Large natural products website owns education website. Should relationship be disclosed?
-
Hello All -
I'm working on a content strategy for a large natural products company. In general it's difficult for articles about the natural products industry written written on commercial company sites to show up in the SERP. Most of the results come from large educational sites and blogs with no obvious affiliation (or products for sale).
This company also owns an educational site - one that would be much easier to get content on the first page of the SERP for. The 2 sites are hosted on the same server.
My question is - does this website relationship look fishy? Is it a grey area to create content for the educational site - content where the purpose is #1 education, but #2 - to promote products from the main site and send traffic to the main site. I do think it's important to note that the main company site does not actual sell any products there (products are sold on Amazon and on shelves in stores).
I appreciate your thoughts!
-
Hi Umar -
This is good advice, and consistent with my thinking. The educational site is ranking very well and we're in the process of giving it a facelift - new design, etc. It is not a .edu - it is essentially a large blog site that discusses a specific area of homeopathy.
The content produced for the educational site will not be thin. I also plan on introducing more outbound links to other authoritative sites that are not the commercial site to diversify the link profile.
Much appreciated!
-
Hey Justin,
First of all welcome to Moz
Coming to your question, if you think your content is really original, well-written and in-depth as compare to other "large educational sites and blogs" I strongly believe you can outrank them by focusing on hardcore content marketing activities. Though, it will take some time but it's practical.
Coming to other part of the question, it will look fishy if you continuously and un-ncessary linking up your commercial site with this educational site by thin content. If you're just looking to send only traffic to your main site, make content looks original, add other authority links and implement a no-follow tag to your commercial site and play safe.
I also like to know, is this educational site already ranking up? What actually makes it "educational"? Are you referring to any .edu domain here?
Hope this helps!
Umar
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
-
Is there a good website builder that can gain links?
I made the horrible mistake of using GoDaddy website builder and just found out that I have 3 homepages with a 302 temporary redirect on one of them. GoDaddy says I have only one homepage and no redirects which is not true as far as both Google Webmaster and Mozpro are concerned. I am not able to change anything structurally on the Godaddy site. Is there an economical alternative to having a website built that I can work with myself (with little knowledge) and that I can do some link building that will be effective. Thank you, I will refrain from commenting on GoDaddy Scott
Link Building | | ScottR.0 -
What Makes A 'Natural Link Profile'?
I find it hard to recognize unnatural link patterns when the links to my site are so familiar. It can be hard to see the wood for the trees! How many links from one site is too many? Does it depend on the size of the site? Thanks for your advice on this.
Link Building | | T0BY0 -
How to derive link value from owned Pinterest-type site?
Good morning! Say the client is Acme Parakeets . . . if we created a "MyParakeetPin" Pinterest style board such as http://themifydemo.me/pinboard/ and promoted it to the parakeet community how might one set it up to generate maximum link value for www.acmeparakeets.com? And, did I set myself up for a 'tweet' joke?
Link Building | | GFujioka0 -
Any benefits to having Wikipedia links now they are 'no-followed' (apart from traffic and natural link prof.)
I see that Wikipedia outbound links are all no-followed, is there any benefit (aside from the traffic) for having links here now ? For example is their co-citation and co-occurance benefits. I know there is without the links since from seeing previous Moz content about this saying Google getting good at connecting brand/s and topic mentions on a page (without any links) so appreciate Wikipedia is still good for that sort of thing. And a no-followed link is obviously good for the potential traffic. But is there any additional SEO benefit to having a no followed link on a wikipedia entry/stub too ? (aside from its contribution to your no-followed links which in turn contribute to a natural looking link profile) Cheers Dan
Link Building | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Mutliple language website with same keyword for different language
Hi you all, how are you? I'm having a problem with a new client. His website is multilanguage, and he wanted to position his website in Google US, Google Brazil and Google Argentina. The problem is the following: the client is an hotel chain, and for every hotel they own they have an internal website. Because each internal website is well optimized for the keyword that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned with the internal pages, not the home. This is fine by me, but here is the problem. Each language (es, en and pt) ranks better in each country. How would you exchange links? Because I have, for each keyword, three websites, each one in a different languages. Coul you give me an idea with this? Someone has experienced the same thing? Thanks!
Link Building | | arielbortz0 -
Where/should I post my press release/articles on my own website?
I have started a long-term article marketing campaign and press release distribution. I will have about 4 articles and press releases in total every month. Although the press releases will not be self-promotional, sometimes they will be talking about a certain product that we unveil. The question is, due to the high quality of these press releases, should I put them on my website as well as publish them on third party websites? If so, because they target a specific service/product which we already have a dedicated page on our website, wouldn't that put Google in the position of choosing between the two pages? I was thinking to put them on my blog and link internally from there with the keywords that I target on those pages as anchor text. The same question for articles. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | echo10 -
Keyword Strategy for Very Large Website Launch
My friend and I are launching a website used to track alcoholic beverages. It has over 115k pages, three tier site structure. I am curious about the keyword strategy for the homepage. I know I will get a lot of long tail search traffic for drink names and how to mix drinks. Do I need a Keyword Strategy for my homepage with so many internal pages? Its a new brand we created, not a keyword domain. We would like to rank for how to mix drinks, etc... However with the number of pages we already have a lot of internal link juice. Where should link building be focused?
Link Building | | getbigyadig0 -
Guest Blogging - Build a relationship with a few blogs and post only there or post a few on as many good blogs as possible?
I'm curious which strategy is better in the short term and in the long-term? Part of my link building strategy involves contacting bloggers and posting some guest blogs on their sites. Now there are advantages with posting on a few blogs and creating a link between you and the blog readers and the blog owner. It also saves time trying to contact blog owners etc. However would my time be better spent contacting hundreds of blogs and seeing where I can guest blog and then post on as many as possible; in order to have a diverse number of links going back to my website? What do you think is the best option and why?
Link Building | | Grow0
