As an agency, what is the best way to handle being the webmaster and hosting provider for several sites (some of which are in the same industry and have natural links to each other)?
-
We are an agency that builds and hosts websites for several companies (some of which happen to be in the same industry - and therefore naturally link to each other - we do not dictate). In regards to handling their domain registrations, webmaster tools account, google analytics account, and servers, what is the best practice to avoid Google thinking that these companies are affilliated? Even though they aren't affiliated, we are afraid that us being the "webmaster" of these sites and having shared servers for them that we may be affecting them.
-
Grayloon, were these responses enough of an answer for you, or are you still looking for more information?
-
I think there may actually be two issues here: One with regard to the sites all linking and one with regard to GA accounts. After Keri's answer (thanks Keri), I did a little research regarding what is the best practice. (Somewhere, sometime, I learned you set all up in a master and then move forward....). Appears I was wrong.....
Almost anyone within SEO, SEM, etc. I could find with a blog or other venue stated that the best practice was to set each client up with their own analytics account since it allows portability. With regard to Adwords accounts, that should be set up in advance in a contract: Marketing Co or Customer will possess AdWords account on termination of services. For us, if client is to retain, I require a cc on file that is used to pay all invoices as they occur.
Hope this helps.
-
There are sites out there that will show you which sites share the same Google Analytics code, http://spyonweb.com/ is one. Google knows, trust me, as I've had them shut off adwords for multiple clients when one client refused about $36 in charges (five years ago, no MMC, but all in same GWT account).
I don't have an educated opinion on the impact of ranking that this may or may not cause, and will defer to others about that.
I personally create separate Google Analytics Accounts for each client, with only their profiles in that same account. It's less about Google knowing all and more about being able to hand off the GA account to another business and give them admin access without handing over the rest of my clients.
-
We are an SEO, SEM, WebDev, etc. firm. We handle several verticals with clients who do not directly compete. Frankly, we don't like having those who do (unless in a different region or highly niched). With the web dev we are webmaster, host, and etc. Typically, we won't take on a client unless we are the ones handling the hosting as we have had too many times when we were blocked or stalled by Danny the Developer and it is not worth the pain. (That is why we got into dev).
Most of our clients have multiple sites and we do cross link carefully where it is logical. By virtue of this, we actually have sites that are hosted on various site hosts nationwide (GoDaddy, BlueHost, Network Solutions, etc. etc. etc.). We develop a matrix around the sites and groups that will link and then insure we are not pulling the IP or C blocks in a way that shows all sites on same. Furthermore, we utilize the matrix in a way that If there are say 4 groups with 10 sites each, Group A can only link to Group B or C and Group B only to C or D. D can link to A, etc. - I am not endeavoring to fill in the entire picture, but believe you can figure it out.
Early on, we were link monkeys going everywhere, connecting everything. Could not figure out what the issue(s) were. When we learned from some mozzers about the IP and C block issues, it changed our clients outcomes. I suggest that anyone that is "cross pollinating" multiple sources set up your sites in a fashion that keeps the IP and C blocks from showing up as all from the same.
-
I have a lot of sites on only a few ip numbers, i have them all on the same Bing and
Google accounts as i host and build websites. I also have a lot of linking
between them. I have recently had a site drop in ranking, but i doubt it is
because of this, as others that have not dropped have more same ip links.
DiscountASP one of the biggest hosters has almost all sites on one IP number. I
think the concern is overblown.I would just make sure that same ip links do not make up the majority of your links.
Bing or Google understand that people are in my and your position, where you are a
webmaster for many sites and host them on a few ip numbers, it is natural.what is not natural is to a link farm
-
I'm curious to see what answers you get as I'm somewhat in the same boat. I do have multiple clients hosted with the same hosts, but there's not much cross over in industries. I do, however always set up completely individual GWT, analytics etc just because of a hunch that Google may consider two sides sharing an account somewhat connected. Whether anyone has any proof is another thing..
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
-
Best Way to Handle Near-Duplicate Content?
Hello Dear MOZers, Having duplicate content issues and I'd like some opinions on how best to deal with this problem. Background: I run a website for a cosmetic surgeon in which the most valuable content area is the section of before/after photos of our patients. We have 200+ pages (one patient per page) and each page has a 'description' block of text and a handful of before and after photos. Photos are labeled with very similar labels patient-to-patient ("before surgery", "after surgery", "during surgery" etc). Currently, each page has a unique rel=canonical tag. But MOZ Crawl Diagnostics has found these pages to be duplicate content of each other. For example, using a 'similar page checker' two of these pages were found to be 97% similar. As far as I understand there are a few ways to deal with this, and I'd like to get your opinions on the best course. Add 150+ more words to each description text block Prevent indexing of patient pages with robots.txt Set the rel=canonical for each patient page to the main gallery page Any other options or suggestions? Please keep in mind that this is our most valuable content, so I would be reluctant to make major structural changes, or changes that would result in any decrease in traffic to these pages. Thank you folks, Ethan
Technical SEO | | BernsteinMedicalNYC0 -
Off-site company blog linking to company site or blog incorporated into the company site?
