Linking to/from website

[barefootsusan]

We have an offline client whose main website is likely being penalized by negative reviews on Google Places, yelp.com, etc.

Our plan is to create a 2nd site for our client that is independent from his main site, the one being penalized, that compliments his main one, but am wondering about linking the two sites.

What is the best way to link the penalized site to the new one? I was thinking it might be better to have a link going from the new site to the old one, rather than adding a link to his old site that promotes the new one.

Anyone know which one is the best way to do that without passing along any negative "link juice" to the new site?

[ButterflyGarden]

Here is an article that will help with Reputation Management - Online Reputation Protection

[austingirl]

You can also try to contact Google and Yelp, etc. if they are comments that are untrue and slanderous in nature. I had a client that had this happen on Yahoo. We contacted Yahoo, clearly presented the case and the facts, and Yahoo removed the illegitimate comment. Good luck!

[orvn]

Originally Posted by austingirl

You can also try to contact Google and Yelp, etc. if they are comments that are untrue and slanderous in nature. I had a client that had this happen on Yahoo. We contacted Yahoo, clearly presented the case and the facts, and Yahoo removed the illegitimate comment. Good luck!

Google is like the United Federation of Planets. They do not interfere in these matters. And they're RIGHT not to.

Originally Posted by barefootsusan

We have an offline client whose main website is likely being penalized by negative reviews on Google Places, yelp.com, etc.

Our plan is to create a 2nd site for our client that is independent from his main site, the one being penalized, that compliments his main one, but am wondering about linking the two sites.

What is the best way to link the penalized site to the new one? I was thinking it might be better to have a link going from the new site to the old one, rather than adding a link to his old site that promotes the new one.

Anyone know which one is the best way to do that without passing along any negative "link juice" to the new site?

It seems to me that there's something seriously flawed about your logic in going about this entire predicament your client is in.

Can you solve the problem by responding to reviews? On the new places/hotpot, you may reply to a review as a verified business owner.

What do you mean "pass on negative link juice"? This doesn't make any sense. How can link juice be negative? Link juice is not determined by the traffic flowing through a link, but by the pagerank of the source page and all the pages that it derives rank from.

What you might mean is that the negative reviews might be affecting a users' likelihood of clicking your client's pages in SERPs, due to surrounding negative search results, e.g.- bad reviews.

If this is the case and you're set on creating a new site, close the old places and yelp and what-have-you accounts (tell them the business is closed or something).

Then 301 redirect the new site to the old one. You're passing on the ranking to the new site and none of the bad reviews of the company reference the new site.

If you were just to keep the old site and cross-link it with the new one, you'd gain a slight advantage, but not nearly one as big as simply transferring all the PR to the new site. You'll be saving yourself a lot of link building.

Do you understand now why I so bluntly accused your logic as flawed?

[socialbookmark]

Maybe you can use nofollow rel to avoid juicing value of link to new website. in the link but totally i think linking to a website from penalized website is not suggested.

[orvn]

Originally Posted by socialbookmark

Maybe you can use nofollow rel to avoid juicing value of link to new website. in the link but totally i think linking to a website from penalized website is not suggested.

Okay, is it just me, or is the point being missed here?

The website hasn't really been penalized as in sandboxed.
It just has poor user reviews.

I realize I could just be under-informed, so please enlighten me with regard to this transmission of negative juice value, as this is the first I hear of it?

[austingirl]

ORVN - your comment about Google being the United Federation of Planets cracked me up - thanks! I think though, that we are talking about the same thing in a general sense - respond to the actual review in some manner rather than changing the domain/linking/website structure. For example, ask your client's satisfied customers to post an honest review about their interaction with the service provider. IMO this falls on the business reputation side of things, not the seo ranking side of things - but maybe I'm wrong? I'm on board with ORVN in that I don't see how this could impact page rank / seo.

[orvn]

Originally Posted by austingirl

IMO this falls on the business reputation side of things, not the seo ranking side of things - but maybe I'm wrong? I'm on board with ORVN in that I don't see how this could impact page rank / seo.

No you're right. It's public relations, not SEO.

Listen, if there were such a thing as negative PR, I could sign up all my competitors for old black-hat link farms and then promote myself organically as an SEO strategy. Of course this will not work.

This is the same reason Google will not interfere. Let's say someone makes a blog accusing you of doing something unethical, do you think Google will go out of their way to attempt to determine the truth and remove it? Of course not!

If that were the case, I could make a compelling case about my competitor's website and have them delisted.

It's interesting to note that what someone with malicious intent could do is create a whole bunch of negative places reviews for your business. But they would have to really have a personal dislike for your local business.

[yukon]

What about Vitaly Borker?

Google did make some changes because of this guy, around Dec. 1. 2010

Official Google Blog: Being bad to your customers is bad for business