Site Interlinking - footer and menu - whether to nofollow/remove

[BobGW]

Hello,

We've got a bunch of interlinking going on between the following sites:

nlpca(dot)com

thewealthymind(dot)com

shop.nlpca(dot)com

dynamicspinrelease(dot)com

These are all owned and operated by the same people. Some linking is in the footer and some is in the menu or header.

Could you take a look and tell me which interlinks you'd recommend nofollowing and which you'd recommend deleting entirely? We can always place a home page single link to replace those sitewides we delete or nofollow.

I'm thinking we should delete everything in the footers and nofollow those in the menu or headers, placing a single dofollow link on the home page when deleting/nofollowing a sitewide link.

[BobGW]

That's an excellent idea. I will take a look and talk to the owners. What tool(s) do you recommend. Will OSE do it?

[TakeshiYoung]

Maybe Google sees them as suspicious because they are international sites and also use keyword rich anchor text across hundreds of pages. They stand out more to me than your internal links. It may be worth it to contact them and get the links changed to your brand name.

[BobGW]

Those are valid sites in our same niche, they're just international.

Could links like those be causing problems because of anchor text?

[TakeshiYoung]

Your internal linking doesn't seem very spammy to me, but I am seeing a lot of external sitewide links from foreign language sites that do use anchor text rich links:

• http://goals2life.ro/
• http://nlp.lap.hu/
• http://www.iepdoc.nl/

[BobGW]

We have dropped off the chart for our main keyword "NLP".

I'm wondering if any of this interlinking has anything to do with that. Other terms, like "NLP Training" are performing OK.

[itrogers]

It also might be a good idea for you to place these links in context in the footer.

"This site is in association with...."

Also, if the sites are on the same IP address or C block then Google will probably figure out that there is a real relationship between the sites and the people who run them.

Also, put those links in your Google+ profile. That's another good way to give Google the signal that there is a relationship. If you're not trying to manipulate or deceive anyone or Googlebot you shouldn't have much to worry about.

[TakeshiYoung]

The links in the footer that use exact keyword anchor text could be potentially problematic. Have you seen a drop in ranking for those keywords? If you haven't, I would recommend leaving it alone as it doesn't look particularly spammy. I would also advise against nofollowing links to your sites. If they're good sites and you trust them, then leave them be (again, unless you've been penalized or are receiving notices in GWT).