Global navigation & backlinks to external sites
-
Hi guys,
My company has a number of websites of which the main corporate site links to via its global navigation. This global navigation sits within a simple
with no HTML
<nav>markup.
Every time a new page gets created on the main corporate, a backlink gets generated to those external sites. And the anchor text is always the same. As the corporate site publishes new pages frequently, I'm wondering whether this ongoing building of links using the same anchor text would be a cause of concern for Google (i.e. too many links from the same domain with the same anchor text).
Would really appreciate some insight here, and what could be done to fix it if it's an issue.
Many thanks
</nav>
-
Fair enough. If you believe there is a benefit to your users then proceed. Sounds like they are seasonal navigational links and that they could be good for users. But because this tactic could be used to manipulate search, it might still raise flags.
If you are automating these links and they all appear on the same day at the same time with the "Exact same fantastically keyword stuffed anchor text" then it will look suspicious. If these are links pointing to a uniquely titled event, "November SEO Evangelist Raleigh" and the news is published casually in content over a few days after the original announcement then it will look less suspicious. Especially if the each publication adds in some additional commentary about the event that makes it useful for each site's distinctive audience.
As with everything SEO, test it out. You should know fairly quickly if you get an algo penalty. You should also know fairly quickly if users are finding the links useful. I would certainly "NoFollow" the links.
-
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for responding. Funnily enough, the links aren't there for specific SEO gain - my company oversees a range of initiatives (such as public events) and the navigation is intended to provide our audience with an overview of all the other things we do. The events are seasonal, so they drop in and out depending on the time of year.
In saying all of this, I am event tracking use of this specific navigation, so time will tell if its 'useful'; but as this stage I'm concerned about the potential negative SEO effect from the backlinks.
Many thanks.
-
Well it certainly doesn't sound natural. Is there a benefit to creating these links outside of SEO?
-
Well, 20 are a lot, those sites are probably safe, but the main corporate site might be flagged as "selling link" although it isn't.
I just had my manual penalty revoked, and in the process they pointed a link from federicoeinhorn.com to my business site (the link was in the about page saying I was the CEO of *** and a link there). Google pointed that specific link as one of the examples of the infringing links, therefore I would suggest you do a nofollow to all those external links in the nav.
-
Hi Federico
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. There are probably over 20 sites, but the number in the global nav changes - usually anywhere from 10 to 15.
Cheers
-
Hmm.. usually it is advised to nofollow those kind of links. However, as your main corporate site links always to the same places (how many external sites?) there shouldn't be any problem, still it wouldn't hurt to nofollow them to avoid any penalty.
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
-
Technical Site Migration
Hello All- I have been in the SEO industry for about 4 years and feel fairly confident in my technical SEO; however, I am being asked to conduct a migration that is both a platform change (step 1) then a consolidation change (think of combining websites when a company is acquired) all within a 4-5 month time span. I feel like as I begin to create this multi-step checklist I would love to hear of others that have gone through something similar or have resources you could point me to form more of a process/procedure standpoint. Again - I feel confident in the technical output but I have a fairly junior team and want to execute this smoothly. Feel free to add recommendations or ask for clarification if my discussion question doesn't make sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instructure0 -
Same server for different client sites?
Hi everyone - I have a question about whether it's OK for us to host several of our client's websites on the same dedicated web server, without this causing problems in SEO. I know the issues with duplicate content etc., but for background - we provide website services to a particular sector (antiques/auctions). All our clients are distinct, and have written their own copy etc., but because they're all in the same sector, their websites will - largely - talk about the same types of things - so the content is not duplicated, but it's similar in topic, I guess. Does anyone feel it would cause a problem if we were to put several (say about 😎 of our client's websites on the same dedicated web server, or would we be better spreading the sites over different shared servers? Come to think about it, if we are spreading those same 8 sites across 4 virtual servers - but all hosted by the same company - presumably Google would know that too? Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this! Nikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Go-Auction0 -
Bit.ly backlinks
Hi all, what experience do you have with Bit.ly links? Can I use it for backlinking management?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar3 -
PR & DA
What are the best ways to increase a website's page rank and domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarkets0 -
New site causes massive drop off in ranking, old site restored how long to recover?
Hello, We launched and updated version of our site, mainly design changes and some functionality. 3 days after the launch we vanished from the rankings, previous page one results were now out of the top 100. We have identified some of the issues with the new site and chose to restore the old well ranking site. My question is how long might it take for the ranking to come back, if at all? The drop happened on the third day and the site was restored on the third day. We are now on day 6. Using GWT with have used fetch as Google and resubmitted the site map. Any help would be gladly received. Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesBryant0 -
Development site crawled
We just found out our password protected development site has been crawled. We are worried about duplicate content - what are the best steps to take to correct this beyond adding to robots.txt?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
Panda/Penguin & more than one services site in niche
Hello, My friend has a personal development training site. I have been advised not to make separate personal coaching sites for the owners of the training sites. Do you have experience that Panda/Penguin could penalize for separate sites in a similar niche? Do you need any more info to give a good response? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Franchise sites on subdomains
I've been asked by a client to optimise a a webpage for a location i.e. London. Turns out that the location is actually a franchise of the main company. When the company launch a new franchise, so far they have simply added a new page to the main site, for example: mysite.co.uk/sub-folder/london They have so far done this for 10 or so franchises and task someone with optimising that page for their main keyword + location. I think I know the answer to this, but would like to get a back up / additional info on it in terms of ranking / seo benefits. I am going to suggest the idea of using a subdomain for each location, example: london.mysite.co.uk Would this be the correct approach. If you think yes, why? Many thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0