Best way to link 150 websites together

[WesleySmits]

Fellow mozzers,

Today I got an interesting question from an entrepreneur who has plans to start about 100-200 webshops on a variety of subjects. His question was how he should like them together. He was scared that if he would just make a page on every website like: www.domain.com/our-webshops/ that would list all of the webshops he would get penalised because it is a link farm.

I wasn't sure 100% sure which advise to give him so i told him i needed to do some research on the subject to make sure that i'm right.

I had a couple of suggestions myself.

1. Split the amount of pages by 3 and divide them into three columns. Column A links to B, B links to C and C links to A. I realize this is far from ideal but it was one of the thoughts which came up.

2. Divide all the webshops into different categories. For example: Webshops aimed at different holidays, webshops aimed at mobile devices etcetera. This way you will link the relevant webshops together instead of all of them. Still not perfect.

3. Create a page on a separate website (such as a company website) where the /our-webshops/ page exists. This way you only have to place a link back from the webshops to this page. I've seen lots of webshops using this technique and i can see why they choose to do so. Still not ideal in my opinion.

That's basicly my first thoughts on the subject. I would appreciate any feedback on the methods described above or even better, a completely different strategy in handling this. For some reason i keep thinking that i'm missing the most obvious and best method.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Wesley,

I am glad to be of help. Hopefully there's a way you can still work with the gentleman and do something that will still generate a good ROI, but does not use the tactics he originally wanted to.

I wish you up when you speak with him.

I'll all the best my friend,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Keri,

Thank you for updating me that's really good to know.

I apologize for the mistake. Please know that I I've seen EGOL answer so many questions so well over the years that I actually believed he was the Content director here.

My apologies and fantastic job EGOL & Keri you've each always had allot of wisdom in your replies and comments.

All the best,

Thomas

[KeriMorgret]

Quick correction: EGOL's title is Content Director, but he does not work for Moz as either staff or associate (though we're thankful he dedicates so much of his own time to Q&A).

[WesleySmits]

Thank you Mike, Thomas and EGOL for your advice. You have confirmed my fears that there is no good way to do it since it is indeed kind of a link farm. I will give him the advice to not link the webshops together as you suggested

Thanks again

[WesleySmits]

I wouldn't work on the webshops and they would not consist of only one page. From what i gathered every webshop will evolve a theme and have at least 5 different categories of products.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I want to say I completely and totally agree with EGOL

He is content the content director here at Moz

I would put the most stock into his advice.

You can be doing much better things your time than doing what this client wants.

[EGOL]

I would simply say...

If I owned a business like yours I would not build 150 different one-page websites.   I don't think it is going to be a good use of your time and money.

If he wanted me to work on them I would decline.

[BlueprintMarketing]

PS

I had recently been approached by a person who essentially had done exactly what you're describing, but they only used about 20 domains. Regardless they were penalized so hard they were delisted from Google. Unfortunately for that person when I told them the cost to fix it the gentleman was shocked that it would cost a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars to have the penalty lifted from his website and what you're describing is exactly what his being proposed to  to do.

in the end I could not get the person to agree to not build another like scheme I'm being serious so I bowed out and let the client go I don't want my name associated with that type of work and honestly when a client won't listen to you it's not really going to end up being worth your time.

I'm not saying that the guy won't listen to you.

If you want me to tell you the best way to link them together separate whois separate c blocks entirely separate hosting this is just the tip of the iceberg and it's going to get caught either way. I honestly would tell the client the truth you don't want to start with a bad foundation. He will make more money having a higher ranking on a legitimate domain that's not a link scheme that will someday fall down.

I would hope that the person would understand.

All the best my friend,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Unfortunately, I would tell him that it will violate googles guidelines if he is trying to profit in any way by linking them together and not give a better user experience he is going to be penalized. It is essentially a link farm unfortunately he would have to put everything on separate C blocks with separate who is it the list goes on and trust me you don't want to do it. He should focus the attention on whatever the web shop sells allowing it on one domain per a subject or group of subjects, but say I sell outdoors gear will I can put camping and canoes and whatever else on that domain I would mark it as a separate site entirely never interlink sites that you know or not directly relevant to each other.

It really is a shady way of doing it unfortunately I would tell him that Google's guidelines are pretty clear about this type of stuff and advice he can demonstrate how this would better the and user not himself in any way then he should of course continue working with you and you'd be happy to help them build the correct way either naming it one company or keeping the domains separate for separate web stores that do not have any relevancy to  Eachother.

I hope that helps,

Thomas

[MikeRoberts]

Why do they want all their shops linked together anyway?

Honestly if you really have to link them together then only link the sites that are relevant to one another and NoFollow the links. That should/could lessen any signals telling Google that your family of sites are just a link scheme. It's more a precautionary measure than anything. Don't worry if there isn't a chain of links that eventually ties every single one to each other somehow.... you don't want that. If its not a link scheme then you want to do whatever you can to make all of those links look as legitimate as possible so there are no questions about whether an algorithmic penalty is in your future.

[WesleySmits]

I was surprised by the amount of webshops too. The webshops were very diverse in product categories from what he told me. Still i have a hard time believing that he wants that much.

Aside from that, i'm still curious what would be the best approach to link these websites together.

Thank you for the reply

[MikeRoberts]

Either way you cut it, sounds like a poor man's linking scheme to me.

Have they considered, perhaps, one or two sites with a bunch of relevant categories? Somehow I feel like starting and running 100-200 legitimate shops like that would be more of a headache than just taking all the related products and slapping them together.