SEO: Linking from Every Page of a Site?

[nzap]

I have a small network of sites, about 5-10 sites, and obviously I want to use the page rank and linking power associated with each site to help my other sites do well in Google search results.

In the old days, we used to link an anchor text from every internal page of a site. If I had a blog, for example, with 1000 posts in it, I would put the links on my blog roll, expecting that those 1,000 links to my external website would lend some real linking authority.

Is this still true? Or is it better to link from the home page and some relevant internal pages? or within the content of a blog post?

Is Google filtering out these kinds of links now?

I want to be utilize my network to promote my sites.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[goodroi]

Many webmasters do not realize just how much Google has evolved over the years. Google realized early that not all links are equal. So ten years ago Google tried to more accurately assign value to links with PageRank. Now they tend to look at many more factors like the placement of the link on the page, anchor text distribution, no follow tag, page theme and much more.

IMHO blog rolls tend to be valued less than before by Google's ranking algorithm. I still use them since there is a good benefit for the user in the right situation and less value does not mean blog roll links are worthless. For maximum link benefit I seek out relevant content pages and embed links within the content. This placement helps to boost the direct traffic from these links making the ranking boost an added bonus.

[Planet13]

I want to be utilize my network to promote my sites.

I would love to hear what other people feel about this, but from what I have seen and heard, this is not really a viable strategy.

Maybe I am missing something something that others are doing, but it seems that the majority of people who arrive at the webmaster world forums after using their network of sites to promote each other are only here to look for a way out of being penalized.

Again, maybe there are some people doing that successfully, so if there are, I hope they will chime in.

[nomis5]

I have 10 or so sites and interlink between them. But two links to any one site at the most.

Does it do any good / harm? No idea but I get the impression it does help to establish new sites.

By the way, all the sites are about the same area of intererst.

[HuskyPup]

I hope they will chime in.

For me and my customers worldwide it totally depends on my widgets, where they are sourced and produced however I'm guessing this is not what the OP wants an answer to.

In the LHS navigation of my network of sites they are all interlinked with precisely the same navigation so that customers can go from one supply country to another without having to search any further:

example.asia
example.cn
example.co.in
example.co.uk
example.com
example.com.br
example.eu
example.in
example.mobi
example.ru
example.tel
example.us

example.info is used in the footer for all sites for legals, privacy, cookies etc.

Some of my widgets are actually processed in several different countries therefore there is some form of duplication but because they are very popular widgets I have to show that I do supply those widgets from those specific countries.

At times I have to tread a very fine line ensuring that whilst descriptions are accurate that they are not ad verbatim duplicates.

I have to say that GooYahBing have all succeeded in successfully understanding my navigation, some sites have been around since the early 90s therefore that may have helped as each country/region was added over the years.

As to promoting a network of sites in one country I have no experience whatsoever but I would have thought that if each site were to have unique information then there should be no problem.

Do I assume these sites have grown from one unique widget site and you've added more unique widget sites over the years and now you want to present them together?

Are they all unique blogs on their own unique domain names?

[nzap]

To give you more info, all of these sites are unique sites on unique domains. For example, I have a site about baby names, and another site about romance, and another site about weddings, etc. So they are all unique, many of them residing on different hosts as well.

There is nothing weird going on where I am considered about being penalized.

I just am wondering if it is beneficial in terms of SEO to link from SITE A to SITE B, for example, on every page of SITE A on the sidebar or footer or somewhere, or whether this is just filtered out by Google.

It seems to me that it would be better to link from within the content of a page, but I am not sure if perhaps doing both is the best strategy? So I wanted to get SEO opinions here.

Thank you!

[masterdark116]

I am also considering about link architecture between my networks.
I create some websites that have same topic and make exchange link between them.
Should I do that? Which link architecture I should do?

[goodroi]

Based on my experience creating a mini-site just to gain another inbound link generally does not work out. The big issue is that your new mini-site site has no link popularity to pass along to your main site. To develop the link popularity for the mini-site you need to spend time & resources which you typically would have spent on your main site. The end result is that the mini-site becomes a distraction from your main goal.

