Network of sites

[GetApp]

Hi guys,

Wanted to get your opinion. Ran a backlink profile of a client and discovered there is a number of sites that linked to the main site. The number of sites are owned by the client and seems to be built on the purpose of just backlinking, there is footer links (exact match keyword links)

The website aren't linked together in analytics or webmasters but shows up in whois under the same company.  I think the best bet is get all those links removed from footer and let  the domains expire once it finishes - seems to serve no purpose.

But the bigger question is what are good reasons I can feed back to the client that it's has a negative affect?

[GetApp]

Thank you Devanur!

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi,

Especially since the Penguin update, sitewide links like footer links, blogrolls, links from a network of sites or blogs built with only one intention i.e. to manipulate search rankings etc are a big NO, NO and we should stay away from them by all means. Though even if you have 100 links from a single website, Google might count only one of them and does not care about the rest, if there's a manual check or audit which they do randomly, this might not look good and can invite a penalty. Here you go for more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTjN9x-by-I

Also, as you mentioned that those sites were built only to provide back links to the main site, please have those links removed with immediate effect. As you know, Google is an accredited ICANN registrar, they can find the relation between those sites and the main site by looking that the WHOIS info and if those are being hosted on a shared hosting (sharing a single IP), the relation would be much more evident.

Hope it helps.

Best,

Devanur Rafi.