Should I link my similar sites together?
-
Hi
I currently have two sites within exactly the same market. I've just purchased a third website from someone.
Should I link these sites together? (i.e. in the page header should I cross link them or point two of them to the third?)
If I do this will it harm them if they are on the same C-Class IP blocks? Is using private domains and different hosting companies considered dodgey in any way?
Basically I'm a big wimp and don't want to do anything potentially that might potentially hurt my rankings;)
-
Thanks for the replies.
Linking the sites together would be difficult as they are marketed at different segments.
The main sites are well known and marketed to different segments, (free and professional.) People search for them by brand so I wouldn't want to merge them, + that's too many eggs in one basket for my liking.
The third site is a branded toolkit containing the same services plus a couple of others. It's already had a PR7 site in a related niche merged into a sub folder about a year ago.
My plan was to link (either one way or reciprocal) the free and professional sites to the under-performing mixed bag one.
There is no duplicate content but if anything could cause a problem then I won't do it.
-
I agree with Ben on managing 3 sites if it is the same content or products|services.
There are other possible solution, which will depend on:
1.Do you sell the same products/services on each domain?
Yes: Well you can do that, without any issues, but if the content is duplicate and you are going to link all 3 domains together, can and possibly will cause issues.
No: Then, there's nothing to be worried about "cross sell on 3 domains".
There are other possibility's, which only you can answer, that is why it's always a good idea to provide more info when asking for input!
-
Unless the branding is drastically different on them I would personally consider amalgamating them into one super site.
Linking to yourself in this way probably won't have a negative affect on your rankings (not in isolation anyway) but why manage three medium sized sites when you could have one awesomeamazingkickass site instead?
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
-
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Is a link inside a video player considered an inbound link from the domain the player is embedded in?
Good afternoon...We just added a link to our homepage inside the menu of our video player. In the link below, if you click on the menu icon in the bottom right corner of the video player, you'll see a "Powered by WellcomeMat" link at the bottom of the menu. http://www.wellcomemat.com/video/kt216e25172416n/-Rancho-Santa-Fe/Ca/92067/16596-Via-Lago-Azul/1234567890/ My question for the community is would that link be considered an inbound link from any site that has the video player embedded? So hypothetically, the video player is embedded into www.abcd.com. If a user would click on that link and go to our homepage, would search engines recognize that as an inbound link from abcd.com, even though it sits within our video player? And most of the time, the player sits within an iframe. So that's why I'm not 100% sure. Thanks for reading and for your help! It's much appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brian7201 -
More bad links
Hi, After a recent disastrous dalliance with a rogue SEO company I disavowed quite a few domains (links he had gained) which I was receiving a penalty of about 23 places. I cleaned up the site and added meta descriptions where missing, and deleted duplicate titles and pages. This gained me another 5 places. In the meantime I have been getting a few links from wedding blogs, adobe forums and other relevant sites so was expecting an upward momentum. Since the high point of bottom of page 1 I have slowly slid back down to near the bottom of page two for my main keywords. Just checked my webmaster tools latest links and another 4 domains have appeared (gained by the dodgy SEO) : domain:erwinskee.blog.co.uk domain:grencholerz.blog.co.uk domain:valeriiees.blog.co.uk domain:gb.bizin.eu They all look bad so I am going to disavow. I expect to find an improvement when I disavow these new domains. As I have said, have started using the open site explorer tool to check my competitors backlinks and getting some low level links(I'm a wedding photographer) like forum comments and blog comments and good directories. I know there is much more than this to SEO and plan on raising my game as time progresses. I have also gained more links from the domains I disavowed on the 8th January mostly from www.friendfeed.com. will webmaster tools ignore any new links from previously disavowed domains? Like I have said I know there are better ways to get links, but are these links (forum comments, blog comments and respectable directories) one way of raising my rankings? To be honest that is all my competitors have got other than some of the top boys might have a photograph or two on another site with a link. No-one has a decent article or review anywhere (which is my next stage of getting links). Thanks! David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
Using rel="nofollow" when link has an exact match anchor but the link does add value for the user
Hi all, I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on using rel="nofollow" for a link on a page like this http://askgramps.org/9203/a-bushel-of-wheat-great-value-than-bushel-of-goldThe anchor text is "Brigham Young" and the page it's pointing to's title is Brigham Young and it goes into more detail on who he is. So it is exact match. And as we know if this page has too much exact match anchor text it is likely to be considered "over-optimized". I guess one of my questions is how much is too much exact match or partial match anchor text? I have heard ratios tossed around like for every 10 links; 7 of them should not be targeted at all while 3 out of the 10 would be okay. I know it's all about being natural and creating value but using exact match or partial match anchors can definitely create value as they are almost always highly relevant. One reason that prompted my question is I have heard that this is something Penguin 3.0 is really going look at.On the example URL I gave I want to keep that particular link as is because I think it does add value to the user experience but then I used rel="nofollow" so it doesn't pass PageRank. Anyone see a problem with doing this and/or have a different idea? An important detail is that both sites are owned by the same organization. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
How to find affiliate sites linking to a competitor website?
Hello here, I am trying to understand the best way to find sites that are affiliate of a competitor, through link research. Typically our competitor's affiliates link to our competitor website via any of the following links: http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp?SID=[aff_id]&LID=[link_id] http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=[aff+id]&offerid=[off_id]&type=2&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.musicnotes.com%2Fsheetmusic%2Fmtd.asp%3Fppn%3D[item_id] The first link looks much easier to find, so I have tried to find the first kind of links with Google by using the "link:" clause as follows: link:http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp Or, similarly, by using Open Site Explorer. But I always get 0 results! It is weird because I know there are thousands of affiliates out there with the same tracking code. How's that possible? Why does it look impossible to find the sites I am looking for? Would you suggest any different approach? Any ideas, suggestions and thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
SEO Link on Clients Site
Hey SEOMozzers, Quick question. In light of the possible 'over-optimisation' penalties pending from Google should we be looking to remove the SEO links to our site from our Clients websites? I appreciate that including a link to our site from an anchor text that includes 'SEO' in it may be like waving a flag to Search Engines saying we are carrying out SEO on our Clients sites. Obviously we would sooner risk a drop in our SEO keyword rankings than risk a penalty of any kind for our Clients. What is the recommended practice here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0 -
Purchased new site with good SERP ranks, do I operate and build links or redirect the TLD?
I recently purchased a blog within my product category - it has many first page rankings for difficult keywords within my niche. I am wondering if it makes more sense for for me to continue to operate this blog and build links to my site and blog (blog is in wordpress) or to export the XML feed and upload the content to my blog (new site also in wordpress), at which point I would do a 301 at the Top-Level domain. Any thoughts, ideas, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickEubanks0 -
Sitewide Vs HomePage Links For Network of Sites
I wanted to site wide link a few sites together as they are sort of in the same network of ownership and wanted some advice. 1X PR1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | upick-162391
2X PR2
2x PR3 Would it be best to just get home page links before the footer, the links will be within a paragraph of text OR Just site wide link them in the footer with a heading of "Our Shopping Network"0