One exception to this situation is if the mini-site can serve a niche market that your main site has trouble connecting with. This way your mini-site minimizes duplication, opens up new channels and creates synergy with your existing site.

I suggest webmasters avoid the short cut mentality and instead think about how they can more efficiently handle link development. Try to develop dual purpose links - links that boost direct traffic & help search rankings or links that boost brand awareness & raise your link popularity.

[sundaridevi]

The Theory: There is a Matt Cutts video on this topic (the series where he says, we have a question form so&so in everytown, country). He says that if the sites are similarly themed and you make it clear the sites belong to the same company, this should present no problem.

The Experience: I've had a network of related sites since 2002. First it was two sites, then three. Circa 2005 I can say unambiguously that this increased serps. Today I don't think the sitewide linking helps as much, but it is still the best you can do if you have a PR4 or better site to link out with. When we had a -40/50 penalty on some pages beginning after the Panda update on October 13, 2011. I undid everything I thought might be suspect. One of those things was the footer linking between the 3 sites. After the one penalized site recovered from the penalty i started putting things back in, including those footer links and a few other changes. One of the three penalized pages got re-penalized. Right now I can't say for 100% sure whether or not the footer cross-linking caused it or not.

I have a second group of two sites, 1 and 2 years old, that do the comprehensive footer cross linking on every page, and they are both top ranked in their niches (one is number 1 for every term i care about).

In any event, if the sites are related, even without search engines results, I get significant and measurable traffic and sales from the cross linking. So at least in some cases it is worthwhile even if you don't care at all about SERPs (and that is how Google says you should be making design decisions, right?). However, my experience suggests there may be good and bad ways of doing it (think about anchor text, etc.).

I think the best strategy today is to do what you suggest and link from body text and fewer rather than all pages.

The big issue is that your new mini-site site has no link popularity to pass along to your main site.

If you have a PR6-7 site to link to the minisite, it will quickly be PR4-5 at which point it will gather it's own links with no additional effort if it has high quality (meaning better than just about any other similar resource on the web). Then you will have a PR5 site to feedback to any other site you choose.

[MikeNoLastName]

Thanks, some great info and similar interesting experiences sundaridevi that closely match our own.

We have some very old interlinked sites as well. They grew up intertwined more by accident and out of necessity, and all 3-4 always showed the same company header and mostly involved the same central subject. We thought, like the original poster, and you mention, that it couldn't hurt having extra high PR external links that we owned as well.
I thought I had heard/read somewhere a while back that less than a critical number of domains were ok as well. I actually thought it went as high as 100, before they determined enough was enough. All did excellent until October as well! So it's beginning to sound like Panda doesn't like them in general anymore. I'm in the process now of moving all 3 onto one domain. So your results and post has made me more optimistic about the benefit of doing that. Hope our results are alike.
Off to start moving pages and changing thousands of links. Thank goodness for multi-file search and replace!

[HuskyPup]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld masterdark116

I create some websites that have same topic and make exchange link between them.

IF the content is unique and not a duplicate there should be no issue. Just do not try to deceive Goo/Yah/Bing into believing they are natural reciprocal links from independent sites when they are actually your own...it's very easy to find out.

Too many honest webmasters agonise over nothing, work on your sites, good stuff WILL rise to the top.

[mhansen]

We had a small group of like-product drop-ship commerce sites back in 2007... think baby cribs, baby strollers, baby clothes, etc. They were very relative, yet somewhat thin to the products only.

At one point, we interlinked all of the sites under the parent company umbrella. In a sidebar, we put: Like this, you might also like our sister sites, blad.tld, moreblah.tld, etc. On our company info page, we linked to a parent company site, etc.

All of the sites seemed to suffer in search results after the linking. We couldn't say 100% for sure that it was only the common linking that hurt us since the content was very commerce like (boilerplate, duplicate, etc) and the checkout was not on our own server, however, we assumed it was part of the equation.

In our opinion, all we did was make it easier for someone to chain the sites together and penalize all of them as a group, versus each standing on its own merits.

Just my .02 cents...

[sundaridevi]

Thank goodness for multi-file search and replace!

:-)

PHP include!