Kind of a SEO newbie, so be gentle. I'm a beginner content strategist at a small design firm. Currently, I'm working with a client on a website redesign. Their current website is a single page dud with a page authority of 5. The client has a word press blog with a solid URL name, a domain authority of 100 and page authority of 30. My question is this: would it be better for my client from an SEO perspective to: Re-skin their existing blog and link to the new company website with it, hopefully passing on some of its "Google Juice,"or... Create a new blog on their new website (and maybe do a 301 redirect from the old blog)? Or are there better options that I'm not thinking of? Thanks for whatever help you can give a newbie. I just want to take good care of my client.
Technical SEO | | TheKatzMeow0 -
Want to move site to wordpress and keep links without using redicrects
I have an old cluny site that has been around for about 56 years. It is on the homestead platform. I want to move the site to a thesis theme 2.1 wordpress platform without losing my links. I would prefer not to do 301 redicrects. With thesis I can specify the URL for each page of the wordpress site, however the wordpress site is hosted on hostgator as a subdomain of another site and the other problem is that wordpress adds a back slash that is not present on the old site. I can, however add .html to the URL's for pages on the wordpress site to conform to the URL's on the old html site. Will this work? thx Paul p.s. the URL for my old site is www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com
Technical SEO | | diogenes0 -
Best strategy for redirecting domain authority from an acquired site...?
Hi all, I'm an in-house for a company that made several acquisitions last year prior to my starting. I'm just now hearing about several loose-ends websites that belong to companies that have been absorbed by us. The question is how to best approach the task of utilizing that site's domain authority to our site's benefit. There is already a link to the homepage in the header of the site in question (our logo's right under theirs) so we're already getting some linkjuice. Looks like the whois information never changed. Here are the options I'm considering: 1. Blanket redirect (all of their pages there into our home page) - not ideal. 2. Targeted redirect (try to "connect the dots" between content pages with similar subjects/keyword relevance - better than #1, but is it worth the extra effort? 3. More linking (add more strategically placed and keyword optimized links back to our site) - also more work, but certainly do-able if the consensus is to leave the site up. 4. Any other suggestions? Thanks for your help everyone!
Technical SEO | | TGViaWest0 -
Any way to modify SERP site extension links?
I am not sure if this is doable but one of my clients have their website's SERP with sitelinks extension. In example. www.example.com -example1 -example2 -example3 -example 4 Anyway to modify the sitelinks on the SERP?
Technical SEO | | William.Lau0 -
301 help, whats the best way
Hi all right now i have 301 redirects setup in my htaccess file i recently redesigned our site so i have been redirecting all the old urls to the new ones. I saw a post about having all your urls the same format, so i updated my htaccess file to redirect all urls from http://www.mysite.com/food to http://www.mysite.com/food/ (added a forward slash). Now on my latest seo crawl i see all my site urls, redirecting to the forward slash url. am i doing this right, thanks will
Technical SEO | | Will_Craig0 -
Open Site Explorer - Showing No links
Hello, I have ran Link Analysis report in Site Explorer for my client qtmoving.com http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.qtmoving.com These competitors are the top 3 that consistently appear in the Local
Technical SEO | | CohesiveMarketing
Search top 7 or the Local Search Blended SERP. I don't understand why I have No Internal Followed Links, no Internal Links, and only 2 external followed and external links. This doesn't make sense to me because I know there are links internally and that there are some sites that link back to us: I'm not sure how this can happen when we have the following sites that
link to us:
http://www.bbb.org/manitoba/business-reviews/moving-storage-companies/quick-transfer-ltd-in-winnipeg-mb-14125
http://www.yelp.ca/biz/quick-transfer-ltd-winnipeg
http://www.ourbis.com/617657-quick-transfer-ltd-winnipeg Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Lyn0 -
InSite Linking Best Practices
When creating links within your website, is it bad to have a anchor text link pointing back to the same page? Say the page the homepage is optimized for "credit cards". If I have a "credit cards" anchor text link on the page the link points to, is that bad practice? Secondly, if it's better to put that link on a different page, wouldn't I be placing a keyword that's optimized for a different page on the wrong page? (hopefully I'm making sense) Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0