Will including a global-site link in all 100 local-sites footer be considered spammy?

[Jonathan.Smith]

If I am a car manufacturer brand site(global), and I request all my location-specific domains include a link to the global site in their footers, would this trigger a red flag for Google? There are roughly 100 location-specific sites, but I would like to come up with a long term solution, so this number could be larger in the future.

Is it best practice to only follow the footer link on each location-specific site Homepage, and nofollow the rest of the footer links on each site?

Is it best to only include one followed link to the manufacturer brand site (global) on each location-specific domain?

Is it best to not put this global link in the footer, but rather towards the top of the page only on the homepage?

[GlobeRunner]

When it comes to site-wide links, first consider the users--if you think they will actually click on those links and it would be helpful for them, then you should include them. If you were to include those links in the footer, they should be nofollow links.

[McTaggart]

Might a solution be to <no follow="">the link to the global site in all instances - perhaps the safest option? That's what I would fo - the first thing that came into my mind... any other SEO feedback on this would be good -  Luke</no>

PS1. I would be tempted to avoid any kind of keyword targeting - even if nofollow
PS2. This is interesting - a different situation but hey: http://www.thesempost.com/design-websites-follow-designed-footer-links/

[MoosaHemani]

You have site A and other location centric websites B, C, D and more.. (100+). From my understanding, adding a link in the footer (followed) to all the location based website will give Google a red flag. This is because Footer links are generally side-wide.. and adding 100+ side-wide links to a main website does seems like a problem to me!

If I were you, I would have added the link on one page (instead of site-wide) to location based websites. The links should contain either diversified anchor text or may be branded one.

Just a thought but I would love to hear others opinion on this one!

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Jonathan,

Sitewide footer links on that many domains isn't really the best idea. Would these links serve any real purpose or is it just for the backlink strength?

If you were going to link from each one, I'd suggest keeping the volume very small and using them to add value. For example, rather than dumping them in the footer and masking most with a nofollow, point them to a great blog post on the global domain or at least say something like "interested to know more about [manufacturer brand]? Check out our global site to see where we're headed in 2016." You can include the link in that sentence so it makes sense in context.

Going somewhat off topic here, is there even a need to have 100+ websites for a single brand? More often than not, the better solution is to have a single powerhouse of a website rather large volumes of satellite sites scattered around the web. I imagine you're talking about sites like CarBrandLA.com, CarBrandNYC.com etc, rather than CarBrand.com CarBrand.com.au, CarBrand.co.uk? If it's the latter, these geo-specific TLDs make a bit more sense