Reciprocal linking across holding
-
Hi there,
I was wondering if the following setup might be harmful for SEO of is frowned upon by Google:
I manage a couple of websites that belong to a specific company within a holding company. What is allowed regarding reciprocal linking? The current setup is like this:
- Site A: one-page general website about the holding, links to sites B, C, D on the homepage (follow link)
- Site B: website for a specific company branch, links to SITE A in the footer of each page (follow link)
- Site website for a specific company branch, links to SITE A in the footer of each page (follow link)
- Site website for a specific company branch, links to SITE A in the footer of each page (follow link)
Sites B,C,D don't link to each other, which is a good thing I guess, but should I change the links to nofollow, or is this not so harmful?
-
use it for cross navigational purposes only (user experience) don't use it for SEO or you'll get penalized if you're passing page juice. Nofollow all of them by default if you need to interlink, better you don''t interlink them.
-
RBenedict,
What you are describing is not reciprocal linking. You are a holding company with a legitimate purpose in your linking as well. Here is the GWMT page on Linking Schemes. The language is quite clear on what a "scheme" is:
Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site, or outgoing links from your site. Manipulating these links may affect the quality of our search results, and as such is a violation of Google’sWebmaster Guidelines.
I would not nofollow and they are not harmful.
Best
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Paying for a Link
I realize it is bad to pay for a link but is it bad to pay for a link on a page that ranks you 1 to 10 againist your competitor, shows a screen shot of your and lists Pros and Cons of your site? Is this sort of paid link different somehow?
Link Building | | Studio330 -
Reciprocal Link Dangers?
I know that there are issues with reciprocal linking, and I'd choose to avoid it if I could, but the circumstance I have been put into may require me to do so. Say we do it in the worst possible way. What is the worst case scenario here? Is it possible to be hit with a site-wide penalty? Is there a range of penalties? or you just get dinged or not? Will the links themselves simply be devalued? and by how much? they loose half their juice? All of it? And if you are penalized, how difficult would it be to recover? Can you just ditch the recips? or is it a lot more difficult than that? Obviously it has to do more with how you do it and what your site and the other site are like content-wise, but I just wanted to know what you think about the actual possible penalties and recovery. TIA for any answers.
Link Building | | DownPour0 -
Link building for rankings VS Link building for relationships
A Big Shout To Everyone -- Good Morning and What's Up 🙂 As I read today through seomoz professional guide to link building and the section why link building matters and in addition to this a newsletter I received today that changed my whole thinking towards link building for rankings vs for relationships. It is already happening on social networks if you are active there, but what about on your website. What are your thoughts on the following ? Google's job is provide the most relevant results to surfers online, and looking the link profile of a site & the page itself is the key to determining which page to serve on plate to the surfers link query ! Webmasters Site Objective:
Link Building | | helpwanted
I think that we as webmasters have to ask ourselves what do we want to achieve with link building. To get quick traffic or build slow authority links, high rankings, lead generation, sales & other things here I may be missing etcccc Other Objective Networking & Relationship Building Alliances : What I discovered today is that building links for 1st page rankings are great and will provide me with steady traffic, but not all of it is targeted traffic, but what else can I do to bring targeted traffic and at the same time try to build alliances with other related non competing business owners online. The idea... is to apply old school networking / relationship building alliances to get targeted traffic to my site that can actually benefit from my services. How Do We Achieve This I become a editor for approving resource links for me site, only the best will be placed on my site as a resource. Build a valuable tightly themed categorized resource section with related non competing resources that can help my sites visitors find what they are looking for, send visitors to non competing resources that may purchase their services which helps me build a relationship with them, and may can with rankings as well, provided I am selective with my qualification process. Questions & Concerns Below : What should I be thinking about when creating a resource categorized links page How many outgoing do follow links should I allow from this links partner page How will this links resource page affect my own SE 1st Page Rankings and is it worth it based on getting targeted traffic Any pros / cons I may be missing here0 -
NEW LINKS
Hi If you plan to add new links to a site which currently has very few inbound links what is the maximum amount you could add in any one day before it is deemed by Google to be suspicious and unatural. I am referring ot manually added links, not robotic. Thank you 🙂
Link Building | | PH2920 -
Should I unify my links?
Checking at opensiteexplorer.org I can see that: mydomain.com has has DA 26, linking root domains 1, total links 22 www.mydomain.com has DA 26, linking root domains 31, total links 89 The 22 links to the non-www domain come from the same site, which I would be able to convince to change to the www domain. Is it worth doing it? Will it add up to better DA? Thanks J PS: with only 32 root domains I think I have to do some serious link building...
Link Building | | TIBA0