Linking Affililiate Sites

working, but how risky

[graywolf]

I was reverse engineering a competitor, and see he has several sites selling the same products, but they are all linked together, with the optimal keywords. Some of the sites are even free geocities stuff. The content for each is similar but unique enough to be different.

Only one of the sites is ranking, but how strong is the ranking based on the extremely on topic supporting sites?

I usually try to have multiple sites at arms length to give me multiple positions in the serps, but wonder if I may be going about this wrong.

[caveman]

We wonder about this too. We have some competitors who are far more aggressive than we are in this regard, and sometimes I'm surprised that they are not banned, especially when some others seem to do the same thing and get wiped out. At the very least I guess it can be looked at as high risk.

We're considering converting an old underperforming mini network to this approach, but it is hard to know exactly how far to push it. One conclusion we have drawn is that if you're going to do it, you better also have a bunch of external inbound links from sites not related to yours - those inbounds seem to provide a good level of insulation. Watch those dup filters too, if your site templates are similar. FWIW.

[Vegas21]

In the last 6 months, I've noticed considerably less affiliate sites ranking well in Google due to links from their own network of similar sites. In Yahoo, it still seems to work.

If your sites have different enough content, are hosted on unique C classes and have a good amount of links from other quality sources, I think the risk of linking your sites together is rather low and will give you some boost, especially in Yahoo.

[disgust]

there's a lot more that goes into it than just the class c range. if google wanted to find "interlinkers" they could also use domain whoises, geotargetting, etc.

[graywolf]

they could also use domain whoises

Thats why I mix in some rrivate registrations, some DBA company names, some PO boxes, and UPS address boxes.

[disgust]

you may, but a lot of people don't.

at another forum, I saw someone that was really really adamant about the use of different class c's. I checked out some of his sites- sure enough, they were on different class c's. however, the domain whoises (and not to mention the location of the server) were identical. ;)

[cabbie]

When I wonder,I do both.;)

[caveman]

So graywolf, what are you thinking...heavier cross-linking mainly? (Assuming the c block, WHOIS, etc stuff is handled appropriately.)

If so, get *lots* of links first.