Franchise on same server different IP - link building question

[mgf45]

Hi, so I have about 90 geobased websites for franchise business. I have all sites on the same server, but no interlinking to main corporate site which is on same VPS WHM server, however that domain has a unique IP address, different C class and all.

So my question is, if I placed a link to on ABOUT US page for all 90 sites that point to main corporate website, will google see that as me trying to use a PBN, especially when all 90 sites have same IP? There is no blogging, they are all static sites and I wouldnt dare to do footer link or sitewide link.

[Shai]

Here in the UK there is a large newspaper publisher that owns around 128 papers across the country. All local papers but most have very good link profile. We recently got an article with a good link published on one of the papers and it got syndicated to all of the other pages including the link. We saw no effects of those links which tells me that Google saw that they are very similar in content AND all on the same IP and just discounted it all.

To answer your question, I don't think you will get a penalty but you will not see a massive change (if any) in ranking either. And if that is the case, why not NOFOLLOW the links just in case?

[mgf45]

Thanks for the answer. So far Im paying over 3k to get into certain niche directories that allow blog posting with a directory listing, however these are nofollow. I looked at my backlink report and it's 80% nofollow from sites ranging from DA 40-80 with good TF.

I'm a noob in this game. But I will consider that, since they are obviously in same niche. And with nofollow, there will be no benefit correct in rankings?

With your answer, I think it's best to not even consider backlinking from 90 sites to mastersite, since the user will most likely not click on the link and will be little value to me as far as a small boost goes.

[Robert Charlton]

Is there a separate local physical presence behind each of the geobased websites? If not, what's the differentiation of the sites beyond geo information?

Google is going to favor actual local businesses over locally targeted sites but not otherwise actually local... and I believe it will regard the linking among the sites differently, depending on whether there's either a brick and mortar local presence, and/or a substantial difference in content among the sites, independent inbound link sources, etc.

If actually local, then there's a whole set of local guidelines which are likely to apply.

[mgf45]

Hi Robert, as far as geobased, they are aged domains with geo TLD which makes for a great CTR in that city, however my new boss was screwed over by virtual offices and has a huge balance with regus, so he dropped those and lost placement in google maps. So yea, they are not local :/

I hate to use franchise, I'll be honest. It's 90 attorney sites, each targeting different cities. My boss had great success prepanda but now I just use those geobased domains for PPC. I know I'm spinning in circles. Sorry.

[Robert Charlton]

aged domains with geo TLD

mgf45 - I'm not getting what this means. With ccTLDs Google more or less offers country-specific targeting... not really a boost, though.

In the US, I just looked and there 5 cities with city-name Top Level Domains (including eg .nyc, la, and .vegas). My guess is that Google doesn't let these skew local results very much, but you may be right about click through rates.

I have a feeling you're not really talking about TLDs. Are the 90 sites local directories, or are they individual sites for local professionals?

My instincts, btw, with what you've described, is that you definitely don't want to interlink these sites. You could use "nofollow" links, but I don't see the point of linking these. As the saying goes, there's no 'there' there... and I never cross-link just for link juice.

[mgf45]

Thanks Rob that made a lot of sense. I made a decision not cross link.

I was confused about the TLD, i meant geo based domains. Those geo domains are just static sites targeting law services (city)(personal injury lawyer).com. I wish I had the time to do SEO on all the sites, I did however change up the content, replaced old design with HTML5 responsive and they are still sitting on 5th page. No backlinks.