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
-
Why Links from Top Level Domains doesn't Pass Link Equity?
Hello, I have a doubt about Equity-Passing links report of OpensiteExplorer.org According to Sam Weber http://moz.com/community/users/432678 links which pass value from one page to another including followed 301 and Meta refresh links are under Equity-Passing links. I am surprising after looking at the links report generated by opensiteexplorer.org. Most of the article and directory links which have low DA and PA are under Equity-Passing links. Whereas websites like EzineArticle or Articlebase which have good DA and PA are not found in either Equity-passing links or under only nofollow category. Please suggest me if the report of Opensiteexplorer is not good enough or the links from the site like Ezine Article doesn’t pass the link equity. Thanks.
Link Building | | TopLeagueTechnologies0 -
Reciprocol Links
Am I correct in stating that linking to every article about your company is a bad idea. I see a lot of sites with followed links to the articles that link to them. Is this not devaluing the link? I've been recommending removing the links or no indexing the page and no following the links. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | brandonschultz0 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
Relevance or Authority for Links
Which one do you weigh more than the other? I prefer high-authority sites over low-authority but relevant sites/pages personally. From my experience, non-relevant'authoritative' websites/pages tend to have a bigger impact than 'relevant' websites/pages. What do you think? What is your experience?
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Is this a directory or are they selling links?
I came across a website that at first looks like an informational site, but they also have a directory. On their directory page, it says that if you would like a link placed in our directory email sales@site.com. Do you think Google would consider this a purchased link or a directory link? Can people get away with selling links on your site if you framed it as a "directory"?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0