Sitelinks to Sister Companies
-
Hi
We have a number of sister companies and link to them via a drop down in the footer - are these links as dangerous as anchor text links?
-
Thank you both for the responses.
The links aren't there for SEO value, more for business purposes but I'm mindful of any negative affects from Google.
-
Thanks, Highland. I didn't realize that Hayneedle redirected all of those KW domains. That was a big decision on their part. I know that the ones that I competed against were redirected but I thought they did that in a single niche only. Their Hayneedle domain doesn't rank as well as the KW domains, thank goodness.
-
Wayfair is a similar comparison. Wayfair represents a single consolidated site compared to their 200+ domains previously (under the CSN brand). I'm familiar with them since we did similar things back in the day. I'm not sure how applicable it is because we used to do the same mega-spam footers they did. The bulk of their problem (long before Penguin) was that they were what is best termed as incestuous linking schemes. What crib bedding has to do with pool covers is anybody's guess. What likely tripped them up was, back in the day, we all linked keyword rich links to the sites without any regard to relevance. Once Google catches that you have to get rid of it. A single domain is far easier to SEO for, but they probably ultimately consolidated for the sake of advertising (their ads are everywhere). But (on point with the OP) Hayneedle did 301 their old domains to their new consolidated domain, and obviously for SEO benefit. Example
I don't think it's as big a deal now because link wheels like that are long gone. I have also seen other smaller networks arise (i.e. Soap) that link between properties (in the header no less) and do not nofollow anything. It's worth noting that these networks are poorly related (camping vs diapers vs clothing) so I don't think there's any real focus on SEO there (or they just don't care). At best these links carry some minor boost but at worst they carry no weight at all. Either way, if there was a penalty it doesn't show up.
-
This is simply an opinion, based upon observations and interpretation. I don't know for sure how google views this. I don't think that anyone outside of Google knows the real answer. If anyone has their own opinion, I would like to hear it.
If you go to Amazon.com (not the Amazon.com Business site), you will see that they have site-wide links to dozens of their other retail and service properties in the footer. These go to Zappos, Diapers.com, Casa.com, Goodreads, Woot and lots more. In my opinion, I believe that these are simply viewed by google as Amazon parent company linking out to their other properties. If you go to these other properties you will note that none of them have this huge collection of links in the footer. I see other large companies linking out to their other properties in a similar way. But these are always going from the parent company out to their smaller web properties.
On the other hand, Hayneedle (a large muti-site retailer who runs over 200 retail domains) had severe ranking problems a couple years ago. This problem occurred when most of their retail sites had a huge navigation on many of their websites that contained links from lots of their retail sites to lots of their other retails sites. Hayneedle's rankings recovered somewhat a short time later, when these huge interlinking navigations were removed from their websites. In my opinion, this was viewed by Google as a manipulative linking scheme because you had sitewide links on lots of domains, each directed to lots of other domains. This was a huge number of links totaling in the millions.
In my own practice, I own multiple sites, but I don't place site-wide footer links on any of them because I think that it looks irrelevant and dumb. I also do not believe that it would have much ranking benefit at all. I believe that Google knows who owns the sites, and I believe that they have enough information to dampen your ability to promote your own sites to higher rankings with a heavy amount of "manufactured links". (All of my sites are connected to my personal google account through webmaster tools, so Google knows who owns all of them. They all also have my adsense codes on them and display ads on every page.)
I don't have fear or hesitate to link from one of my properties to another of my properties if I have relevant content there that exceeds what is available on the linking page. Does that have ranking benefit? Maybe a little. But I don't believe that site-wides between your sites are a good idea because there is a lack of relevance. And I don't believe that your visitors are going to investigate a dropdown menu in the footer to see where it goes. So, I don't think that there is any reason to do it.
-
Not really. Google is looking for unnatural links and patterns. A single sitewide footer link isn't going to impact SEO that much. If the sites all share the same server/IP Google will likely just devalue them (not penalize) and move on. If you're still uncertain you can always nofollow them.
The only exception would be if you're trying to link targeted words in the anchor (which does look spammy). Just link the site names.
