How to cross-link a network of dozen hotel booking sites

[vmotuz]

Hi, I have about a dozen hotel booking sites in different cities. All content is unique on each site and specific to its city. Is it a good idea to cross-link them all? If so, is there any strategy to follow? Some of them are older and well established sites wheres others were created recently. The goal is to improve rankings of the newer sites. I appreciate any advice. Thanks!

[benjaminspak]

To be honest I wouldn't until the newer sites mature a bit. But if you were to go forward with it, I would recommend you no-follow the links.

[SimonCullum]

Hi Vitaly

A good question.  There are usually 2 main considerations when it comes to cross-linking sites:

1. To benefit the visitor from pointing to a useful related site

2. To try and aid SEO/Search efforts.

Your goal of trying to improve rankings of the newer sites by linking your hotel booking sites together could be counter-productive. Cross-linking sites with the intention of trying to improve search rankings (through the passing of link juice through the said links) usually has a short-term gain, then either neutral or negative. It's a risky game in trying to 'manipulate' search rankings by linking a load of sites together, which being honest is just what this would be.

With regards to the other reason for doing so, providing links that visitors could find useful, that's a sound and credible reason to link the sites together, just play it safe and NoFollow the links as Ben suggests. This would be playing it by the rules and keep the search engines happy whilst also benefiting your visitors.

Have you considered migrating your websites into one large site to serve all cities? Done properly, always with the visitor experience & offering in mind, it can benefit everyone.  You'd only have the one website to create content for and get links into, whilst providing one more in-depth offering and experience to your visitors.  Worth considering anyway, local search can still be catered for with one large website.

Kind regards

Simon