Should I NoFollow Links Between Our Company Websites?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
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
-
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Lower quality new domain link vs higher quality repeat domain link
First time poster here with a dilemma that head scratching and spreadsheets can't solve! I'm trying to work out whether to focus on getting links from new domains or to nurture relationships with the bigger sites in our business and get more links. Of the two links below which does the community here think would be more valuable a signal to Google? Both would be links from within relevant text/post copy. Link 1. Site DA 30. No links currently from this domain. Link 2. Site DA 60. Many links over last 12 months already from this domain. I suspect link 1 but given the enormous disparity in ranking power am I correct?! Thanks for any considered opinions out there! Matthew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mat20150 -
Getting Your Website Listed
Do you have any suggestiongs? I do not know local websites where I can get some easy backlinks. I guess a record in Google Places.would be great as well. Any sound suggestion will be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stradiji0 -
Link from archived article.
A strong news site has an "archived.domainname" folder, where they have older articles listed. I can get a link on a page where there is a 4 year old article, which will be in this archived sub-domain. My questions: Will Google view a link from a 4 year old article as less valuable. Will Google notice the article is 4 years old and find it odd why the page all of a sudden has a link to my site, and thus devalue such link the sub-domain "archived" does that tell Google it is old and a link will be less valuable thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Links on Google Notebook
I have used OSE to look at links of a competitors site and notice they have dozens for links from Google Notebook pages eg http://www.google.pl/notebook/public/05275990022886032509/BDQExDQoQs8r3ls4j This page has a PA of 48 Is this a legitimate linking strategy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Image Links Vs. Text Links, Questions About PR & Anchor Text Value
I am searching for testing results to find out the value of text links versus image links with alt text. Do any of you have testing results that can answer or discuss these questions? If 2 separate pages on the same domain were to have the same Page Authority, same amount of internal and external links and virtually carry the same strength and the location of the image or text link is in the same spot on both pages, in the middle of the body within paragraphs. Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of Page Authority and PR as a text link? Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of textual value as a text link? For example, if the alt text on the image on one page said "nike shoes" and the text link on the other page said "nike shoes" would both pass the same value to drive up the rankings of the page for "nike shoes"? Would a link wrapped around an image and text phrase be better than creating 2 links, one around the image and one around the text pointing to the same page? The following questions have to do with when you have an image and text link on a page right next to each other, like when you link a compelling graphic image to a category page and then list a text link underneath it to pass text link value to the linked-to page. If the image link displays before the text link pointing to a page, would first link priority use the alt text and not even apply the anchor text phrase to the linked page? Would it be best to link the image and text phrase together pointing to the product page to decrease the link count on the page, thus allowing for more page rank and page authority to pass to other pages that are being linked to on the page? And would this also pass anchor text value to the link-to page since the link would include an image and text? I know that the questions sound a bit repetitive, so please let me know if you need any further clarification. I'd like to solve these to further look into ways to improve some user experience aspects while optimizing the link strength on each page at the same time. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernhardt
Andrew0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1