Is Inter-linking websites together good or bad for SEO?
-
I know of a website that inter-links a handful of websites together (ex- coloring.ws interlinks to a handful of other sites, including dltk-kids.com, and others).
Is this negative for SEO?
I was thinking about creating a few related sites and inter-linking all of them together, since they will all be relevant to each other.
Any thoughts would be great!
-
Google's advice on this is a bit vague, and the practical consequences can vary a lot. Linking together a couple of sites is usually fine - linking together dozens or hundreds could get you marked as a link network and get all of your sites penalized.
Usually, as Richard and James said, it's more that Google will simply devalue the links, especially if those sites share ownership/hosting/etc. It's just too easy to cross-link your own properties. I don't think getting too fancy with hosting, C-blocks, etc. is the answer. That's a lot of work, and Google can still connect you on ownership and other cues. To erase all of those cues is a lot more time, effort, and money than links from a couple of sites are really worth.
The best advice I can give is that, if you cross-link, do it in a way that's clearly of value to users. In other words, just linking these sites to each other in the footer is almost going to guarantee that Google ignores those links. If, however, you can link specific content to directly relevant content on another site, they're much more likely to let those links carry equity, and that's going to be valuable for your visitors and let them usefully traverse your sites. So, think of it more as a CRO task - how can you get visitors from one site to meaningfully engage in and convey on your other sites? If you can do that, and if you're only talking a handful of sites, you have some chance at making those links carry value.
-
What about subdomains?
Would that be more beneficial?
The idea is to have a few relevant sites inter-linking with each other, because each one focuses on a specific niche. Putting all of the niches into one site isn't ideal, let me know your thoughts on subdomains, something like what http://www.got-free-ecards.com/ does (http://printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/)
-
To be honest if it is all on the same sever with the same hosting information ect, if it not going to do much benefit from a long term point of view. I tested your site in one sever tracking tool and it shows up all the sites on the same hosting IP been 98% similar (Google would see the same data) that answers the reply above is it on the same C-Class.
| <a id="mfa99" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa100" class="domain-name"></a>kidsrcrafty.com | 98% <a id="mfa101" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | > 1 million |
| <a id="mfa115" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa116" class="domain-name"></a>www.dltk-kids.com | 98% <a id="mfa117" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | > 1 million |
| <a id="mfa137" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa138" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-bible.com | 98% <a id="mfa139" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | Jan. 26, 2002 | 96566 |
| <a id="mfa154" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa155" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-teach.com | 98% <a id="mfa156" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | Nov. 2, 2002 | 115330 |
| <a id="mfa172" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa173" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-holidays.com | 98% <a id="mfa174" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | Oct. 16, 2002 | 230480 |
| <a id="mfa188" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa189" class="domain-name"></a>coloring.ws | 98% <a id="mfa190" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | 43523 |
| <a id="mfa204" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa205" class="domain-name"></a>kidzone.ws | 98% <a id="mfa206" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | 55624 |
| <a id="mfa218" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa219" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-poems.com | 98% <a id="mfa220" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | > 1 million |
| <a id="mfa229" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa230" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-enfants.com | 54% <a id="mfa231" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | | > 1 million |
| <a id="mfa235" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa236" class="domain-name"></a>makinglearningfun.com | 52% <a id="mfa237" class="expand-indicator expand"></a>reasons why | April 2, 2006 | 178965 |
| <a id="mfa241" class="domain-name"></a>[+] <a id="mfa242" class="domain-name"></a>dltk-ninos.com | -
If you go that route, make sure to use different hosting companies or at the very least get different C-class IPs.
Interlnking sites is generally not that effective, a single link from an authority site will carry much more weight. You are better off spending your time contacting authority sites within your niche to get a link somehow (guest blog, get you featured etc)
If say you have 10 PR 1, DA/PA of 15 linking to 1 site. A single authority DA/PA of 35 and PR 3 would carry more weight than all of those combined.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Inbound links to internal search with pharma spam anchor text. Negative seo attack
Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
What to do with these toxic links?
