both articles the authors talk about how to set up Authorship snippets for posts on blogs where they have no bio page and no email verification just by linking directly from the content to their Google+ profile and then by linking the from the the Google+ profile page (in the Contributor to section) to the blog home page. But this does not work no matter how many ways I trie it. Did Google stop offering this method?
Technical SEO | | jeff.interactive0 -
How can you tell if a link acts like a roadblock?
Hi from sunny 19 deg C wetherby UK 🙂 I read somewhere some links cannont be passed thru if they use Javascript. With that in mind on this site http://www.collegeofphlebology.com/ theres a horizontal scrolling nav bar illustrted here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/footer-nav-indexable.jpg Ive got two questions please: 1. Are these links ok in that they do not represent an indexing roadblock
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
2. How can you tell if an internal link cannot be passed Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
Can we use our existing site content on new site?
We added 1000s of pages unique content on our site and soon after google release penguin and we loose our ranking for major keywords and after months of efforts we decided to start a new site. If we use all the existing site content on new domain does google going to penalized the site for duplicate content or it will be treated as unique? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mozfreak0 -
How is my competition causing bad crawl errors and links on my site
We have a compeditor who we are in a legal dispute at the moment, and they are using under hand tactics to cause us to have bad links and crawl errors and i do not know how they are doing it or how to stop it. The crawl errors we are getting is the site having two urls together, for example www.testsite.com/www.testsite.com and other errors are pages that we do not even have or pages that are spelt wrong or have a dot after the page name. We have been told off a number of people in our field that this has also happened to them and i would like to know how they are doing it so we can have this stopped Since they have been doing this our traffic has gone down by half
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860