Our company is the official and only distributor of a well known manufacturer in our region.
We are building a new website, where we want to add the products we sell. So far we have multiple categories.
My question is: if we link the product categories to the manufacturer's website, how will that affect our ranking?
Basically, when a user clicks on our "home products" category, it should go to the "home products" of our manufacturer.
You need to check the mozrank (or whichever authority measure you like) of both websites and the individual pages. If the manufacturers page is stronger than yours, and you are linking to them, then you risk helping them out rank you.
On the other hand will NOT linking to them hurt your sales/conversion rate?
Are you using 'boiler plate' copy across a large percentage of your websites pages? It sounds you might be, which i'd consider a higher priority to find a way around.
In reality however I don't think the links will matter all that much in the grand scheme, particularly if users are likely to use Geogrpahic terms in there search phrases too.
Worst case scenario, you launch without them, rank track some phrases, then add the links in. Observe the difference, act accordingly.
