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What are the reprecussions of:
posting an outbound link from every page on site A to a single page on site B, (site A being interlinked from the mainpage to every page with a return link)
versus
Putting a single link from the homepage of that very same Site A to site B?
From what I understand, scenario 1. will significantly drain A's PR and boost's B's, much more than scenario 2.
Pavel.
scenario 1. will significantly drain A's PR
The "PR drain" by linking out is neglectible, I would say it's close to zero. And don't forget that sites have no PR, only pages have PR.
If A and B are your sites, scenario 1 could get you penalized.
Scenario 2 sounds reasonable and is the way most people exchange links (from one page of A to one page of B).
From your experience, what is exactly the link amount "border line" after which penalty is applied to site A?
[sarcasm]At the moment, it seems like nobody will be penalized for anything.[/sarcasm]
If the links are visible, why should G penalize you?
Think about a free CMS that requires you to have a link on each page to their company.
It's your Website do with it whatever you want.
G will eventually tweak it's algo to 'ignore' such techniques. Maybe. Perhaps. In a few years, or so.
Over around 50-100+ links per page will start to contribute PR-2.
Both will benefit from the value of the text link. Regarding text links, I am top for one term, therefore for new links, I use different term that I'm second for (same URL). If linking from every page, consider using different search terms/different url's to target different needs.
Each page has its own PR unaffected by links out. However, each page can only give out (not lose) a certain amount of PR. Therefore, it has less PR to give out to the rest of your site, which in turn has less to give back to that page. Therefore, indirectly, a page with outbound links will mean less PR on the site as a whole, and individually for that page.
However, because of the logrithimic nature of PR, the loss of PR is small, especially if there are recip links. Having a big site will more often than not invite many inbound links - DMOZ has many outbound, yet has v high PR. Any PR loss is insignificant to the equation.
In addition, having a link on a page increases the rating of the page for other parts of the Google algorithm.
If the links are visible, why should G penalize you?
I know that there are lots of sites crosslinking excessively and getting no penalty, but I've also heard of people getting penalized by doing exactly this: Linking to one page of yours from lots of pages from a different site of yours. Or linking to every site from every page of every site. There are certain key factors in here, I don't know them so I would be very cautious linking to my own sites.
I too read at many places regarding heavy cross-linking and the threat of being penalized, but everything has been fine for us so far.
What about the web company that puts their link/logo on every page of all the sites they build. I have not seen a penalty. I'm not sure what to think. I just stick to what is going to benefit the user and construct my linking strategy around the user. That can be done just as effectively IMHO.
I do not see penalties for cross linking. Just do what makes sense and you will probably never get a penalty.
What you don't want, is someone blogging on your keywords and dominating your area with "rubbish". Is the new SEO technique to create a blog on their topic creating a web of excessively linked pages that feeds traffic to their "proper" pages.