Linking from purchased businesses to my own

[OrendaLtd]

Hi All,

An SEO and Google guidelines question.

We've recently purchased several local businesses that have websites. Legally, we've put a disclaimer saying we've purchased those businesses, the question is whether we should link from those sites to our main site.

Will this bring a manual action from Google?

It's legitimate that we'd like the visitors from those websites come to our main site because those business no longer named the way they were.

So, is it OK to link from these sites to ours? Will this violate Google's guidelines regarding backlinking? Should we even link and if so add the rel:nofollow tag?

Thanks!

[Bigb06]

Hello,

If it's an important information for yours visitors, then there's no problem. You've purchased stores, so you want to show that they be part of a group.

Think about big companies with footer that list all their websites. They want to show that they own many websites and can reach a large audience. It can be useful to their users so no problem.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Gal,

I always advise in these cases, that the links are no-followed. This removes any doubt and concern over if Google will object. You are right to be cautious because you don't want any penalties to come from this, but it is highly unlikely that any would anyway. Footer links are largely ignored by Google.

There is a reason for the links to show to the different businesses, but I would just err on the side of caution.

-Andy

[Bigb06]

I do not agree. All media websites list their sites in their footer and these may be the only authority links they receive.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If someone is trying to build links by interlinking footer links, they are going to be very disappointed.

If you read what I said again, it is highly unlikely that Google would penalise with a few footer links, but there is no clear cut black & white guarantee that nothing would happen with this. There are so many other factors that could play a part in any decision that Google makes.

To avoid doubt, no-follow them. The links are still present and the benefit to the users is still there.

-Andy

[StephanPire]

Just do it, as long as the topic from the purchased business is relevant to your link.

The link should be a dofollow link and it's OK for Google since you wrote a disclaimer.

[BasKierkels]

I agree with Stephan: you have actually bought the businesses so you can decide to link to your main site.

It is of course a good thing to look out for penalties but don't see what you would be doing wrong if you would display a link from the purchased companies back to the parent company. As you can read: Andy wrote that the chance is probably very slim in this case.

Bas