Linking your own sites together

Will this produce any benefits

[bleached]

Having two sites of similar service one being "Widgets" and the other "Specialised Widgets" (this is a new site to target a niche market) i´m wondering if it would be beneficial to link them together in the footer. From example as in the footer found on this very web site.

Now the problem! I have already implemented the above and somehow my rankings for the "Widget" site has taken a hammering in ranking especially in google. Advice and suggestions greatly appreciated.

[nealrodriguez]

I have already implemented the above and somehow my rankings for the "Widget" site has taken a hammering in ranking especially in google.

if you haven't been completely been taken out of the index, it may be that the competition got stiffer - e.g. acquiring more links - or google devalued the link pointing from the "Specialized Widgets" site.

in my experience google prefers 3rd party links, the posting of which you have no control. the more control google knows you have over the link, the less equity such a link will pass - e.g. social media submissions, directories. thus when i have gotten pushed down on the serps, acquisition of new 3rd party links has been the best remedy to move back up.

[bleached]

Thank you neal.

When actually putting the links in the footer one month ago I only saw a slight benefit in ranking for the "Specialised Widget" site from 2nd page to 1st for key terms, i suppose this is due to the "widget site" having authority. No benefits at all for the "Widget" site. These rankings for the "Specialised Widget" site have stayed the same since, the main "Widget" site has taken the blow. I´m losing 20 positions a day it seems for all main KWs, and now am scared to look!

Something I have noted is that by pointing a .es domain to a .com site has reduced the rankings for the .com site in Spanish Speaking Countries in which the site ranked high for many keywords... A lot of traffic has been lost, do you think this is a coincidence and has something to do with linking the sites together?

[stevebaik]

Google is tricky. It's hard to pinpoint what is causing what because any little change can cause huge differences in SERPs. How old are the sites?

I think cross-linking between 2 sites should be ok, but be careful about cross-linking numerous sites using the same class-C IP servers.

[bleached]

The "Widget" site (pr5) is 5 years and the "Specialised Widget" site (pr0) is 2 months old. I have removed all links that point from the "Widget" site to the "Specialised Widget" site to cut off the association. After a week doing so I have already seen the traffic increasing again (Widget site). However, with google it is always hard to pin point the problem as for the past 2 weeks many people have been commenting that there traffic has reduced in google.

I would like to link the 2 sites together again because not only do they complement each other it could also help ranking for both but having said that am worried if all goes wrong. What do the Link Guru´s think?

[vero]

If your two sites are on the same server, my experience is that you should not link them to improve ranking. Google may see this as being the start of a linking scheme or something, I don't know. But it just doesn't seem to work out well.

I have a similar situation - one older site on widgets, a newer site on red widgets. When I put links from one to the other, the older site tanked. Now I don't link them. I have also found that on days when the "red widget" section on the older "all widgets" site gets a lot of google referrals, the number of google refferals to the "red widgets" site drops. It's as if google will send traffic to one or the other, but not both. Wierd, yes, but just my observation.

My advice - If you want to link them as a service to your viewers, use a "nofollow" tag.

[driller41]

If I have enough other links then linking two of my own sites is not something I worry about.

[JS_Harris]

You haven't provided enough information to make a recommendation with but...

Are the footer links sitewide? All aimed at the index page of the other site?

If so your "new" site will receive a benefit from this but your established site will suffer. The smaller site with fewer pages effectively drains from the larger site because it has less (lower PR and/or fewer pages with PR) to pass back. Also, if they are sitewide links you'll notice a boost to PR on BOTH index pages and a drop across every other page. Your traffic will suffer.

The footer links can help visitors if the sites are related but consider adding nofollow to all internal link pages so that only the index pages point at each other without nofollow, this way the site content is less affected.

[bleached]

Cheers all.

The link on the footers are sitewide and points to the index pages. JS your past observations have been proved as you have stated

"If so your "new" site will receive a benefit from this but your established site will suffer."

Traffic has dropped 30% on the old site and increased 10 fold on the new.

I have removed footer link from the established site to the new site and maintained the footer link from the new site to the older as basically the "Mother Site" and I don´t want any detrimental affect.

I must state that the main aim for linking both sites was to increase trust rank and page rank, however, if there is any risk I prefer to keep them different entities. What is the best method in this case?

[JS_Harris]

The only way to avoid an ill effect is to nofollow them all. By having the new site link to the old the old is now receiving a small boost but the impact of that small boost to your new site is huge. I've been playing with some internal link "juice flow" software applications for fun and they all agree that the drain is significant, perhaps enough that their link value will be bellow any threshold to be "counted" by Google at all.

You could write an article on the old site about the new and link to it from the article. I'd also leave the link live from index page to index page only, nofollow everywhere else.

On wordpress sites you can use an if is_page type command to add nofollow to a link on internal pages. Another method is to create a 2nd footer file that is identical but with nofollow on all links, the index page can call the original file as it does now but every other page can call the nofollow version.

Assuming you call the new file footer2.php you could open your "single" and "archives" templates and replace

<php get_footer();?>

with

<?php include ('footer2.php'); ?>

[bleached]

This article idea seems to carry weight and is great advice.

You also mention about linking index page to index page and all the rest nofollow. My take on this situation is that it would probably be more effective to remove all links from the established "widget" site to the "specialised widget" site and only point the link(s) from the "specialised widget" to the "widget" site. This way there would only be positive effect for the "widget" site (as all link juice would flow and there would be no association) and with time the "specialised widget" site will rank better due to SEO for that particular site. Agree?

My mean aim would be to increase traffic and PR for both but if it comes down to it I have to choose the main "widget" site over the "specialised widget" one.

CMS are a bit of a pain when it comes to changing footers but I can get around this using modules by using modules :)

[JS_Harris]

In theory I agree but the problem is that your specialized site will be at a great disadvantage in the serps and with little internal linking power and lower serp placement it may be hard to have any page receive free traffic.

Its also possible that the value of the pages with the link to your widget site is too low to be "credited" with passing anything. You'll notice in WMT that pages with no pr rarely count as a backlink.

[bleached]

Cheers JS for the continued advice, much appreciated.

[edited by: tedster at 4:07 am (utc) on May 25, 2009]

[seomum]

Thanks @bleached and @JS_Harris you covered most of the unclear doubts, it is really awesome FAQ's page about linking to a new site and old site or either