Organizing a link strategy for multiple unique websites

[Web Res]

I am working with a Marketing Group that has 300+ member locations (motels) in Australia; each is a unique business - most will have unique website in addition to listing on the Group website. The new Group website must give value to visitors looking for accommodation as well as pull together opportunities to get better SEO results for the Group website and the individual website. It seems like a linking strategy within a niche sector should yield powerful results.

I may use a CMS system that we used for this website www.australianholidayguide.com although I am not sure it is good enough for SEO purpose. My other fear is that using this CMS makes it easy to build out other unique websites, but they are all then hosted on the same IP address.

Any feedback would be appreciated on:
- on the Australian Holiday Guide example and how it works for UI and SEO

- the SEO implication of hosting multiple unique websites with unique content and unique domain names on the same server (you would think web designers come up against this all the time)

- suggestions on creating a linking strategy for Members and a Group website.

Really appreciate your help. Hope this is not too many topics in one, but the nature of building this collective strategy is very important and getting it right in the planning stage is essential.

Thanks,

Mark (Web Res)
Web Reservation Systems

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Web Res

- on the Australian Holiday Guide example and how it works for UI and SEO

So are you looking for a report to see how this website is doing now in the search engines? Have you consulted the CMS developer to see how SEO friendly their product is?

Originally Posted by Web Res

- the SEO implication of hosting multiple unique websites with unique content and unique domain names on the same server (you would think web designers come up against this all the time)

I have never seen an issue with this. Now cross linking those websites is another story.

Originally Posted by Web Res

- suggestions on creating a linking strategy for Members and a Group website.

Cross linking the website or just getting back links?

[bj]

As Jaan said, crosslinking these websites if they all reside on the same IP block may be a problem.

I use a few CMS and have no problem with them re SEO, though some are lots better than others. SE friendly urls, the ability to ping the update services, and RSS feeds built in are three things to look for that help a CMS to be SE friendly. And it doesn't hurt if it's xhtml/css compliant, since your pages will load faster.

[Web Res]

Sounds like the links between these websites won't do much good as inbound links. Will they do harm? I don't want to be classified as doing something Google considers spam. It seems natural enough to have related businesses hosted on the same server. It also is natural to have those businesses link to each other because it performs a useful function.

It may be that I'll just have to separate them all with different hosting accounts in different places. That was extra work I hoped to avoid - especially because I want to give each website owner a CMS that they can self manage and that requires installing extra features at each host - nothing impossible, but...

Thanks,

[bigaussie]

From my own experience with hosting multiple websites on a single server - so long as each site is showing a unique IP address you should not run into any trouble.

Our entry level packages include a DIY CMS with individual IP address. WordPress, PodCasting and other software installed via control panel.

As BJ said - there are many CMS products out there. Some are better for SEO than others. How good they are is also determined by the person feeding in the details for the website too. I monitor what our clients feed into their different CMS systems and assist with training in better use of keyword placement etc.

Linking within the same physical server has no noticeable effect so long as each URL has a separate IP address. If a Virtual Server is setup correctly, internal IP addresses can be configured for each URL. Google and others do not seem to be concerned with this setup.

Good luck mate.

[tim2005]

Originally Posted by Web Res

- the SEO implication of hosting multiple unique websites with unique content and unique domain names on the same server (you would think web designers come up against this all the time)

Many hosting companies host multiple web sites on the same server with a single IP address. It is common practice, so it should not influence SEO much.

[MtraX]

Don't cross link the sub sites, rather have the proper listings on the main site and then an 'affiliated with <Main Group>' icon or link on all sub sites. If your content is good, the sites will do well naturally without unorthodox linking methods. It's important though to have a proper content strategy as with having that many sub sites,they will tend to want to duplicate some of each other's content, which is a no-no of course. Employ a good copywriter or use the group's marketing agency to help with unique content. BTW, good luck with your booking system ;-) Getting 300 establishments to update availability is going to be a pain, except of course if everyone is forced to use 'the system' even with real world bookings.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Web Res

Sounds like the links between these websites won't do much good as inbound links. Will they do harm?

Really hard to say until it is done. Just from experience Yahoo hates it and will demote your websites when found, where in a search engine like Google I still see websites get away with it.

[zbatia]

I agree with tim2005.
Since there are many ISPs that share the server for numerous web sites, it's logically normal (I assume that Google folks understand it), so it must NOT be penalized. Based on my experience, there were no penalties.