Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I was told by some seo guy that interlinking sites each to each could be dangerous and that I should try an umbrella linking: all sites link to one and this one links to all other.
If this is also not a good way how should I link those websites? I emphasize that this is not for a spam purposes, all websites are unique in its content and the topic of those sites is pretty similar. Linking will help my users because someone interested in one brand could be also interested in another brand for example.
[edited by: Marcia at 9:55 pm (utc) on June 29, 2003]
[edit reason] Clarified generic product references. [/edit]
While you're specifically asking about Google, and presumably the gist of it is to avoid cross-linking penalties - which is what the SEO was probably getting at and warning about - it would be a good idea to see if we can come up with some ideas for ways to link sites in this type of situation that are safe and work well for users. There have been a number of discussions in this forum that get into linking strategies.
The concept is valid, it's something like Amazon saying that people who bought a particular book also bought some others - and they give a list. "Also interested in" is probably the key, the question is how to do it.
I have right now a similar situation with a rather large network of regional sites that cater to a particular niche and are independently run but part of and under an "umbrella" parent site. They started out all linked with each other on all the pages of all the sites, which is not a good thing and needs to be changed now that the project is having optimization done. It's definitely not starting out in what could be considered a safe position.
In my case it involves an exchange of relevant information and sharing common interests. In your case it's possible cross-interest in different brands of the same product. In my case I'm dealing with a hub-spoke situation, which is how it'll be handled. In your case it doesn't sound that way, but for you because of the relationship between similar products (and interests) reaching toward the same market it sounds like a comparison of features as part of content development may be one way to hook them up by legitimate means.
The task at hand is to come up with how to set up the linking in a workable way with two things in mind:
1. Avoid excessive cross-linking that could hurt.
2. Serve the needs of users of the individual sites who would also be interested in the others.
How excessive cross-linking is excessive?:) I still don't know the answer for umbrella question, is this safe? is this ok to divide my websites into 2 groups of 5 sites and do umbrella of those 5? I wanted to put a table on the main page of my websites with a title like: Other interesting 'my topic' websites. Could you please be more specific in showing me the way to go with this? I am really scared to loose my rankings and I can see that many other people feel the same, the linking fear is coming for us :(
And yes, I feel that interlinking will benefit my users simultaneously boosting my PR, is this wrong?
That's something we can't know with certainty; there really can't be an absolute answer and it would be awful hard for someone to take the responsibility of trying to give a definitive answer.
What we see working today might not work down the road, and there are other factors involved. I've seen some groups of sites cross-linked with each other from every page on the sites - in groups of about five, with several different groups involved in what looks to be a network under the same "management."
The separate groups, while generously linked with each other from every page, are linked to other groups very sparingly - not on all within any given group and not to the same different "group."
Those sites have been doing just fine - but they do have many links out and a lot of inbound links in from independent sites outside their group. Still, I wouldn't personally feel comfortable with interlinking between several sites from every page on every site within a group.
>>I feel that interlinking will benefit my users simultaneously boosting my PR, is this wrong?
It'll spread the PR among the sites, which most likely would have a different amount with different sites linking to the individual ones. But the biggest PR vote would come from the homepage. Having links out to the others among the homepages will also affect the amount of PR passed from the homepage to the interior pages of each of the sites.
Questions:
How many pages on each site that link to the others will it actually take to have real benefit for users?
And is it the homepage that would best serve the purpose for users and be most appropriate?
Is there one site that content-wise covers the others overall, like an umbrella would be over a few people standing under it?
In the case of the sites that I'm personally dealing with now, I'm inclined to agree with your seo guy and think that's the way to go on those.
I was told by some seo guy that interlinking sites each to each could be dangerous and that I should try an umbrella linking: all sites link to one and this one links to all other.
In my example there is actually one umbrella site, and it's my belief that they shouldn't all be linking from every page, either to each other and possibly not to the "umbrella site." First of all, there aren't enough independent inbound links to most in the group, and since they're under individual management to a large extent, if one goofs and ends up going south with a penalty it could bring the others down with it - aside from the excessive cross-linking wreaking havoc with the page rank.
IMHO if we look at a group of sites and it *looks* like it's excessively cross-linked chances are good that it actually is excessive.
For instance: if the site for Brand A speaks all about Brand A, it's benefits, it's technology, it's history, yada and Brand B does the same but it all relates to Brand B instead - I think you'd be ok. But I don't want to swear on a stack of bibles either.
You could test this out by buying three additional domain names and take a few pages of content from Brand A and Brand B and then build an umbrella site that ties them together. Publish it and watch to see how Google reacts to the setup. You'll get your answer within a couple months I would imagine.
