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Should I Only Link Related Sites?

         

jadakiss2

12:17 am on Oct 23, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have alot of sites - I focus on about 5 major categories. For example: Shoe sites, Clothes sites, Book sites, etc. You get what I mean. Now previously I had all my sites - whether they were related or not - I had them all linked to each other and I had great listings for about 2 months - then some of the sites lost their link popularity and rankings.

So my question is, should I only link my sites together that are related to each other and remove the links to the unrelated sites?

WebGuerrilla

5:04 am on Oct 23, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member




If the PageRank for each individual site is generated by the links from the other sites you own, then you might not want to keep them linked that way.

IF each site has independent links from other sites that you do not own or control, then you shouldn't have any problems.

Brett_Tabke

7:13 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I think it depends on how you are going to link. If it is just something like, "visit our other sites: abc,xyz" on your home page, then I don't see a problem.

Crush

7:38 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Interesting one for me. I have 3 domains I am developing with different content. I want get in to local European SE's so I have for example .nl .de .dk

I want to put a link on every page with a flag for that language version. Is this going to be considered a link farm with no other inbound links?

whatson

7:45 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I dont think that should be too much of a problem.
Just dont make a lot of sites with very "similar" content on and link them all together.
If you run other websites it shouldnt be too bad linking them all together as it is safe to assume your visitors may find some of your other web sites useful.
It is fine to exchange links with sites that have related content to you, for example if you run a domain registration site you might also link to some sites that do web hosting and design, and they might link back to you.
Just don't abuse it.

Crush

8:01 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yes I guess the content will be very different...ie Dutch and Danish, don't think that would be considered duplicate content:)

Brett_Tabke

8:12 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Before adding the links, ask yourself one question: is this going to help my site vistors?

Crush

8:39 am on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



2 things in mind. Is this going to help my vistors? Well if some one lands on a page in english and wants the german version, yes.

Question 2, is this going to help my page rank? As these are new sites I am going to need PR, but I do not want to waste three domains in one go. Hence the pevious question.Will it be a link farm?

The sad things is I am building these domains as a back up plan just in case for some reason google gives me the dreaded white bar. I follow the rules but have seen too many supposedly honest people in this forum take a beating.
On the other hand I could be digging my own grave anyway because this new site is the same product but with different content and a human editor may say I am a spammer. But every wise man has a back up plan

julinho

9:44 pm on Oct 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



What happened to those PR0 threads?

I remember I read several of them.

Below, a brief summary of what was discussed in those threads.

Google will punish you for excessive cross linking. Nobody (except google) knows what excessive cross linking means.
If you are caught and punished, your pages will get a PR0. Once you get a PR0, what you will see is not just a decrease in traffic; you will see that your traffic will go to nearly ZERO.
Nobody knows if or how you can fully recover from a PR0. Some people have gone months with the PR0. That's more than enough to close businesses.

I think you should read those threads before doing any cross linking.

2_much

12:49 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Funny thing is that lately a lot of the sites ranking seem to have untheme'd inbound links.

The key to this is:

1. Anchor text should contain information related to your site

2. Web Map - will your sites link to each other only? They need to have inbound links from other parts of the web or you will get banned or penalized.

None of this is new but I thought it might help you. I've said this before but I'm seeing a more hub/authority oriented algorithm.

jady

12:55 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This might be a silly question - but can you get banned/penalty as a development firm by placing a link; Designed By: Blah Blah at the bottom of each page of a Client site?

2_much

1:31 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Jady, my suggestion would be to do that only from the index page. If you place it as a footer and it's on every page, it might create a closed web map and get your site penalized.

This is just an opinion, perhaps others that have tried this may have a more informed idea.

jamsy

1:33 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Designed By: Blah Blah at the bottom of each page of a Client site

Dont think so, i have over 2,000 pages with designed by on and all show up as nice little backward links and a high PR6.

jady

1:54 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks Jamsy - same here, about 400 inbound links (about 90% are our Client references) and we hold a PR6 as well. Just was wondering if anyone has experienced any problems with doing this..

Marcia

4:20 am on Oct 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>>can you get banned/penalty as a development firm by placing a link; Designed By: Blah Blah at the bottom of each page of a Client site?<<<

In web design cases, it's almost imperative to have a link at bottom all across for copyright purposes. People actually do try to pull funny stuff; I caught one a few months ago through a referral in the site stats. I confronted the issue, so it was resolved. But there's no need to link back excessively, one is generally enough from the design site to the client site.

The month that the big PR0 penalty hit, there wasn't a penalty, but it did seem that multiple links from one site (without multiple links back) were disregarded, but there's not enough to say it for sure, though it certainly looked that way. It doesn't really matter as long as the one on the homepage counts, the others are for a degree of protection against intellectual property violation.

There's one web designer who has set up multiple sites (5-6) and links to them all from all their sites - from every page. With PR6 and over 1,000 inbound links there's no penalty now, but their main site dropped down drastically. There's just been a big change now, those multiple links just aren't doing what they were.

I wouldn't cross-link from all the pages of a site to all pages of another and then cross-link all across back to the first. That seems a little like over doing it. It's just too risky, the best way is with moderation.

>>a lot of the sites ranking seem to have untheme'd inbound links.

Totally agreed, for sheer numbers, it seems a lot of links from independent sites is helping, outweighing the value of links from only a few sites regardless of Page Rank. Even links from low PR sites helped a lot in one case this month. Numbers seem to be counting, which could explain some of the totally irrelevant sites being seen for certain searches. But it's still best to concentrate on links from unconnected sites that are topically related, things can always shift.