Links between own sites cause bad pagerank?
-
Many people say PR does not matter, but for me its an indicator that links from a domain with higher PR may rank better.
My client has a about 4 different travel-sites of very different kinds of travelling. His sites are not ranking bad but all sites have just a PR 0-2 although the content is unique. I made the experience that even sites with few content will have at least a PR of 3 after some years with no SEO effort.
One reason is may some part of duplicate content (4 Tours begin in Manaus, so the description for Manaus is on all the 4 Tour pages the same) but another is that the pages have few external links but many of other sites he is owning... like: also check out this -> link to another own site.
Question: If I take all these links away (they even don't cause many referrals at all) - will this have a positive effect on rankings? Means trying to have always more external links from not self owned sites is a good start?
Thanks for sharing your experiences
Holger
-
If the links between each site are relevant, and the content on each of those sites is 100% unique (it sounds like you may need to work on this aspect) a few links between them are probably not causing any harm, and may actually be helping. A lot of businesses have multiple websites that link between each other. The real test is to be honest with yourself when asking the question: Is this link here for the visitors, or for SEO? Without seeing the sites myself, I can't say whether it looks spammy or not.
I hope this calms your fears (the person asking the question only had one less site than your client): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufGw65-1je8
-
Hi Holger,
While the merits of PageRank are still somewhat nebulous as new information develops, it is never bad idea to give the benefit of the doubt to links from domains with higher PR. That said, it may be beneficial for your client to generate even more unique content for each of these sites. Having sites with any duplicate content linking to each other is going to appear as link-scheming to some extent with Google. If these links do not cause many referrals, it would be fairly low-risk to try removing these links and rely more on stand-alone content between the sites to generate stronger PR. For example, you mentioned four of the tours begin in the same place; try creating unique content for each page to reflect the diversity of the tours, and offer links to content hosted outside of your client’s ownership. At the very least, this will help diversify content and give ideas for similar practices in the future.
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
-
Value of Links? What is each link worth?
Morning Everyone, I just had this thought and wondered what everyone's opinions were in terms of link value in monetary terms. We'll assume for the purposes of this that the links come from contextually relevant sites and that the sites in question have got the Moz DA from being high quality and have a good quality incoming link profile. Its a bit of a theoretical question, but i guess imagine if the only way you could get links was to pay for them, what would they be worth to you. This is link value for SEO purposes, they will have in addition value from traffic from good sites, that no doubt varies wildly depending on topic. I assume everyone also agrees on: The first link from a domain is the most valuable High DA sites are worth more than low ones. So could anyone who has an opinion on the link value suggest a monetary value for links. Its really just using a monetary amount to see how best to target my time. Here is my example of what might be expected, but I am hoping people with more knowledge will perhaps correct it. DA Rating First Link 2nd-5th Link 5th-10th Link 10Plus Links 5 $5 $2 $1 $0 15 $7 $3 $2 $1 25 $25 $10 $5 $2 35 $45 $20 $7 $3 45 $65 $30 $11 $4 55 $95 $45 $19 $5 65 $200 $100 $45 $6 75 $350 $120 $65 $9 85 $700 $240 $95 $15 95 $1100 $450 $200 $30
Link Building | | wellandpower1 -
How to get 'Links to you site' via the google search console API?
hey! Any idea how I can download backlinks via the sear console API? This page from Google has a few commands but not the back links one - https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/webmasters/v3/ Has anyone collected backlinks data in the past? Apprrciate your help! Thanks Arjun
Link Building | | BaselineTry0 -
Free tool which includes a link back to my site
On one of my sites I provide a free tool to other webmasters to use that allows them to copy some code to use the free tool on their website and under the tool on it says "Powered by: mysite.co.uk" with a link to "mysite.co.uk". Now I have no real control over which sites can come and use this free tool (a tool to test how fast an internet connection is), on the whole though it is aimed at a specific niche but a range of sites do use it which means good or crap sites can pick up the free code to place into their sites. The link to mysite.co.uk is now always mysite.co.uk as the anchor text, I used to use the websites name (which is the actual name of the URL - link to site at end of post) so the links were keyword rich but only to my sites genuine name, however I now just leave it as the URL to my site. I am not aiming to do anything untowards with the linking other than to get the acknowledgement that it was provided for free by my site, however I'm wondering if google etc will be able to tell they are natural and not dodgy? My site is: http://bit.ly/MsNQwS (n.b. a new improved test is being created before anyone says it's not accurate). 🙂
Link Building | | Wardy0 -
Niche Web Design company - Links from all your clients - Good or Bad?
If you were a web development company that specializes in a specific niche & you were to have a link back to your website on all of the websites you have designed would this be seen as crappy links & would hurt you due to the Penguin Algo updates? Or since it's a niche web development company, having links from the same industry websites be seen as decent links? Thanks
Link Building | | DCochrane0 -
Are site profile links from sites like Quantcast still a Google friendly quick win?
I heard one of the speakers from Link Love suggest getting an easy high PR link from Quantcast.by creating a site profile page. What is everyone's opinion on the value of this type of link when blended with other types of link building activity. Low, Moderate? What is the best way to find these types of link profile opportunities? Any one have a good list?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0 -
Attaining quality links from sites of a different language.
Working on a campaign for a Bed & Breakfast within non-english market. The possibilities of establishing quality links is very limited. However, as it is most of the time, there are plenty of english sites we can target. What is the latest news on achieving link presence on a site that does not match your own site's language? Given this campaign relates to travel; there shouldn't be an issue in achieving links on foreign sites, is there? Does the PR flow through just the same?
Link Building | | SpadaMan0 -
Page links vs. domain links
Hello all, I am trying to find out how Google weighs page inbound links vs. domain inbound links. I have a domain with about 100,000 inbound links and am adding a new page to my domain which at this time has 0 links. I will be trying to outrank a competitors page that has 6,000 inbound links to the competitors page, but only has 26,000 inbound links to my competitors domain . Is there a formula or a way to know how Google values a page link vs. a domain link?
Link Building | | digitalops0 -
What are the best back links for a review site?
This is specifically for reviews for web hosting or VOIP services. Very technical. Where should I look for sites to get backlinks from?
Link Building | | Aqua0