Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Linking to External Site In Nav Bar
-
Hi, we are a celebrity site but also own a separate sports site with its own URL. We have a link to that site in our Nav bar. Are we being penalized by having that link?
thanks
-
You shouldn't be penalized if these are simply sister sites that are linked together in the header. This is common practice with a number of media websites, for example:
- xojane.com nav links over to xovain.com
- msnbc.com runs footer links to nbcnews.com, today.com, cnbc.com, and breakingnews.com
- cnet.com runs footer links to cbsinteractive.com
- foxnews.com runs header links to 7 other properties
- etc.
To be conservative, I would suggest linking with the brand name of the other site - don't use a commercial anchor text. In other words, link to it as "brand name" or "brandname.com", but don't link to it as "sports news".
- topic:timeago_earlier,about a month
-
Hi
No, it won't cause your organic traffic to go down. If it were me, I don't see a reason for it to be included in the top navigation because top navigation should only be utilized for pages directly on the site.
That's just my opinion though - I still like the idea of having a partners or sisters site page where you link out to other sites like this one. Or, having it as a dropdown list item in your navigation under "About Us" or something along those lines.
Let me know if this makes sense. Good luck!
-
thanks for the feedback. We have not received a Manual Action in Webmaster Tools about it, but I was wondering if may be the cause of our organic search traffic going down a lot. I feel like it is related to the rest of the site – just a sports version of what we are doing with celebrities.... do you see a reason to get rid of the nav bar link?
-
Hi Erik
There a ton of reasons for getting a manual action - bad, thin, or duplicate content, spammy link building tactics, or more - if you have one, I suggest you see what type of manual action it is, and act accordingly.
Now, for your link in the navigation, there could be potential for that link to be considered spam, although I don't see it being super likely. The reason being, it will be recorded as coming from every page that the top navigation appears on your site, and it's not topically relevant to celebrity news.
What I would do instead is link to the site through content opportunities with branded anchor text, or developing a page that is dedicated to sister sites or company websites. Although you will have to be careful and not link to 100 websites or go overboard.
You also have to consider that another website linked to in your top navigation could potentially be a bad user experience as it is inconsistent.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
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
-
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | May 5, 2017, 12:20 PM | Bee1590 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | Jul 5, 2016, 5:07 PM | GTAMP0 -
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | Mar 31, 2016, 6:06 AM | doctecs
my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.0 -
Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?
I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?
On-Page Optimization | Feb 17, 2016, 2:10 AM | accessintel0 -
301 Redirect to external site
Hi guys, We have a client who is getting their website redesigned through us. They are discontinuing couple of their services which will not get featured in the new site. They are fairly well ranked for these services and my client wishes to 301 redirect these pages to an external site owned by his friend so that they benefit out of the ranking. The question is: Will my client's website's general ranking get affected due to 301 redirecting to an external site? The external site is not spammy or red-flagged by Google (at the moment, at least). Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | Jan 17, 2015, 10:02 AM | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
Duplicate content on partner site
I have a trade partner who will be using some of our content on their site. What's the best way to prevent any duplicate content issues? Their plan is to attribute the content to us using rel=author tagging. Would this be sufficient or should I request that they do something else too? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | Dec 7, 2013, 1:57 AM | ShearingsGroup0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | Aug 15, 2013, 12:52 AM | HochKaren0 -
Sister Sites or Joint Family?
A large News Media Group has a Tv Channel, print newspaper, radio channel (for music primarly) and an online website that includes the newspaper content and other original content in different media. My question is, is it better to have independant websites for these different mediums or have all the content on one big website. Currently the newspaper and blog are online as one whereas the radio channel has its own website and the television has its own. So should we maintain sister sites and cross link to each other or have one big happy family under one house? Best, Rishad.
On-Page Optimization | Feb 22, 2011, 4:33 AM | RishadShaikh590