Linking to each other: when companies merge
-
Here's the scenario:
An AC company bought two plumbing companies. The plumbing websites and the plumbing company names will stay the same for at least a year. Then the two plumbing websites will merge and have a new domain and website. However, we will already make small modifications to the two plumbing websites to introduce the new owner.
Is it okay to create the following links?
AC Company < > Plumbing Company 1 (linking to each other)
AC Company < Plumbing Company 2 (one way link)After the merge is completed:
AC Company < > new Plumbing Company Inc
new Plumbing Company Inc < (301 redirect) Plumbing Company 1
new Plumbing Company Inc < (301 redirect) Plumbing Company 2My questions: Could the links described above raise a red flag or cause any other issues? The links are not at all meant to be spammy. They are meant to advertise for the other company's services and let the customer know that the Plumbing and AC companies are under one roof.
I am thankful for every opinion.
Johannes
-
No it has no relevance at all. Majority of the time people that want to link their sites together, they are under the same host. With the whole same host or IP and linking one another not coming up as a problem, it should be noted that it won't hurt you in any way.
But things could easily change or there might be variables we don't know. If you want to play it safe, just make the links one way and not reciprocal.
-
True: Not using keywords in the anchor text should already help to prevent raising a red flag.
-
Thank you for the amazon and Hayneedle sample. I know that I am not amazon and Hayneedle is a good warning.
My concern is less the linkjuice. I also might not use the link in a footer (especially after your examples). Probably the link would be placed in the header, in a blog post or in a slide. The aim would be to inform the customer about the additional service.
So they might think: "I liked this AC company. So their plumbing service should be good, too."
-
The problem is.... Google can not determine "intent". And, they can smack you down without warning or appeal.
I am willing to bet nice money that Hayneedle's problem was interlinking.
I have a few links between my sites but for the most part they do not link to one another. And, it will be a cold day in Hades before I am putting up footer links like Amazon - even when my sites are tightly related and it might be good for visitors.
But, that is just my conservative philosophy. I might be losing out.
-
Thank you William!
So you are thinking that having the websites on the same IP address lowers the chances, that Google is thinking that the links might be spam?
-
There is absolutely nothing wrong with reciprocal linking if it isn't being done to manipulate the rankings. If linking to a site is going to benefit your users (ie: show them you also own/operate a plumbing company) then go for it.
-
Andrew is 100% correct, the big sites definitely get a pass. Google cannot penalize a site like amazon because users will go to a different search engine to find what they are searching for. Your sites on the other hand Google does not care about because no one will miss it if it's gone.
The best is to one way link from the weaker site to the stronger site - I would not interlink them both because it looks like reciprocal linking which is a dead SEO technique. Also you want to pass PR to your more powerful site and retain the PR on that site by not interlinking out to other sites. And as William pointed out, easy on the anchor texts or you may find penalized rankings for those terms.
-
I would have zero hesitation to link these sites together. It is normal and natural for sites under the same ownership or that are partners with each other to link to each other.
I would however, be sure to link with the company name. Don't go for major anchor text like 'city name plumber'.
-
Amazon can also get away with things that most sites would never get away with. Google is not about to take Amazon out of the rankings so they get a bit more leeway.
If this is indeed a linkjuice play, I would probably avoid it and just focus on what is going to deliver the best user experience.
-
If you go to amazon.com and look at the footer, you will find a huge list of links out to 23 other properties that are affiliated with amazon.com. These are all followed footer links.
If you go to these other properties such as diapers.com you will find many footer links out to a couple of other domains. Not all 23 domains but they are linking to multiple deep pages on one or two domains.
Last year Hayneedle stores got slapped out of the SERPs for a couple of weeks and my thought was that their huge interlinking network of stores was the problem. Hayneedle severely cut their interlinking and returned to the SERPs in competitive form. They still don't have the huge list of links to other properties on their site so I believe that the links caused them problems.
I would be afraid to do this type of linking on my sites but amazon.com does it and continues to be one of the most difficult to beat sites in the retail space. So, I am not recommending this... just pointing at somebody doing this at an extreme level and not seeming to suffer from it on the domain where the links are displayed or the domains where the links are received.
