Search engine penaltys

[Ciqala]

I am working on a large cluster of sites at the moment that will all use the same template (or maybe share 3 designs amongst each of them) effectively they will be static sites with information on related but slightly different topics.

My question is:

If i were to have a page on eash site that had links to every other page in the cluster would this (considering they potentially have the same layout) be penalised by google for 'replicating the same design to increase se listings for the same site' each page would have different keywords and completely different content but I am worried this might harm my rankings rather than help it.

I envisage around 50 - 150 sites in this cluster within 6 months or so.

alternatively I was considering create a 'hub' site which i point every site to by way of links that lists each site just once (this way it may not look like i was link farming) or course I would prefer to have the links on each page as this (if it isnt harmful) could lead to better link pop on each domain.

Ciq

 

[dvdrip]

Very interesting question. I was thinking the exact thing.
I am actually building a neutral template that I will use.
All sites going to have different subjects, colors, keywords...
but all are going to have links to the others.

 

[mole]

That's a bad idea. It goes against all the principles of bad practice of Google SEO optimisation

 

[Tippy]

Why is that mole?

If you have many sites which relate in a way to one another wouldn't it be ok to link to it even if it had the same basic look and feel but different content?

Mike

 

[Unregistered]

humm, Ciqala, everytime when i see your posts, i just can't take my eyes off of your avatar.

humm, am i offtopic?

 

[atlach]

Same template in my experience usally got me penalized even if different s topic and different content, it s probably cause too many part of the sites are exactly similar.

 

[Ciqala]

what if the content 'blocks' were dynamicly created so I could rearrange them within the template for each site? would the fact the html is not arranged the same for each site make any difference?

 

[actnow]

Very interesting!!!

These are all of the things that I have been thinking. But, haven't asked.

I need for someone to give us a "eureka" answer.

 

[mole]

If it were this easy to increase your page rank by using your own sites to feed links into your other sites and using templates to cut down on production time, then most webmasters will be doing this by default, and I'm sure many will have tried.

There are many reasons why clusters could compromise you but some of my own (just my opinion) rules of thumb are :-

1. Make sure that each site has a unique and static ip address - the ideal being that each ip address should be as different as possible - one way is to use different hosts all the time - but only hosts that will guarantee you a unique ip address.

2. Never use URL redirects

3. Vary the templates and site structure as much as possible. It's amazing how algos can spot similarities in ways the naked eye can't.

4. Limit your outbound links to as few as possible particularly on your home page. Conversely, the more inbound links the better - but keep your web structure as flat as possible.

5. Dynamically generated pages are less effective than static pages as spiders love to eat static, particularly XML

6. Relevant content is No. 1. Don't compromise user experience with links that serve more to build page rank than lead to useful content.

Even if you eventually do get good rankings on Google despite 1-6, your competitor could just report you to Google for using clusters to manipulate page rank and if they deem this is just another SEO trick, then your sites could be blacklisted.

 

[JMJ]

If you're talking about a directory of sorts you shouldn't have any problem. Alot of directories use the same "idea" all of the time. I ran across one today as a matter of fact that had all of the other sites linked at the bottom of the page. Each site had the same design yet different content. But all were of the same main topic. This is nothing new and they really can't penalize you as long as the content is useful.

I checked the link popularity of the site and it has a very high number of linkpop due to this. One thing that is a downside of this is the link popularity was from the pages this company owns. Very few were from other sites.

 

[mole]

What's the URL for this site jolt?

 

[deepstar]

I think it depends on how many sites you do this with and the way it is done. If you build one page sites that have nothing but a few targetted keywords and all your links at the bottom then I would expect to get banned but if you have 4 sites that link to each other that have the same look and signficantly different content then I think you will be fine, actually I know you will be fine.

Eric

 

[Ciqala]

my plan is to create a proper site for each content.

say for instance it was about movies stars I would have a different site for each celebrity with a list of their films, a page of famous quotes, a biography, a pictures page.

then to bring them all together I would have a single links page on each site that pulls each of the main site urls out of a database and puts up a single link per site.

I will also have a central domain that acts as a hub page which allows you to get to each site (this is what I will promote externally on other sites). this main site will also contain a forum with a single section for each site e.g. a forum for liz hurley another for catherine zeta jones and another for some bloke that the ladies probably like or something. so that each member needs to only join the forum once to access that functionality for the entire directory of sites.

and following moles comments about static xml would you say it might be a good idea to build a php utility that creates the whole site in one go and outputs it in xml format to individual static files so if i update it i need only change the database and create a new set of files and trash the old ones rather than manually update 100 different sites?

 

[NamePopper.com]

Originally posted by mole
4. Limit your outbound links to as few as possible particularly on your home page.

Mole made some great points.

I would like to hear more about the first part of #4. Since there are many portal type sites that have great ranking - and tons of outbound links. Some people have suggested that outbound links can help (not hurt) - especially if you are linking to other highly rated sites - so I would like to hear more about this from everybody including mole.

Obviously having outbound links to other good sites does not approach the importance of having other good sites link to you - but many people say it's still a factor.

So is it just the homepage which is the key (to not have too many outbound links)?

 

[Ciqala]

bump for an interesting topic

 

[NamePopper.com]

Originally posted by Ciqala
bump for an interesting topic

No doubt. Do I have to start slapping people around or what?

Answers.... need answers here!

 

[JMJ]

Its a city guide nothing uncommon. Like this one http://nashville-tennessee.com/ . You actually do get better "points" by linking to sites of similar interest. But most people are scared to do so.

I don't remember what I was searching for but whatever it was this site got first page results and there's not much useful info there that I can see.

 

[Tombot]

I'm not exactly sure why some sites can cross-link and get good PR and some can't. But here is an idea if you want to do it and be very safe...

Site A links to Site B

A links to B & C and B links to C

A to B,C,D; B to C,D; C to D

A to B,C,D,E; B to C,D,E; C to D,E; D to E


I hope I'm not confusing you, but the idea is to never link back.

 

[Ciqala]

Originally posted by Tombot
I'm not exactly sure why some sites can cross-link and get good PR and some can't. But here is an idea if you want to do it and be very safe...

Site A links to Site B

A links to B & C and B links to C

A to B,C,D; B to C,D; C to D

A to B,C,D,E; B to C,D,E; C to D,E; D to E


I hope I'm not confusing you, but the idea is to never link back.

Is this only applicable when a large number of sites are involved as I thought reciprocal links benefited the PR and SE placement.

If this is the case it shouldnt be too hard to split the links up and place a few on each page i suppose.

 

[Tombot]

Originally posted by Ciqala


Is this only applicable when a large number of sites are involved as I thought reciprocal links benefited the PR and SE placement.

If this is the case it shouldnt be too hard to split the links up and place a few on each page i suppose.

Well like I said, it is difficult to tell why some sites are penalized and some aren't. Splitting up the links would probably work as good as the method I showed. That method is what some people who indeed do have a very large number of sites. Personally, I wouldn't risk having 100 sites all crossed-linked. What I would do is have one site that links to all the sites. And I would have all the sites link back to that hub site also. Then on some of the sites I would have links to a few of the other sites, but not all of them.