No Follows - Sister/manufacturer sites
-
What is the best practice nowadays for linking to sister sites? Should you do it, shouldn't you, and/or should you list them with no follows? What about the reverse - having them link to us. Is this bad for us in anyway? Should we have them no follow their link to us?
We are a distributor so manufacturers link to us as well, should we have them no follow their links?
Thanks!
-
In my opinion, I don’t think there is a problem and you should let them link to you but always make sure that they mostly target your brand name instead of a keyword because if they started to target any keyword across different website it will give Google a negative signal about the reputation of your website but having a link with a logo or brand name anchor text is fine and you can allow your manufacturers to link to you!
-
How many sites are involved?
If you have two or three sites and each of them has a few relevant links to the others I don't think that it is a problem.
However, if you have 150 sites and they are all linking to each other or all pointing to a single domain then you are going to have a problem.
One day I heard Matt Cutts tell a guy (who like a dummy with a big grin asked... "How many sites can I link together?".).... Matt told him... "If you can't quickly name every domain involved in this linking then you are probably stepping over the line."
-
Links from manufacturers is fine. You want them to link to you, those are good links.
Links from sister is a little trickier, but it's pretty standard practice to link to sister sites from the sidebar or footer. If you're worried about Penguin, you can keep the link to just the homepage or about page.
-
I have dealt with this quite a bit and I think first off it is important to mention that your sites are about your customers.
Do you think that a client or potential client could end up on one site but intending to find the other? With Google, Yahoo and Bing out of the question, what would you do?
I spent my first 3 years trying to SEO for Google. In the end, they did not purchase a single item from me. My point is that even if they were to hit you on SEO (which I do not think is going to happen) I would choose the hit vs leaving a client stranded on the wrong site with no way to get to the content they are searching.
Google has cracked down on single purpose sites for a single business trying to dominate the SERP ie. one restaurant with the same content on 4 sites trying to get 40% of the first page SERP. So if you have two location of Bob's Restaurant you should have one website for this. However, if you own Bob's Restaurant and Lucy's Diner, you should have two. They should be connected via links as they should connect to other local restaurants as well.
There is nothing wrong with linking to other sites you own, ++ if they have similar topics.
What to avoid? Linking to them on every page. Forget Google! Where would you put the links so that it best helps your users? Now remember Google, they want to see you put the links where it will best help your users.
You can read more on the Google Product Forums
-
IMHO in this specific situation I don't think it matters a whole lot, one way or the other. As long as you don't have a page filled with 500 manufacturers and you're linking to all of them, which would be horrible for your users, I really don't think it matters.
Regarding whether or not you should have the manufacturers who've been gracious enough to link to you put "nofollow" on your links? Please don't do that. The business relationship you have naturally warrants a link. If they've been kind enough to give you a regular link, thank them and move on. If you have manufacturers who aren't linking to you and you think they probably should, contact them and ask them for a link. We do this all of the time. We deal with many manufacturer who don't sell directly to the public. They often include a directory that allows regular consumers to "Contact a Local Dealer" or "Find a Reseller Near You." Asking to be included in that type of directory is a completely natural business relationship. Whether that link is rel="nofollow" or not doesn't matter nearly as much as making sure potential customers searching in that manufacturer's directory can find you there and click through to your site.
Regarding "nofollow" of your links out to sister sites or other manufacturers, I would make that decision based on what you want your visitors to do. Do you really want them to go visit these other sites? If so, leave off the "nofollow." If you are simply referencing another site within your content, or to make people aware that you carry specific brands, you might want to use rel="nofollow" You might also consider just mentioning them in the text without a link at all (if your goal isn't really to funnel traffic to their site).
I hope that helps a little!
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
-
I want to rank with this page http://www.servicesarab.com/%D9%86%D9%82%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%81%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AA/
i want to rank with this page http://www.servicesarab.com/%D9%86%D9%82%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%81%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AA/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | saharali150 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Why did this fabric site disappear for "fabric" and why can't we get it back?
Beverlys.com used to rank on the first page for "fabric." I'm trying to get the date of their demise, but don't have it yet so I can't pinpoint what Google update might have killed them but I can guess. In doing a backlink analysis, there were hundreds of poor quality, toxic sites pointing to them. We have carefully gone through them all and submitted a disavow request. They are now on page 9 from nowhere to be found a week ago. But, of course, that's not good enough. They are on page 2 for "fabric online" and "quilt fabric." So Google doesn't completely hate them. But doesn't love them enough even for those terms. Any suggestions? They are rebuilding the site to use a different ecommerce platform with new content and new structure. They will also be incorporating the blog within the site and I've advised them on many other ways to attract traffic and backlinks. That's coming. But for now, any suggestions and help will be much appreciated. Something has got to be holding them back for that one gem of a keyword. Also, I would like to know what experiences others have had with the disavow request form. Does Google absolutely hold you to making every attempt you can at getting those links removed? ANd how does it know? No one responds so it seems to be such a waste of time. And many now actually charge to remove your links. Thoughts? Thanks everyone!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | katandmouse0 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
Bad keywords sending traffic my site, but can't find the source. Advice?
Hi! My site seems to be the target of negative SEO (or some ancient black hat work that's just now coming out of the woodwork). We're getting traffic from keywords like "myanmar girls" and "myanmar celebrities" that just started in late June and only directs to our homepage. I can't seem to find the source of the traffic, though (Analytics just shows it as "Google," "Bing," and "Yahoo" even though I can't find our site showing up for these terms in search results). Is there any way to ferret out the source besides combing through every single link that is directing to us in Webmaster Tools? I'm not even sure that GWT has picked up on it since this is fairly new, and I'd really love to nip this in the bud. Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 199580 -
Disavow tool for blocking 4 to 5 sites for Article Republishing
Am finding some very low authority sites (recently picked our articles from ezine and other article sites - written over a year back) and pasted on to there site. The number of articles copies are not 1 or 2, but more than 10-12 in all these domains This has also led to our anchor based url - backlink to us from them (a part of article). Have Wrote down to remove my author profile and articles - but there has been no response from webmaster of these sites. Is Disavow a right approach. The number of such sites are 4 or 5 in nature !!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
2 sites in one niche?
Hello, Can you be penalized for having 2 ecommerce sites in the same niche? Is there a way to do it white-hat? Please explain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Article Re-posting / Duplication
Hi Mozzers! Quick question for you all. This is something I've been unsure of for a while. But when a guest post you've written goes live on someone's blog. Is it then okay it post the same article to your own blog as well as Squidoo for example? Would the search engines still see it as duplication if I have a link back to the original?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Webrevolve0