So we have multiple sites under our company, each about a totally different topic. Eg 1 is our industry news blog, 1 is a technology blog (we work with lots of new technologies, so write about it), and there are a few regional sites for offices around the world.
They’re 100% independent sites with different readerships etc, but we want them all tied together as our company as far as SEO etc go.
We also interlink the sites a fair bit when one needs to refer to another’s article.
1) Is this bad as far as Google is concerned, is having multiple domains/sites about similar stuff going to punish us? Should it all be under 1 site?
2) How do we best take advantage of this? rel="me" tags on our own interlinking? Any special meta shit to worry about?
Just looking for advice from you SEO pros, we know nothing about SEO.
If they are 100% independent, why are you wanting to tie them together with seo?
Because they interlink a lot, and worried about getting penalised for that.
Hard to explain since i’m not allowed to say what the site is
Think of it as each site being a "category" of a blog, but with a different WP install and different theme to suit a slightly different target. They’re still the same company, and they interlink LOTS (eg if one site mentions something another site has posted about, the content links to there), so the concern is that linking to each other while being on the same server, without telling Google that they’re the same "owner", could be seen as cheating? When it’s all for a legit purpose.
So we were wondering if there is a way to say to search engines "Look, we’re the same owner, just different sites, but all our content is interlinked"… I know when it’s a personal site linking to your own Twitter/whatever, you use rel="me", I just didn’t know if there’s a similar tactic for "related sites under the same company".
Does that make sense? (long day sorry)
Personally I would do SEO individually for each one and continue to link between them
This.
As long as you’re not doing crazy blackhat stuff, etc., you should be fine. Google isn’t stupid and I’m sure 1000s of other companies do it.
I know I do.
Heh, ok… thanks. Everything will continue as normal then