In my opinion, this is a linkjuice play, not something useful for their visitors because amazon sells all of the products on amazon.com
-
No it will not. Normally, Google wouldn't penalize if this is just a one time thing and you are not known for linking back and forth to one another or in any way associated with networks that do these type of links.
Also sites that are under one host or same IP will not give Google any reason to penalize you because many domains have the same IP (vast majority of sites are on shared hosting any way).
So you are safe to go and shouldn't worry about that. In the end it will just be AC Company < > new Plumbing Company Inc.
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
-
Internal Links - How to Increase them, Categories not being considered as Internal Links
Hi All: As per my understanding, Internal Equity Passing Links is a metric defining PA. Now my website has around 65 internal links while few of my competitors have more than 180 links. I am unable to understand how to increase the internal links passing equity on my website, because I can see, more number of links on my website than my competitors but opensiteexplorer does not show that. I am really confused. Please help out if anyone knows something about this issue. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | sidjain4you0 -
What is the number of links do you require your link builder to attain each week or month? What is a reasonable goal?
Hello Mozzers... I would like to get a survey or feedback from other Mozzers who owns an SEO company or manages / hire link builders. **What is the average number of links does your link builder need to attain per week or month? what is their goal? ** I understand quality over quantity but I want to make sure there is a reasonable average to provide them goals and something to achieve on. Of course reward them more if they exceed or get .edu links. What do you institute? What do you think is fair and achievable per website? PS. There is no right or wrong answers here. I am looking for a measurable answer not subjectable. Again just gathering MEASURABLE GOALS.
Link Building | | ChatterBuzzMedia0 -
Self linking article
Every article on SearchEngineLand is self linked by it's title on H1 tag. I want to ask you if there is a SEO ranking benefit from it. I saw another sites that practice this tactic. Ex: http://searchengineland.com/forecast-google-lose-1-4-billion-pc-revenue-search-shifts-mobile-186504
Link Building | | fin0 -
Indirect Link Earning via dofollow Links In News Articles
Hello, MOZ SEO Gurus. I've been trying to think some deep thoughts on safe, effective link earning for news publishing sites, and wanted to run this up the flagpole and see if you salute. Our site is a biotech news service -- we pump out copious amounts of news content each day, which works well for driving traffic. That being said, we also want to rank some optimized landing pages as well. Take, for example, this page, which we'd like to rank for "secondary progressive MS" and related keywords: http://bionews-tx.com/secondary-progressive-ms/ Now, as far as I'm concerned, shopping this page around to MS influencers isn't easy. I can go to Foundational websites, blogs, etc., and say, "hey, we have this info page on SPMS, and I thought that you might find it helpful/want to link to it." But chances are, the MS influencers already have their own proprietary content on SPMS, and there isn't much value to linking to it. Therefore, I think that we'll get few link earning conversions on the effort. However, what if I take our Secondary Progressive MS landing page, and I link to it in a corresponding article about SPMS research, as I did here: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2014/01/30/secondary-progressive-ms-natalizumab-clinical-trial/ Then, I go to the drug developer who is at the center of this story and say to them, "hey, we recently covered your drug in the news, and I thought you might want to link to it." Then, we get a link from an MS drug developer to the news article, which in turn has a prominent anchor text, dofollow internal link to the landing page for SPMS. If the link from the drug developer is dofollow, then we flow page rank juice from the drug developer page to our news page to our landing page. To me, it's much easier to earn safe links this way than to try and shop the landing page itself. That being said, if we get a dofollow link on the news piece, we only get a diminished portion of page rank going to the landing page. Is this strategy viable? Is the indirect flow of page rank from a linking site to a news article to a landing page even worth it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Link Building | | bionewstx2 -
Link Building by Phone?
Is it worth going to the trouble to contact webmasters in person by phone rather than just using email? If so, what has been your approach to link building by phone?
Link Building | | eli.boda0 -
Link building
i want to ask a question. i am sure this is kind black hat seo. look at this web site http://www.199999dollars.com/ if we also create website like this and put a banner as domain for sale and in the footer put back links to our domain ? thanks
Link Building | | idreams0 -
Do you link out to good content?
I have noticed that there are a bunch of questions in the Q&A about people are concerned about allowing blog post comments or linking out in general. My question is: do you avoid linking out to other websites, even though they have good content? I am not talking about direct competitors here, but just linking to other websites in general.
Link Building | | ThomasHgenhaven0