Should I NoFollow Links Between Our Company Websites?

[MJTrevens]

The company I work for owns and operates hundreds of websites throughout the United States. Each of these is tied to a legitimate local business many times with specific regional branding and mostly unique content. All of our domains are in pretty good shape and have not ever participated in any shady link building/SEO.

These sites currently are often linking together between the other sites within their market. It makes perfect sense from a user standpoint since they would have an interest in each of the sites if they were interested in the specific offering that business had. My question is whether or not we should nofollow the links to our other sites. Nothing has happened from Google in terms of penalties and they don't seem to be hurting our sites now as they are all currently followed, but I also don't want to be on the false positive side of any future algorithm updates surrounding link quality.

What do you think? Keep them followed or introduce nofollow?

[Travis_Bailey]

One person's 'mostly unique' and another person's 'duplicate' are two different things. Without knowing the domain(s), it felt like a good idea to cover that angle - just in case.

Though I would be inclined to agree in regard to unrelated links in many instances.

[Discountvc]

I get the link farm idea. However, a link farm typically is a cluster of spammy or low quality (PR0-1) sites that are set up for a link farm purpose.

If the vast majority of your websites are stand-alone, with quality and age, targeting specific markets, you don't have anything to worry about, in my opinion.

The remark about anchor text, however, is valid. Pull a report in Open Site Explorer and do a quick run over the anchor that is being used. If it is too keyword rich, I would play it safe and change the anchor to just the company name for example. From your comments I understand you are not linking from a pizza restaurant in Oregon to a bowling alley in Miami, correct? Businesses are related or the external link to the next website makes sense, correct? If not, followed or not followed is not the question, the link has to go.

Being honest and straightforward should not trigger a penalty from bots, simply because you happen to own those other websites.

[Travis_Bailey]

So if the brand name is Super Cobblers and one of the locations is in Poughkeepsie, the anchor text would be 'Super Cobblers Poughkeepsie'? Seems pretty legit to me, without a concrete frame of reference.

When The Googles started busting down on site-wide footer links, I heard of quite a few 'City Website Design' took a beating. Though I don't know what else they were doing. It's pretty common for some webmasters to whine after a decisive action.

But you have to be careful about what you think is and isn't spammy. Until a few years ago a lot of people thought mass article and PR syndication, with a dose of free for all directories, was just fine. Their justification was; 'Because it works.' That's dangerous territory.

So, you could find yourself on the wrong side of an algorithm change - even though your intentions seemed good to you. Nothing is 100% safe or certain forever, especially in this line. But if everything else you're doing is definitely legit/above board, then you may well be okay for some time.

If you hear of some fairly definitive rumblings about your current practices, keep a nofollow version of your template(s) at the ready.

[MJTrevens]

They're actually just linked with the name of the business which is generally a mix of brand, locatio and specialty. No manipulative keyword anchor text at all.

[Travis_Bailey]

The one thing that comes to mind immediately is 'link farm'. But since you mentioned that it's 'mostly unique content' - you may be okay. Though I wondered how the anchor text looks.

Are sites linked with 'brand location' rather than 'money keyword location'? The former will look less manipulative, while the latter definitely looks manipulative. Anchor text matters. How are the sites linked?

I would imagine all of the sites are on the same host with the same registrar. Google, especially, would easily understand that the links are not earned. Rather, they are what is referred to as (by my understanding) 'nepotistic links'. Though the term can also be applied to 'paid links', which doesn't appear to be an issue at this moment. So initially, they would simply discount or disregard any juice the links would pass.

Yes, there is a line for what will get a site penalized. However that varies significantly by vertical. Often Google has to pick The Best of The Worst. So if you're in a somewhat or quite spammy vertical, you may have a little wiggle room. Don't get too cocky though. That is definitely not the only thing to consider.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

any future algorithm updates surrounding link quality...

That's the $100 question right there. As it stands, all is peachy - but if Google decide to make an update (of which there are more than 500 per year), you could be spending a lot of time trying to repair what might have been an easy fix in the first place.

It's all about damage mitigation. If I were in your shoes, I would be probably be suggesting external links of this nature, were nofollowed.

-Andy