When you are building out your newest website, it’s a common desire to want to link it to the rest of your websites. After all, it’s not spam if they are all truly owned by you and are really in the same network, right? Unfortunately, the spammers out there have, once again, ruined it for the rest of us. Any significantly large network of sites will send up flags for Google, even if you created it with the best of intentions. We know it’s common to have multiple sites for automotive marketing, so lets take a look at how big your network of sites can be before you run into trouble.
This week, Matt Cutts released a video on multiple linking domains. The question posed is “If I have 20 domains, should I link them all together?” As usual with Matt Cutts’ videos, there is a lot of chaff to get through before you find any of that tasty wheat. In this case, the short answer is a resounding “NO”, but like always, there is also a more nuanced response.
Matt lists one scenario where he can see it being viable to link 20 sites together, and that’s when you localized versions of your site like .us, .eu, or .asia. Even then, you don’t want to just cram all these local variants into the footer, they need to be placed in a way that is clearly not spam. Consider placing them on a single page or having a drop-down menu to access them.
That is literally the only positive example Matt can think of. So if you have a few domains you want to link together, go for it, but once you have 10 or more all linking into one network, it may be time to rethink your strategy.