It looks like a linkfarm

[anubis2]

Hello,

I have 15 online shops owned by one company and the web developer put in the header of each website a link to the 15 other sites. It looks like a link farm but they are all for one company. And in some shops we have a huge number of products i.e. huge number of outgoing links to other shops, like a total of a million outgoing follow link to the other 15 online shops.Yes we have it almost 2 years ago and we didn't get penalized by Google and it seems that Google discovered that all are owned by one company.My questions are:1- Will we be penalized in future by Google if they think that they are a kind of spam links?2- What will happen if I changed these links to no follow links? Or if I removed them from the header?3- Do these outgoing links effect the ranking?4- Does PR is still a metric to Google since they calculate it depends on a formula based on the incoming and outgoing links?Thanks in AdvancedHousam Smadi

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would make some point of reference that associates all of these shops together. Maybe at the footer like a copyright or a trademark to the main parent company. That way there's an association and it doesn't look like you're just randomly linking to 15 different websites via 15 different websites. You could possibly even do this under an "About" section with company site listings, so it's on one page and not just living in the header. I would nofollow them as well so you show you are not trying to sculpt their authority.

Are these websites all different companies within the company, or different products? If it's products, I would consider putting these under one website and categorizing appropriately.

You should check out the Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands? Whiteboard Friday from Moz. There are some great tips there.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[anubis2]

Thanks for your answer Patrick,

All of these websites are within the same companies but they are different types of products i.e. one website is about mailboxes and other is about home accessories... But we refers in the header all of our websites.

We also have a main website which contains everything but the others are important because the domain name is more relevant for each product category and we are ranked well for them.

Do you think if I nofollowed them, I will not lose ranking because of the huge number of missing inbound links for the sites on next Google crawl?

Regards,

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

If it were me, since they are the same company, just different products, I would consolidate it all under one website to keep consistency with the brand.

I would structure it in a logical fashion for user experience and update my internal links / sitemap.

This is just me - if you wanted to look into that route, I would talk to your team and review the following:

• All KPIs that matter most to your visibility / performance
• Your site's goals over time
• Google Search Console performance over time (impressions / rankings)
• Take a look at your competitors
• Check your on-site SEO
• Check your backlinks
• Check your content
• Check your information architecture
• Learn more about your audience
• Are you capturing your audience at the right points? Do you have content to do so?
• Are you doing everything you can do develop your brand(s) right now?

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Could you share your URL so that the community can look at the website?

[David-Kley]

Agreed. It's hard to tell how the site is set up from the description.