No Follows - Sister/manufacturer sites

[CHECOM]

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!

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[EGOL]

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."

[TakeshiYoung]

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.

[yeagerd]

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

[danatanseo]

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!