I am designing and optimizing a site for a company and had a question about the linking of the site. The company is a big company with many different names that it does business as. For example CompanyABC is the parent company, who sells letters. So there is going to be a site www.companyabc.com, which will have links to its other sites companydef.com who sells only def letters, companyghi.com who sells only ghi letters...etc. I know SE's don't like multiple sites to be the same...but, each site will have different links going to its other pages...rather than having www.companyabc.com/def the link would be www.companydef.com. How will search engines take and respond to this method. Thanks,
as long as all websites have completely different contents you'll be fine, but if there are duplicate contents, your websites will be penalized.
Thanks, That is what i assumed the actual content is different but the design of the site is identical there will be about 9 sites all linking to one another with the same look and feel. Only the main url will be different, while all of the other links will link back to the main URL (each url will have the same contact form(from the main page), same FAQ page, same about us page. etc).......