Connecting Two Websites Without Upsetting Google
-
I have a question that I think I know the answer to, but want to cover my bases.
We have a successful blog and are creating a second similar blog for a more specific type of reader. We want to backlink between content because it makes sense for the reader. Our fear is that we may come off spammy to Google by having so many backlinks.
Is there a way we are able to tell Google these two sites are related so they don't penalize either site for anything?
-
Thanks for your thoughtful response. As you point out, there are many different business models, and what might be best "general" practice, might not quite fit every model.
Moz Q&A is great for this type of discussion.
-
It depends on the topic. I normally agree with this sentiment, I have given the same advice often over the year. In this case it was something that made sense to do because the audience via social and email is a very different demographic than we had on the main blog. The second blog was not built for backlinks or any spammy purpose, which is why we wanted to clearly show the relationship to Google without getting flagged for trying to spam. The purpose for the links would only be for user experience and not for SEO, we are good making all those links nofollow links. Even if we did them all nofollow we just wanted to see if there was anything else that could be done to show the relationship between the two sites.
The second blog was started less than 2 months ago and already has 50k+ pageviews even without the help of the original blog. Not a single backlink during that time, mainly because we were protecting our assets. Thanks for your feedback and not holding back on this topic, I like that even if I may not like the advice given that we're all open to the truth here in the Moz community. I definitely agree with you here about doing this for the backlinks, there has to be a purpose to a second site. In this case there really was a purpose, and it was all audience driven. Cheers!
-
This is what I figured, but just wanted to see if there was something I was missing. I thought a remembered hearing about a way that was similar to cross-domain tracking where you were able to show the relationship between the two site clearly to Google. I kept going back to NoFollow links and trusting that Google is smart enough to see what's going on.
-
I think that it makes better sense for the reader and better sense for you, to put all of this stuff on the original blog.
The backlinks that any second blog will create will be worthless unless you have links into the second blog from third party websites. So, instead of building that second blog, just put all of that great content on the main blog and get the backlinks straight to the the site you are promoting.
Building a second blog just for backlinks is like trying to kill a rabbit with a ricochet. Just shoot the damn rabbit.
I don't think that Google is going to like this second blog very well if you are making it to manufacture backlinks for your first blog. Google was killing that stuff twenty years ago.
-
Hello Jeff,
Yeap, with Nofollow tags on that links.
Best luck!
GR.
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
-
World.edu -- is that a good website to get a backlink from?
I saw the "World.edu" as a place to get a small blog and could create backlinks. But it seems like it may be a PBN which google doesn't like. What are your thoughts of world.edu?
Link Building | | newbyguy0 -
How can i build back link for competitor website
please tell me how can i build back link for competitor back link how can i check competitor back link
Link Building | | Vikran0 -
What are the SEO implications of high quality backlinks from US-based websites to UK-based websites?
Hi everyone, quick question I hope someone could help me with: We're representing a client based in the UK. As part of their overall strategy we've been linkbuilding. At the moment, about 80/90% of the links we've gained come from UK-based sites, with 10/20% coming from US-based websites. The US based websites are very good (think New York Times and genuine, relevant blogs with good readerships). An external search analyst/consultant has contacted the client to say that the US links will be harming the site, because the links are from websites in the US and not the UK. We believe that if 80/90% of the links were from the US this could indeed cause harm as it could indicate to search engines that our client is in the US when it's not (which might compromise their chance of ranking in .co.uk versions of search engines) however because it's only 10/20%, and because the linking sites are very good, we believe that they will getting all of the benefits of the positive metrics without any meaningful negatives. We just wanted to get a few opinions on this to see if people think that we're mistaken, and would be glad to hear any opinions contrary to our own.
Link Building | | GoUp0 -
My website Moz Page Authority
My website is Best Comedy Tickets. The current homepage has a Page Authority is 41, mR : 4:53 and Domain Authority is 31. However all my sub pages are basically non existent. All the other pages on the site are a Page Authority of 1, mR : 0.00. Why is this and how do I increase this ? Are there any tips or tricks to increase subpages ? I appreciate all the feed back and am grateful for any tips or helpful advice.
