Partner Sites

[StewMcG]

Hi All,

Within our company we have a media group that publishes magazines and videos, the sites have footers that link to our shopping site, one of them has 118,459 links to one URL, domain authority 23, and the other 17,726 to seven URLs, domain authority 52, (there are some articles which link organically). My question is are these links because they're from identifiable companies with the same ownership worth keeping or are they detrimental?

The site being linked to has a DA of 39

Cheers

Stew

[ProductPearson]

Hi, I assume the 118,000 links are from 118,000 pages which feature the footer-wide link?

I have read many times that these links are "bad for SEO", but in all honesty all major content networks have to do this, because how else will they link to their parent company, or other sites in their network.

It does of course help if the other sites are on the same domain, and just subdomains or subdirectories, but I understand in most networks this would not be the case.

Many large publishers do this, especially in the UK, with companies like Future plc, Newsquest, Immediate Media Co etc. They all have footerwide links on all pages.

Whilst they may be rather saturated in providing link juice, they should provide a better user experience and not be bad for SEO, but I always read conflicting information about this kind of thing.

[ecommercebc]

Have to agree with the above. If you're an enterprise or well-known media company then this is usually pretty standard, if sometimes not ideal. Provided it's a legitimate/well-known entity, you should be fine.

[StewMcG]

They're on different domains but the sites all link together and the legal entities, domains, SSL certs etc are all registered under the group name, we've had a backlink issue with one of our sites and I'd always had it in the back of my mind that those links could potentially be a problem, while I'm cleaning up the others I just thought I'd ask, thanks!

[ecommercebc]

Hey Stew,

I guess you could always nofollow to be sure? I would perhaps recommend this if you aren't a huge entity (e.g. a Sky, BBC, Walmart etc) as you might want to play it safe.

[StewMcG]

Thanks I'll do that