Linking a Brick & Mortar Site to an Online Store

[fuzzatonic]

Here is my situation, and I wanted to get a second opinion before moving too far forward. I own 2 sites:

Site A - Brick & mortar: store location, about us, product listing, etc, etc.
Site B - Online shopping of our products

I wanted to separate the two site so I could market the online shopping to a wider audience. Plus, I plan on doing some PPC. I am getting a lot of visitors to Site A, looking at the product pages, and leaving. I want to add a link on all the product pages on Site A to the appropriate product page on Site B so they can (hopefully) make a purchase. If I didn't know about Google and worry about being penalized for cross-linking, I wouldn't hesitate linking the two sites. I just wanted to see if this looks to be alright.

[fathom]

Hi fuzzatonic & welcome to WebmasterWorld! ;)

Your strategy sounds reasonable and you should not have any problems.

Limit the number of crosslinks (crosslinks - meaning a page linking to another site's page and that page linking back).

If you link from site A to product pages on Site B the only link back (if any) from Site B to Site A should be to homepage... say noting site ownership.

In addition, you should develop unique links with other sites to keep from developing a pattern of only back & forth, but generally two sites will rarely have a problem. (unless you start linking every page to every another page).

fathom