Back in July I had posted here that I thought someone was doing negative SEO against us. We monitor our links on a daily basis, and a lot of toxic links came in quickly within a few days. So we were pro-active and ended up disavowing those links soon after we saw them. Shortly after that our ranking start to drop and we lost a good amount of traffic, though I do not know if its really connected since we only disavowed those toxic links and we weren't ranking FROM those links since they were disavowed so quickly. Now, its happening again. 20 new inbound domains linking to us from complete crap websites with crap content and not done by us. I want to disavow them, but I am thinking that maybe the first time we disavowed the links, it hurt us, and maybe disavowing now will hurt us further? I think Google should be able to filter out this crap but who knows, too much depends on this being handled correctly. Here are some of the crappy links: http://optibike.com/?home.php=page/loans/student-loan-without-a-cosigner-2.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DemiGR
http://designsbynickthegeek.com/?index.php=finance/loans/loan-for-you-3.html
http://www.nuvivaweightloss.com/?index.php=article/loans/300-loan-today.html
http://ecommercesalesmultipliersystem.com/?home.php=board/loans/fast-loan-with-monthly-payments-2.html They are mostly duplicate content across a network of sites. How would you guys handle this?0 -
Link idea? good or bad?
OK so my website ranks fairly well for keywords i would say 50-60 % are ranking in the top 3 my DA is 15 and PA is 28 I have a few other sites that i blog on that i own they have a DA of 11 and PA of 20 i was thinking of just guest posting on those using a keyword Anchor text that im not ranking for and seeing what that would do. I was thinking of creating a few other sites and just blog about random stuff for 3-6 months generate traffic and start guest posting redirecting links back towards me. Is this bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gslc0 -
Website Spam Backlinks Solution
I have been doing some back-link checking and found that 25% of the total back-links to my PR5 site are Spam and generated over the past 8 weeks. There are 189 links in total from 38 different domains and the anchor text is a combination of 'ugg boots for women' from TLDs in China, Russia and North Korea. The PR of these sites is 15 are n/a, 12 are 0 and the other 11 range between 1 - 6. More interestingly, all the links point to 1 single page on the domain. I have taken down that page now and wondering if I should 'disavow' the offending links in Google and Bing? Clearly with such a high % of my total links now being Spam, I want to be proactive so this does not hurt my rankings in search. If a Spambot is behind it then the issue is going to get worse moving forward. Any advice is welcome...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ubique0 -
Suggestion for Link Directory Script?
I own a subscription to PHP Link Directory but was wondering if anyone could suggest an alternative link directory script/software/service to PHPLD. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fergusonconsulting0 -
Hit by Negative SEO
I've seen some discussion here about whether or not negative seo is real. I've just spent 6 months recovering from Penguin, rewriting content, removing hundreds of bad links, and seeing our traffic slowly improve. Yesterday we noticed in Google webmasters tools that we're ranking for the term "Free Sex." Here... http://screencast.com/t/ezoo2sCRXQ Now we have discovered that thousands of "sex" links have been directed at our improving domain. I am convinced I know who the culprit is. What would you advise a client to do in my situation? Forget about removing these damn links. I don't have the time, money or energy to go through that again. I'm sure he can add them much faster than I can ever remove them. Is the disavow tool best answer in this case? Or is there an international court of seo justice that I can appeal to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Best way to build links?
i want to build high piority links and some high pr one's. what tool should i use? i was thinking of using scrapbox. any insights? i already have 2 high ones from youtube and google +1
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Radomski0 -
How to handle footer links after Penguin?
With the launch of Google's Penguin I know that footer links could possibly hurt rankings. Also too many links on a page are also bad. I have a client http://www.m-scribe.com That has footer links creating well over 100 links on many of their pages. How should I handle these footer links? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0