Hans I'm currently running a few websites which I host at one provider on which I'm happy about. Now I want to start another site but I wondered, is there still any impact on rankings if I host all my sites in one submit (ie: /24)? Does Google give me some sort of negative factor over this? 2 👍🏽2 16 💬🗨📰👈
Peter As long as you don't link all the sites together with followed links (and not doing any dodgy stuff) – No (nofollowed links are fine). I have over 200 sites with the same host – never had an issue.
L.E. McArthur » Peter I wonder at what point this becomes an issue. I have a group of sites that are hosted on the same server and I do interlink them with follow links, when it makes sense to the article. I use follow because that's what I use when I link to any external link, (unless it's an affiliate link. Those are all nofollow.) I haven't seen any issues, (that I know of), in their 10 years online. Will followed interlinking become a problem if I'm just doing it to provide supporting links? Am I really playing with fire? Peter » LE McArthur Personal experience from when the Penguin algo first rolled out years ago: We had 2 sites in the real estate niche – the larger 1 was typical, global R/E portal with the usual listings on it – the other smaller site was a property investment portal. The large site was used as a traffic driver to the investment site to great effect (followed links and banners galore) – when Penguin rolled out – the large site got a manual penalty for "appearance of being a link network" and the smaller site dropped in rankings as result. We were using a (shit – now sold and rebranded) agency at the time who did have a "direct line" to Matt Cutts at the time (I saw and was included on some of the correspondence, so have no reason to be suspicious about it) – who stated – "that is typically how we want the algo to work" and "if you apply nofollow to all of the cross-linking you are doing – the penalty will be dropped". We followed that advice, the penalty dropped – rankings and traffic improved dramatically on BOTH sites. When G later rolled out the new stuff about User Generated Content (UGC)/sponsored attributes – I asked Danny Sullivan about which (if any) was more appropriate for a similar situation (after explaining the above – Both he and John Mueller concurred that using nofollow would be the best approach to avoid penalties. As with most things in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – there are thresholds at which you can stay under to avoid penalties – if your linking is not "prolific" and as you say – "appropriate where relevant and useful to the user", rather than "improving rank" – you should be ok IMO. L.E. McArthur » Peter Thanks for those insights! Yeah, it's for the user primarily.. but as someone who knows about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I can't help but be aware of the "improving rank" part. 😀 I think I'll just continue, being mindful to keep the interlinking to a minimum – even if I don't know where that line in the sand actually is. Oh, SEO is fun, isn't it. Peter » LE McArthur The thing most people miss about linking between sites they own – is that you can link as much as you want if you use nofollow – the trick is figuring out what's worth more? The potential short term ranking gains until you get a penalty (which can effect all the sites involved and be a PITA to deal with)?, or the traffic gain from having nofollowed for the most part – with no chance of a link penalty in the long term. There are those with networks that take the "churn and burn" approach and are geared up to replicate everything every few months (like the old days) and those that prefer to play the long term game. The way I look at it – linkbuilding is not scalable safely for the long term, and the value of links is falling and will continue to do so (it's a fundamentally flawed way of calculating rank – as Google and others well know) – so I spend that time on enriching the sites I manage/producing more L.E. McArthur » Peter Oh, I'm totally with you. As I've said before, like you I don't do any link-building – (aside from a small amount between my sites and on my social accounts), and am happily gaining rank and traffic with every Google update. Perhaps I will start using nofollow going forward, and leave the existing links as is. As a way to mitigate any future issue. I'll be very happy when Google gets even better at it's job, and link building or actually "link BUYING", becomes a useless endeavour. Maybe one day more of us will be focussing on VALUE, and not the silly notion that backlinks=authority.
Mitrovic There is no issue hosting them with the same host. There could be issues if you host them on the same server.
Peter » Mitrovic What issues? Peter » Peter Agree there could be issues as in server falls over – but from a search engine point of view – it *shouldn't* matter Peter » Peter I get it. How do you manage 200 sites? I can't even manage more than 3 if my daughter's life depended on it! Peter » Peter Custom built Content Management System (cms) on Umbraco, and careful site structure planning
Hans ✍️ OK, thanks very much for this detailed advice. Only in this group, love it! So, my sites are rather small still, but one is in a camping niche, the other in pets and one in babies. I can imagine I have some articles on baby sites for "How to camp with baby" and link to my camping site. Also, "take pets with you on your trip" is perfectly logic in my eyes, all do follow. As long as I help the visitor, right?
Peter » Hans And don't do it to excess (that's the bit that trips most people up – see my long comment further up about the real estate site) – essentially, and in theory, there is no (ranking) gain in having more than 1 followed link from any given domain. Hans ✍️ » Peter I do see a lot of guestposts with 2 do follow links (1 on domain, 1 on a specific slug). Can't hurt either I would say? Peter » Hans It's your sites and your gauntlet to run with dude – as stated, there is no additional gain from a ranking perspective in having more than one link from the same domain. Remember, just because you see someone else doing it, it doesn't mean it can't hurt you. Given that guest posts are somewhat frowned upon these days by the SE's, and most are only done explicitly to improve rank – ask yourself if the same methodology as that is a wise idea?
