Linking from purchased businesses to my own
-
Hi All,
An SEO and Google guidelines question.
We've recently purchased several local businesses that have websites. Legally, we've put a disclaimer saying we've purchased those businesses, the question is whether we should link from those sites to our main site.
Will this bring a manual action from Google?
It's legitimate that we'd like the visitors from those websites come to our main site because those business no longer named the way they were.
So, is it OK to link from these sites to ours? Will this violate Google's guidelines regarding backlinking? Should we even link and if so add the rel:nofollow tag?
Thanks!
-
I agree with Stephan: you have actually bought the businesses so you can decide to link to your main site.
It is of course a good thing to look out for penalties but don't see what you would be doing wrong if you would display a link from the purchased companies back to the parent company. As you can read: Andy wrote that the chance is probably very slim in this case.
Bas
-
Just do it, as long as the topic from the purchased business is relevant to your link.
The link should be a dofollow link and it's OK for Google since you wrote a disclaimer.
-
If someone is trying to build links by interlinking footer links, they are going to be very disappointed.
If you read what I said again, it is highly unlikely that Google would penalise with a few footer links, but there is no clear cut black & white guarantee that nothing would happen with this. There are so many other factors that could play a part in any decision that Google makes.
To avoid doubt, no-follow them. The links are still present and the benefit to the users is still there.
-Andy
-
I do not agree. All media websites list their sites in their footer and these may be the only authority links they receive.
-
Hi Gal,
I always advise in these cases, that the links are no-followed. This removes any doubt and concern over if Google will object. You are right to be cautious because you don't want any penalties to come from this, but it is highly unlikely that any would anyway. Footer links are largely ignored by Google.
There is a reason for the links to show to the different businesses, but I would just err on the side of caution.
-Andy
-
Hello,
If it's an important information for yours visitors, then there's no problem. You've purchased stores, so you want to show that they be part of a group.
Think about big companies with footer that list all their websites. They want to show that they own many websites and can reach a large audience. It can be useful to their users so no problem.
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
-
Breadcrumbs or contextual links ?
Hi, I have breadcrumbs on my site but wondering if in addition to those I should also add contextual links linking to the same pages ? Or is it necessary to duplicate ? The reason i would be doing this is because contextual links/ editorial is what google likes and I am not sure breadcrumbs counts as much. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Charity links
Quick question - Are links on charity websites with a small mention about what your company does good links to go for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Subdomain Metrics Links??
I have been analysing my companies website against our competitors and we beat them hands down on everything apart from the total links in the subdomain metrics. Our competitor jumped above us a couple of months ago to grab the number one spot for our industries most valuable keyword. They have had a new website designed and after looking at the source code and running it through SEO MOZ in comparison to our site I can't see how they have manged to do it. We beat them hands down on all factors apart from subdomain metrics > Total links where they have twice as many. When it comes to Page Specific Metrics and Root Domain Metrics we easily beat them on all factors. Does anyone have any ideas what I need to do to improve the subdomain metrics? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Detectamet0 -
Best internal linking structure?
We are considering implementing a site-wide contextual linking structure. Does anyone have some good guidelines / blog posts on this topic? Our site is quite (over 1 million pages), so the contextual linking would be automated, but we need to define a set of rules. Basically, if we have a great page on 'healthy recipes,' should we make every instance of the word 'healthy recipes' link back to that page, or should we limit it to a certain number of pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Outbound Links to Authority sites
Will outbound links to a related topic on an authority site help, hurt or be irrelevanent for SEO purposes. And if beneficially, should it be Nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC0 -
One Business-Multiple Services
Hello Everyone, I was looking for some strategies for doing SEO on a site that offers multiple services. Here is the example: There is one company with ONE physical address. They perform the following services: Pest Control Mold Remediation Home Inspections Waterproofing They also handle these services in several surronding cities. They want to maintain one website for branding purposes. Obviously I will create individual pages on their site for each service but was wondering how diffiuclut it will be to rank one website for these various services. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Should I remove paid links?
I recently added about 20 paid links from directories but have since seen a 10% drop in traffic. I did also delete about 1000 pages of content that had no inbound links and were duplicated on other sites on the web and replaced the content with new content supplied by a client but still duplicated on other sites on the web, old URLs no longer valid or linked to, new content on new URLs. Assuming the drop in traffic had nothing to do with the content change mentioned above, should I remove the paid links in an attempt to recover? I don't think the old content was bringing in much traffic as it appeared elsewhere on more authoritive sites than mine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0