Linking question for car dealerships

[davej1963]

Hi, I'm working on designing a web site for a client who owns a car dealership. He comes from a family that owns and operates 5 other stores giving them a total of 6. Each store has it's own website.

My question is:

What would be the best way to link these all together to get the most "bang for the buck" without incurring a Google slap or something?

I thought about just putting site links on the footers of all 6 of the web sites but I'm not sure if there's a better way.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Dave,

I don't pretend to be an expert at cross linking and usually just stick to clients with only one location. But I just read something in my feedreader where Matt Cutts says cross linking to your other sites in moderation is OK.

So my would be think of it from a business/customer perspective as if Google and links did not count. In other words, if someone comes to a Ford site, are they likely to want to also look at your Toyota and BMW site? If so, then cross link for in a way that would help the customer find those other sites, but don't overdo it just for the backlinks.

Possibly a more conservative and safe approach would be having logos/links to the other dealerships only on the about us or contact us page of each site. Or a dedicated page about "Our Family of Automotive Dealerships" or whatever. That might be a safer approach than having all the links on hundreds of pages of each site?

Again, not my specialty, just some thoughts on the matter to kick off the discussion. Hopefully others will weigh in.

Additional point - are you aware each dealership can only have a G+ L page if each has a different phone # and address? Does not matter how many web sites they have, must be unique locations and phone #s.

 

[djbaxter]

Hi Dave,

I don't pretend to be an expert at cross linking and usually just stick to clients with only one location. But I just read something in my feedreader where Matt Cutts says cross linking to your other sites in moderation is OK.

So my would be think of it from a business/customer perspective as if Google and links did not count. In other words, if someone comes to a Ford site, are they likely to want to also look at your Toyota and BMW site? If so, then cross link for in a way that would help the customer find those other sites, but don't overdo it just for the backlinks.

That's my take too, and what I've always done. Based on Google guidelines and philosophy, it's also consistent with their view: If it's likely to be useful to a visitor to your site, include it. If not, then don't.

Oh, and just because I've always loved that Cheech and Chong bit, "Dave's not here, man!"

 

[davej1963]

Thanks Linda. I'll be working on their G local pages in a couple weeks and I'll remember that advice.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

For something like this where you're talking only 6 sites and all highly related, by all means cross link them. This is totally natural and normal - and even provides value to the user.

Now if you're talking about cross-linking for SEO purposes, you'll want to be sure each site is on its own C class ip. If they aren't, you won't get penalized, you just won't get any link juice from one site to another.

Travis Van Slooten