What Link Structure Should I Use For Multiple Company Blogs?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, July 12, 2007 Leave a comment
NameCritic had a good question. How do you interlink your blogs without the search engines counting your links as reciprocal? Well, it’s not as difficult as you may think. There is more than one way to skin a mountain lion (Raaaah!).
Let me explain this with an illustration: You have Blog A, Blog B, and Blog C, then your website. That’s four potential sites to link to and from. We’ll say Blog A is in a subfolder on your website’s domain, so it’s really got the same address as your website. That’s the way the search engines will see it, anyway. Blogs B and C have their own unique URLs and each one covers a slightly different topic related to your website’s theme with no cross over. Blog A, however, covers the theme of your website completely and therefore covers a lot of the same information as your other two blogs, but with a different focus. Now, how do you establish a linking pattern between these sites that doesn’t damage your link building strategy with the search engines?
The Different Types Of Link Values
It helps to understand the value of different types of links. First, reciprocal links are pretty low on the totem pole. They provide some value, mostly for traffic purposes, but very little value in terms of building link popularity and PageRank. One-way inbound links, however, are quite valuable in that regard. Even better, one-way inbound links from sites with high PageRank; a step up from that would be one-way inbound links that are anchor text (that is, keywords used as links), and if you have one-way inbound links that are anchor text coming from sites with high PageRank then you’re really rolling. One final category is site relevance. If the site linking to yours bears any topical relevance to yours then your links are more valuable still. That means the most valuable type of link you can have is the one-way inbound anchor text link from a site that is relevant to yours and has a higher PageRank than yours.
Get all of that? Here’s a list of factors in a nutshell that you need to consider in your linking strategy:
- One-way inbound vs. reciprocal
- Anchor text
- PageRank of linking site
- Relevance of linking site to site being linked
Each search engine places a little different weight on each of these criteria but they are all important with each search engine at least to a certain degree. Google strongly emphasizes PageRank and relevance. Anchor text is important with all of the search engines.
Yahoo will count links from Blog A to your website, but Google will not. MSN is finicky and hard to figure out. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. More often than not, it doesn’t, but it is usually the first search engine to discover new links yet lately it hasn’t been reporting links at all so you’ll have a hard time getting information from MSN.
What Link Structure Will Produce The Most Value?
Now, back to our illustration. Let’s assume for the purposes of this illustration that your website has a PR3, your company blog on that same domain has a PR3, Blog B has a PR4, and Blog C has a PR5. The problem we need to figure out is how to get the most mileage from the link structure between these entities.
Never, ever forget your number 1 goal: Get people to your website and close the sale!
You really want people to visit your website. That’s where you should close your sales. It’s OK to get additional business from your blog. I have. That’s always a good thing. But your blogs should be used primarily as promotional tools to build your credibility for your subject and to drive traffic to your website. Your website is your online brochure, your sales collateral. Most of your business will, and should, come from that.
Therefore, all of your blogs should link to your website. Your website should not link to your blogs, with one exception: the one that is on your website’s domain. That’s your company blog. It’s OK to link to it from the website because
- It’s on the same domain name so it won’t be counted as reciprocal; it’s just another page on the website
- Both the website and the blog are PR3 so there is no benefit to a one-way arrangement between the two
- Since you want your website to sell your services and your blog establishes your credibility, it’s a good idea to send your traffic to your company blog at some point during the sales process so that it can do it’s job. Once your site visitors are confident that you know what you are talking about, they will revisit your website and make the purchase
That’s almost a no-brainer. But you should put some thought into how you link the other blogs. First, don’t link from Blog A to either Blog B or Blog C. The reason you don’t want to do that is because you are sending people off of your company website and it’s too easy to leave and never come back. But you are also linking from a lower PR site to higher PR sites. You’ll get more mileage from your link structure if you link the other way around – from Blogs B and C to Blog A.
Keep in mind that we are talking about links in your sidebars and signature links at the bottom of each of your posts. It’s OK, from time to time (but not too often), to include a contextual link within a blog post from Blog A to an individual post in one of the other blogs if you feel that information in one of those other two blogs can add value to a particular discussion. I wouldn’t discourage that. But you want to hold that to a minimum. Don’t do it too often.
By linking from Blogs B and C to Blog A in the sidebars and in your signature links you are satisfying all the important criteria the search engines are looking for:
- One-way
- Site relevance
- Higher PR
- And if you make those links keyword links (anchor text) then you’ve got very valuable links
Link to both Blog A and your website from both Blogs B and C in your sidebars and in your signature links and you’ll have four very important links going to your most important domain and sales tool with every single blog post you make on those two blogs.
Should I Link Blog B and Blog C?
That’s a good question and this one is a bit tricky. You have some options and you really should think about the ultimate value to your customers and blog readers. You have to think long term and what value to your business and your potential customers is most important.
On one hand, you could link from Blog C to Blog B because Blog C is a higher PR and that will boost the PR of Blog B. There’s nothing wrong with that. What works for one website or blog will work for another, usually. But since these two blogs cover different topics and don’t overlap then you might be doing your readers a better service by linking them to each other. That will water down your link building for each blog but what’s more important – increasing the PR of two already higher-than-average PRs or providing a benefit to your readers that will increase your credibility in their eyes? If you think the readers of each blog can benefit from the information contained in the other blog then there is nothing wrong with providing reciprocal links in the sidebars and signature links to provide that benefit to your readers. On the other hand, if the two topics of these blogs are segmented so that they target to entirely different audiences or market segments that would not have an interest in the information presented in the other blog then I’d say don’t link them at all. A third way would be to link from Blog C to Blog B for the SEO benefit.
So what are your options with regard to these two blogs?
- Reciprocal links
- One-way link from Blog C to Blog B
- No links at all
Which one you choose ultimately depends on the needs and interests of your customers and what you value most in the final outcome. Is it the value that each blog brings to all of your readers? Maybe option A is the best one for you. SEO? Try option B. Totally different markets interested in mutually exclusive content? Option C would be best. Weigh your options and choose according to that and I hope this helps you in some way. One final caveat: It doesn’t really matter how many blogs you have. These principles should guide you to the right decision whether you have three blogs or one hundred.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Leave a comment Category: Link Building
Read similar posts in Link Building
- Matt Cutts Speaks About Cross Linking
- Do Not Worry About PageRank
- How to Put Together a Link Building Strategy
- Are There Any Great Link Building Activities Left?
- Link Building Sources That Are Important
Subscribe to our RSS feed
No comments yet.
Subscribe to our RSS Feed 
