Linking Authentic Sites Together - Semi-PBN?
-
Recently I've had a lot of ideas of sites to build that all would have some sort of relevance to each other, all that would be relevant to my current business.
For example, say you have sites for: bars/clubs, music festivals, cinemas, etc, one site for each. While these aren't all directly related to each other, they all kind of fall within a category of entertainment and having fun.
Now, I'm not thinking about this as if I were to build a Private Blog Network, but instead each site would actually be valuable to visitors, be content rich, have regular updates and thriving social media etc, as if each were its own individual business.
What would be your opinion on actually linking these together at some point down the line?
I must stress that these would not be like typical PBN sites where the themes are the same, content is spun or badly written, no human touches or actual value, anything spammy etc, these would actually be authentic quality sites that you would reasonably expect to have a thriving community.
Personally, after changing my ways from blackhat to weary-of-linkbuilding whitehat when Penguin 1 was released, I'm aware of what a bad linkbuilding strategy can do and would rather steer clear, however when I compare the plan of these authentic sites I have in my head to the obvious, low quality PBNs that I find competitors use to rank well all the time, I'm coming around to the idea that they may not pose a threat with the way I intend to implement them.
Can I get some thoughts?
-
Good point EGOL on showing that after you crush your main market there is actually an opportunity to produce secondary sites, I hadn't thought of it in that way before.
-
If you had a small niche site with incredible potential and you had key articles that could support that site on your main site, you could move them to the niche site and redirect the URLs. Or, you could publish them on both sites and use rel=canonical to give the indexing and ranking value to the niche site, while still displaying that content on the main site.
I would only do the above if the amount of content is small compared to the size of the main site.
-
Thanks Andy,
Will have a look for that hangout (usually don't miss them but don't remember this one).
A little surprised he's OK with not using no-follow but I suppose if you make it really obvious there's a connection between sites, then Google can probably figure out which links to follow or not.
Will make that it's not seen as linkbuilding and instead just referencing our other domains - thanks
-
Thanks for the input EGOL,
Fully agree with you there, I've always found larger sites to work better than lots of little networks.
With this plan I can get some input from others who would be relevant to each of the secondary sites, and while it obviously will detract me from the main site somewhat, I think there may be potential for some of these to help contribute to the main site's growth in a way that could be worth investing in.
Are there any circumstances where you would take resources away from your main site (before it reaches its full potential) in order to grow a high-potential side-venture?Many thanks
-
I believe that the value of one large site would be much higher than a medium size site accompanied by a bunch of hotdog stands.
I'd put the work of these hotdog stands into the main site. The best time to produce secondary sites is after your main site crushes its niche market.
-
Hi,
John Mueller from Google recently answered this question at a Webmasters Hangout and his view was that if you have a few of the same brands, like 4-5, that are all related, owned by you and you are just showing people your own network, that there isn't much of an issue doing this at all. Add the links into the footer was also not a problem, as was not needing to add no-follow to them.
However, problems might occur if there are more if it looks like they were being done to try and gain SEO benefits (i.e Link Building).
-Andy
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
-
Canonicalize vs Link Juice
I recently wrote (but have not published) a very comprehensive original article for my new website (which has pretty much no domain authority). I've been talking to the publisher of a very high Domain Authority site and they are interested in publishing it. The article will include 2-3 follow backlinks to my website. My question is should I: Repost the article in my own site and then request a "rel=canonical" from the high authority site Not re-post the article on my own site and just collect the link juice from the high authority site Which would be better for my overall SEO? Assume in case 1) that the high authority site would add a rel=canonical if I asked for it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wlingke20 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Does linking older posts help?
Asking a blogger to add an anchor text into their old post that relates to my niche. does that help with backlinks? does the quality of backlinks determine by how new the post is or the page rank determines all? for example a new post with lesser page rank vs a old post with higher page rank which one is better to put your link on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Is it still considered reciprocal linking if one of the links has a nofollow tag?
I have a popular website in which I include nofollow links to many local businesses, like restaurants and retailers. Many of the businesses are local startups that are more focused on word of mouth and often have no idea what SEO is. Seeing as I am already mentioning them on my website and my readers are finding them via the links, I want to reach out to these businesses to see me if they might give me a link since I have been linking to them for years. My question is: If these business owners decide to link to my wesbite and they give me a 'followed' link, will this look like reciprocal linking in the eyes of search engines? In other words, does the nofollow tag I put on my links to other businesses negate the reciprocal link penalty since both parties are not benefiting from a link juice exchange?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrewHill0 -
Links from same brands?
Hi, We have around 25 sites around the world under different domains and brand names. I was wondering if its safe or not to interconnect (linking) all these sites. Please let me know, Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ferratum0 -
Is there a way to check if your site has a Google penalty?
Is there a way to find out if your site has an over optimization penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Why is Google not punishing paid links as it says it will?
I've recently started working with a travel company - and finding the general link building side of the business quite difficult. I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive. However, the link profile pointed to one thing, that was incredibly obvious. They had purchased a large amount of sidebar text links from powerful blogs in the travel sector. Its painfully obvious what has happened, yet they still rank very highly for a lot of key terms. Why don't Google do something about this? They aren't the only company in this sector doing this, but it just seems pointless for white hats trying to do things properly, then those with the dollar in their pockets just buy success in the SERPS. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neilpage1230 -
Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0