View Full Version : Will Linking the Sites I Own Together Get Them Penalized?
petertdavis
06-02-2005, 09:15 PM
I've read so much crap about this topic that I've succeeded in getting myself confused. I own a bunch of websites. They're all great sites, stand alone by themselves very healithy, having one thing in common; my company owns them. I put links in the footer, about ten of them all forums. I've had a couple people tell me that doing this is sure to get a penalty in at least one of the search engines. I wonder why. Should I be so frightened about what a specific search engine is going to do to my sites that I shouldn't put links to my own websites there? At what point do the search engine guys think it's a link farm? The sites are already geting great amounts of search engine traffic, and already ranked in the top three, many are the top, for the keyword I use in the links. My intent isn't to game the search engines. Will they think I'm trying to game them? Will it matter if some of them are hosted on the same server using the same shared Ip?
CaseyC
06-03-2005, 12:24 PM
I have the same concern/question also. My company has several websites as well that are all independent of each other, but that are all linked together. One of them has had a significant loss in traffic from MSN and we can't figure out why. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with that or if we were just unlucky when it came to MSN's last update.
petertdavis
06-03-2005, 02:14 PM
I have the same concern/question also. My company has several websites as well that are all independent of each other, but that are all linked together. One of them has had a significant loss in traffic from MSN and we can't figure out why. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with that or if we were just unlucky when it came to MSN's last update.
It may be interesting to note that searchenginewatch.com does the same thing, just with icons in the footer instead of text.
petertdavis
06-03-2005, 02:16 PM
It may be interesting to note that searchenginewatch.com does the same thing, just with icons in the footer instead of text.er, um, well with images and text, if you count all the Jupiter links, there are about twenty of them.
agreen1125
06-03-2005, 06:20 PM
im doing a free lance web development and I ask for permission from my clients if i can put credits at the footer of their sites and all them says Y-E-S . . will SE penalize me for that? Though i still have a google pagerank of "0" im looking ahead :)
krisval
06-03-2005, 06:38 PM
You can definitely find a lot of examples of subsidiary sites linking to a corporate page as part of a big network (clickZ, iEntry). I haven't see these networks get penalties???
BUT, I don't do it. I am a publisher and do run multiple properties. I always try to err on the safe side. If you have ever been delisted like I was early on (4 Years ago), you know the pain it can bring. If you don't mind the risk, many people don't think site wide links will hurt, but if you are like me, consider placing 1 link on the home page and possibly another on the about us page which both link back to your company home page. Also consider using your corporate name and/or logo as the link. If you use text, vary it a bit like: Super Web Network, Inc. - SuperWebNetwork.com - SuperWebNetwork, inc., etc.
I, Brian
06-03-2005, 06:51 PM
Interlinking a handful of sites is something I'll personally shy away from, simply as a precaution, and much prefer to link sites to a single main site.
Maybe it's too cautious, but just because big fish can do it, doesn't mean to say small fish can with equal effect.
It's sad, really, that we have to worry about linking some websites together when what they have in common is that they're all owned by the same entity.
If the links are over-seo'd and loaded up with entirely out-of-place keyword rich links, I can understand if that catches some attention, but if penalties were handed out automatically for basic links to the mothership, SE's would lose half their index.
The worst that should happen that the links themselves are discounted for being irrelevant.
I realize this thread wasn't asking for how things *should* work, but there's a school of thought that says, "If it feels right, do it." Giving credit to a site owner or the designer, to me, feels just fine.