Reciprocal linking on the same server

it's that linking again...

[pardo]

Got a bit puzzled about linking between two sites. A lot to read on this forum but still wondering about linking between websites.

We have our own webservers at the company and have several websites for our company:
the main site: www.widgets.com
product site1: www.blue-widgets.com
product site2: www.green-widgets.com
etc.

Can it hurt to link from the main site to the startpage of the two product sites and making a couple of specific links back from inside pages to the main site?

Can this hurt the main sites ranking? And what if they are on one server?
And how about a link to the main site on all pages on th e product sites in the footer?
And what if the site is not 'on theme'?

Hope anybody can help...

[mil2k]

It should not hurt to link to homepage of your other sites. When you are talking of extensive interlinking it can create a problem if you do not have many incoming links to all your sites.

[creative craig]

This thread here [webmasterworld.com] may help a little.

It wont hurt if they are on the same server if they link to each other.

Linking back to the main page of any site is always good practice from a usability stand point.

If you were to link all the sites together would there be a chance of it being seen as duplicate content, if so that could be a problem.

Craig

[hercules]

Hi,
I have the same question but with this thing different. I have www.widgets.nu the main page en www.widgets.nu/blue and www.widgets.nu/orange. Does it help to the ranking of my main page if i put links on those subpages to my main page?
Greetz Hercules

[pardo]

Graig,

There will be no duplicate content. But I did read that websites on the same server are detected and when there are a couple (10?) of crosslinks between the sites that yoy will be penalized...

[garylo]

And how about a link to the main site on all pages on the product sites in the footer?

Linking from each page of one site to one page on another site may be considered spam by Google, and thus penalized.

[pardo]

Garylo,

You might be right about a link in the footer on every page of a related product site to the mainpage on the main site.

On the other side it helps your customers: I have a directory guide with 'recommended' links, from lots of pages to our preferred content-pages, thus many internal inbound links. the reason is that we get traffic on all specific content pages by direct or SE referrers. people often take only 1 page and then...go away. So they see only 1 link and having the visitor in mind this is absolute no spam.

This theory will be the same for the footer link as described above.

[creative craig]

Linking from each page of one site to one page on another site may be considered spam by Google, and thus penalized.

You wouldnt be penalized for this, having a link at the bottom of every page on a site that links to another external page/site wouldnt result in being penalized. Do a site search and try and find a thread on web designers who link every page that they have ever designed back their own personal site (couldn't find it anywhere).

You would only be penalized if the site linked back heavily on every one of its pages back to all the other sites. Or if there there were multiple links on each page back to the site.

Craig