Connecting Two Websites Without Upsetting Google

[HashtagJeff]

I have a question that I think I know the answer to, but want to cover my bases.

We have a successful blog and are creating a second similar blog for a more specific type of reader. We want to backlink between content because it makes sense for the reader. Our fear is that we may come off spammy to Google by having so many backlinks.

Is there a way we are able to tell Google these two sites are related so they don't penalize either site for anything?

[GastonRiera]

Hello Jeff,

Yeap, with Nofollow tags on that links.

Best luck!
GR.

[EGOL]

I think that it makes better sense for the reader and better sense for you, to put all of this stuff on the original blog.

The backlinks that any second blog will create will be worthless unless you have links into the second blog from third party websites.  So, instead of building that second blog, just put all of that great content on the main blog and get the backlinks straight to the the site you are promoting.

Building a second blog just for backlinks is like trying to kill a rabbit with a ricochet.   Just shoot the damn rabbit.

I don't think that Google is going to like this second blog very well if you are making it to manufacture backlinks for your first blog.  Google was killing that stuff twenty years ago.

[HashtagJeff]

This is what I figured, but just wanted to see if there was something I was missing. I thought a remembered hearing about a way that was similar to cross-domain tracking where you were able to show the relationship between the two site clearly to Google. I kept going back to NoFollow links and trusting that Google is smart enough to see what's going on.

[HashtagJeff]

It depends on the topic. I normally agree with this sentiment, I have given the same advice often over the year. In this case it was something that made sense to do because the audience via social and email is a very different demographic than we had on the main blog. The second blog was not built for backlinks or any spammy purpose, which is why we wanted to clearly show the relationship to Google without getting flagged for trying to spam. The purpose for the links would only be for user experience and not for SEO, we are good making all those links nofollow links. Even if we did them all nofollow we just wanted to see if there was anything else that could be done to show the relationship between the two sites.

The second blog was started less than 2 months ago and already has 50k+ pageviews even without the help of the original blog. Not a single backlink during that time, mainly because we were protecting our assets. Thanks for your feedback and not holding back on this topic, I like that even if I may not like the advice given that we're all open to the truth here in the Moz community. I definitely agree with you here about doing this for the backlinks, there has to be a purpose to a second site. In this case there really was a purpose, and it was all audience driven. Cheers!

[EGOL]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  As you point out, there are many different business models, and what might be best "general" practice, might not quite fit every model.

Moz Q&A is great for this type of discussion.