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
-
Local Sitelinks
Does anyone know how organic local site links work? The examples I'm looking at are from Yelp and Angie'sList. When you run a brand search, some sitelinks reference my current location and takes me to a regional landing page. My company has landing pages for major cities across the U.S. but they never get picked up as a sitelink like this. I don't see local links anywhere on the AngiesList or Yelp homepages so I don't know how Google knows to prioritize these pages. We are also a national review site, so we have no interest in showing up in the local pack, etc. Any thoughts would be super helpful! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | healthgrades0 -
Two divisions, same parent company, identical websites
A client of mine has intentionally built two websites with identical content; both companies sell the same product, one via an 80 year old local brand, well known. The other division is a national brand, new, and working to expand. The old and new divisions cannot be marketed as a single company for legal reasons. My life would be simple if the rules for distinguishing between nation's could apply, but I only have city X, and The U.S. I understand there is no penalty for duplicate content per se but I need to say to Google, "if searcher is in city X, serve content X. If not, serve content U.S. Both sites have atrocious DA and from what GA tells me, the National content appears to have never been served in a SERP in 3 years. I've been asked to improve visibility for both sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kc_sunshines0 -
Looking for Adult SEO company
Hi guys and girls, I am looking for a company that is willing to work with us to improve our SEO. Our website is www.reallovesexdolls.com and we keep on going all the way UP to fall rock bottom hard again (like waves in the ocean). It's really weird, we never invested much in link building and such. We are so busy with other things that it would be nice to outsource this task. You can contact us by phone, or by email. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MartinePeters0 -
Google Places for Business for a national company?
A national business has one HQ. it's possible for customers to visit. Could there be any disadvantages to listing a national company on Google Places for Business? I'd see it as an advantage as they'll have a greater presence for local searches. From what I understand it won't affect the organic rankings of the company as that's a separate algorithm. There are already some discussions about this in the Q&A, but nothing I can see that's recent and concrete.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
How to jumpstart the new parent company site?
A client operates four well known brands inside the industry, and each website has a relatively (for the industry) high amount of Domain authority across these four sites. They just formed a group of these four brands and launched a new website with no authority. What steps would you take to instantly grow the authority of the new site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Socialrocketco1 -
Sitelink Trouble - CMS Migration
Hi Mozzers, My company recently took over a website for a client and moved them onto our CMS. We are having some issues right now with sitelinks. A few things have happened to cause this: 1. Our IT department didn't put in the proper 301 redirects from their old subdirectory pages to the new corresponding subdirectory pages. (Insert head smack here.) 2. In addition to taking over the client's desktop domain, we've also taken over the client's mobile site. The mobile site has changed from m.domain.com to www.domain.mobi. Again, there was a missing 301 between the two (head smacking ensues). As a result, Google has selected the following pesky sitelink for one of the sitelinks returned during a brand search for the client. The brand search is returning a sitelink under www.domain.com as:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE3
IIS7 IIS7 When you click on the sitelink for IIS7, it's a link to m.domain.com which NOW redirects to www.domain.mobi. My question is how long until the IIS7 sitelink goes away and is there anything we can do to speed it up? What we've been doing to fix this: 1. Demoting sitelinks in GWT for www.domain.com that have the old subdirectory structure while the 301 redirects are being implemented. I can't demote this m.domain.com as a sitelink for www.domain.com because it's a different subdomain, and GWT will only allow me to demote subfolder pages or the www.domain.com itself 2. We've verified m.domain.com and demoted its homepage as a sitelink. Still not sure how this could stop it from showing up for a brand search that returns www.domain.com Thanks in advance!0 -
Lowercase Company Name - Impact on Rankings?
A company who spells their name in all lower case, uses their name spelled exactly this way in titles & meta descriptions & throughout all of their site's content pages - will it affect rankings (particularly since the company name isn't a recognised word)? For example, let's say the company is called "twintrest" Which <title>would be better:</p> <ul> <li><span style="background-color: initial;">A) </span><span style="background-color: initial;">Twintrest - It's Like a Twitter & Pinterest Cocktail or</span></li> <li><span style="background-color: initial;">B) twintrest - It's Like a Twitter & Pinterest Cocktail</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="background-color: initial;">I am leaning towards "A" because the crawler would recognise "Twintrest" at least as a noun, where as in B it could be misconstrued as a spelling mistake.</span></p> <p>Also, in content it would need to be italicised right? <span style="background-color: initial;">So both these would be ok:</span></p> <ul> <li><span style="background-color: initial;">You should use Twintrest because it rocks. or</span></li> <li><span style="background-color: initial;">You should use </span><em style="background-color: initial;">twintrest </em><span style="background-color: initial;">because it rocks.</span></li> </ul> <p>But not:</p> <ul> <li><span style="background-color: initial;">You should use twintrest because it rocks</span><span style="background-color: initial;">.</span></li> </ul> <p>Is it worth pointing out?</p> <p>I've noticed that jcpenny spell their name in lowercase and use this format in their meta tags, however, they are a well established brand. Is there any evidence to suggest that lowercase may even be advantageous since a lot of searches are carried out in lowercase?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wojkwasi0 -
SEO Company Referral
I am looking for a great US based SEO company referral. I try to do as much as I can on my end but the more I learn, then more I find I need help to do a great job. Lately running the business takes most of my time, and we need a team who really specializes in SEO. Can anyone recommend a SEO company with a great reputation, someone who has done great work for you in the past? I get many people contacting me with SEO promises, but I need some advice from someone with more experience than me. I appreciate all of your insights.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fertilityhealth0