portal pages

[hwy2hel]

We have two separate websites that offer different services in the same industry. One site has been around for a while and has a good se’s ranking (both free & paid). The other one is relatively new and so far only positions well in the paid listings. My boss has asked me to build a portal page that will basically consist of one front page divided in two parts that will describe what each of our sites is offering and have links to them. He also wants to advertise this new portal with Google, Overture, etc. My question is – could this harm us in any way? Would some se’s consider this page spamming?

Thanks so much!

[agerhart]

No, this is not considered spamming. Many corportations do this sort of thing as an entrance into their cluster of company websites.

You need to be careful with cross-linking between the websites.

I am not sure as to your goals for the portal webpage or website, but if intend it to rank well, I would think about developing more content for the site and building it out.

[hwy2hel]

thank you so much for your help!
:0)
c

[TWhalen]

I am currently working with this same situation, Hwy.
In my case, it was one site offering 6 different services, which I turned into 7 web sites (one acting as the "portal" to the 6 service sites - all unique domains, seperate from the portal domain)

None of this is considered spamming, and all sites are doing well with one exception: I'm having trouble getting all sites listed in the Open Directory.

I was able to get listings in ODP (in different categories) for 3 of the 7 websites (one was the "portal" site), but after visiting the Open Directory Forums to check the status of my other sites, I was told that they considered the grouping of sites "deep linking" to the portal site. I argued the difference in an attempt to get the listings to no avail.
They simply told me that since the portal site has a listing, and those remaining sites are listed from there, that including my remaining sites would have been considered deep links.
(of course I dropped my argument there, fearing removal of the two other sites that "slipped by")

Anyway, I would suggest submitting your two "service sites" to ODP first, then going back and submitting your "portal" site afterwards, to avoid the same problem I've had.

[hwy2hel]

thanks so much for the tip, i'll do that!