Link Building | | JosephSantiagoNYC0 -
Niche Market without impartial authority for links
We've had trouble with one of our brand websites for years now in SERP rankings. When I first started working here 3 years ago I stated that the site lacks a content foundation to build on. A large number of our pages do not have proper text content or had duplicate content, there was no consideration of keyword usage in any title or body copy, and there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to link to the site. I'm not a copy writer so I've pushed to get one hired, if even just on a freelance basis, to at least get some kind of content on the pages that I could work our keywords into. I'm hoping that soon they will finally start listening to me and we'll get that content in place. However, even with the content we have the problem of our market not having an impartial authority site that we could be linked from to help us build our own authority. The current authorities for our keywords are competitors. They've been doing a better job with their SEO and for a lot longer than us. The nature of our business restricts us from displaying pricing on our site which I feel is another major strike against us when it comes to organic link backs. We do not sell direct, all of our sells are made through authorized dealers and each dealer has their own territory that does not compete with each other. Additionally we do not have a MSRP and even if we did our dealers would explode if we advertised it on the site since there is such a wide range of dealer pricing. The only good thing we have going for our site currently is a new redesigned layout that makes it easier for users to navigate and get the information they need. I feel it is still to cluttered but I have to make the brand manager happy and that person insists on adding clutter that is not necessary. Additionally we added a new tool to the website, a custom tool that uses javascript and canvas to allow visitors to build their own product and request a price from their local dealer. The links we have to our site right now are from PR sites and sites that do not have any authority in regard to our target keywords. A while back we asked our dealers to help out by adding a link to our site from theirs. This was initiated by a third party company who had delusions of understanding SEO and so the links our dealers have work great for ranking us for our brand name but not so much in regard to the keywords we want to place for. Plus not every dealer is doing it. Our top competitors have over 3x the links to their sites than we do so we have a lot of catching up to do in that respect. And when I look at the sites that are linking to them it's, again, news and PR sites mostly. My line of thinking currently is to get our content issues under control and get all of our dealers linking to our site with properly constructed anchor text. I'm also trying to push to have more and more frequent press releases sent out to a wider range of sites than we currently target. I want to submit the customizer tool we developed (6 months of work and improvements/additions to be done in the future, so we're kinda proud of it) to sites that like to link to such things but so far I've not been able to find any. I'm just not searching for the right thing to find them is my guess. A few other ideas I've had is to reduce the page depth of many of our pages, mainly our product pages since they're 4 levels deep right now. I'm not sure if that's worthwhile though. How important is the url structure and keyword usage in them and how many levels should I try to keep from exceeding? We have an infographic on our site that generated a few links, are things like that really worth the time and effort though? Would it be better to focus our attention on something else instead? What I want to know is if my thinking is right and if there is anything else we should be doing that I haven't thought of yet. Or if I'm off base with all of this and we need to be focusing on something else entirely. Thanks in advance for any help/insight!
Link Building | | EscaladeSports0 -
301 Redirect and Google...
Hi all Recently, Google has indexed the landing page url for our product differently. This has just happened. So now, when you used search for "DocRead" you would find the top result being : "http://www.collaboris.com/products/policy-and-procedure-management-software" which is what i want. However, now it's indexing it as "http://www.collaboris.com/products" this page is simply a redirect to our product page as it's part of the menu. If I look in fiddler when requesting http://www.collaboris.com/products I can see its doing a 301 redirect, which is fine. Why is Google storing the wrong url ? I also noticed we dropped in our rankings quite significantly last week.
Link Building | | MarkQJones0 -
Backlinks from Trade Website - Are they worth it?
Hi I am doing some linking building for a niche and slightly dull industry. I have found that trade magazine want a lot of money to publish press releases with back links. The publications are relevant to my industry but have a low page rank on Google. Is it still worth paying for these links? Thanks David
Link Building | | DavidLenehan0 -
Where/should I post my press release/articles on my own website?
I have started a long-term article marketing campaign and press release distribution. I will have about 4 articles and press releases in total every month. Although the press releases will not be self-promotional, sometimes they will be talking about a certain product that we unveil. The question is, due to the high quality of these press releases, should I put them on my website as well as publish them on third party websites? If so, because they target a specific service/product which we already have a dedicated page on our website, wouldn't that put Google in the position of choosing between the two pages? I was thinking to put them on my blog and link internally from there with the keywords that I target on those pages as anchor text. The same question for articles. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | echo10