Interlinking Sites

Is Google penalizing own links?

[Wired Suzanne]

We have a network of 50 sites. At the bottom of our sites we have links to our other sites. In this way all sites are linked with each other.

We recently changed the anchors of these links into our keywords. Thought it would be good for the search engines (read: Google). Now we are slowly dropping in the SERPs. Where we used to rank high, we are now only found at the 6th or 7th page of the SERPs.

At the same time I see more and more sites are taking out these links at the bottom of their pages.

Did I miss something? Should we take these links out? Is interlinking 50 sites really not done now? Am I on dangarous grounds?

I saw a network of sites taking out the links at the bottom and now they are ranking higher. Is it possible that Google is deducting own links from the backward links of other sites? (Just a theory)

[netcommr]

you have 'overlinked'

find relevant pages on each domain and only link similar pages

(and not the same on every page!)

[dougs]

You are playing in a dangerous world. Why not bild a pyramid structure of linking, with your most agressive site at the top.

Doug

[rogerd]

Hi, Suzanne. Google doesn't publish a guide as to what kind of crosslinking is OK vs. what isn't, but your example is a textbook case of the kind of thing that has apparently drawn penalties in the past.

Dump the "network" approach, and use a pyramid as dougs suggests, or split into different groups, etc. Try to get good external linkage for as many sites as possible, as this may mitigate the "closed network" appearance of any interlinking you do.

[dougs]

We do some simple cross linking with sites, but we aim to get every site to stand on itīs own first...ie have many inbounds from 3rd party sites. We then only use cross linking for the terms that we are not doing well on....or a to transfer some PR around if one site has managed to have much more than any other.

I would recommend drawing out on a large piece of paper which third party sites link to which of your sites and then draw your sites as you have done.....once you have it on paper you will see what a search engine spider sees...then remove the stuff that does not make sense.

We are now trying to make the links follow themes between sites....ie...if you have a site about USA travel, then link it to a USA finance site, then link this to a European finance site, then link this to a European hotel site....etc etc. Everything then connects how it should do and by having many third party inbounds on each site everything becomes natural.

Doug

[2_much]

That can work but it's all based on a percentage. For it to work you need to have other inbound links outside your network. If the only inbound links come from sites within your network, you will not just lose rankings but at some point might end up penalized and losing your domains.

Drop the excessive cross linking, minimize it tremendously, and do at least a 3 to 1 balance. For every external links, add one link from a site in your network.

Eventually, you can apply all your domains again, but your linkage structure has to be very carefully crafted.

[dougs]

We aim to get 100īs of inbounds from sites not associated with us before we do any linking between our sites.

Doug

[Wired Suzanne]

Thanks a lot.
Took out most of the links. Now I'll have to wait and see.