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Look at all SEO, CrossLinking froma users point of view, because thats what is ultimately the deciding factor.
if its NOT relevant to the user, combined with a trick to get rankings, then in the long run you are heading for a hiding.
Shak
(hope that made sense)
2000 sites - Is there a relationship between - similar topics, similar products or services.
The ones that fit together you can link together.
You should read up on "Theming". Extremely important and highly relevant.
Further -- I highly recommend that if you are considering cross-link 2000 web sites hire a professional.
Cross-linking can be highly detrimental to web site traffic if you do not know what you are doing.
So if this is really what happens there are a lot of sites out there getting penalised for Google's lack of "intelligence". My question is, why doesn't Google concentrate on the multitude of sites that are No. 1 yet still contain vast quantities of blatant spam, rather than trying to run before it can walk?
I add new site links to my PR6+ sites, and are quite helpful in getting an immediate indexing for new sites, rather than waiting around for the Google ADD-URL indexing to be performed.
I don’t think anyone has figured out the threshold yet for crosslinking. I still see examples of crosslinking that I can’t imagine are still being indexed by Google. <insert>no offense to netguy – wink wink</insert> I don’t know how long they have been there or how long they will last, or if it’s just that folks are still copying what others have done before and these are simply an echo of times past. I can’t track every one. What I can tell you for sure is, that ‘if’ there is a threshold there are more than a few factors that we would need to input into the analysis to determine what that threshold is.
Now, if I had 2000 sites that I wanted to link together and ‘if’ I wanted these sites to succeed and have longevity, I would be thinking in terms of what is the unifying key, or theme that brings them together. <insert>fathom nicely addresses this with his post</insert> I think of this as the core.
I would be thinking hubs, where linking to each of these 2000 sites makes sense. If that’s too much effort then just spam the heck out of it, throw it away, spam the heck out of that network and continue to play the game. Of course that takes a lot of effort too.
I’d say first decide what the purpose of your network is, whether it’s a something you want to put your name on for more than a few months.
Seriously what I’d really like to ask you [out the side of my mouth] is how you ended up with 2000 sites and no clue how to link them together? No offence intended truly but where is the planning?
This is for everyone. When you build a house do you build a dozen windows, a few doors, perform some walls and then try to piece the whole thing together or do you first design a plan and then build off of that? A good plan in our world isn’t stagnant though and allows for growth.
It just seems like a lot of work, you know - building structures backward.
I suggest you read up around here on hubs and content development. I remember when we thought your ‘industry’ had it all but for a year now I’ve sensed you all were eager for some changes in how you’re doing business.
We can dance along and keep the discussion generic.
tinboye22 - I had a similar setup when my sites were penalized, interlinking large groups of sites at the bottom of the index page. Not sure if this had anything to do with *why* they were penalized, but I'm still very hesitant to do so with this new batch of sites (I ended up having to get a new server and start all over with fresh domains, as the sites never recovered).
If I could be certain that linking say 10 of them together, I'd do it in a heartbeat because this would be the easiest and most practical way to filter my traffic (all my sites are in the same theme).
If you want to be linking your sites together then it’s time to think hubs. This is nothing new or different, you’ll see my own personal discussions on this for well over a year through the search. Our ideas about what makes a good hub may differ. I can only speak for the longevity of ones that start with a good idea, are well researched, analyzed and that information is used to develop a plan.
A successful hub is built off the concept of themes so understanding themes is naturally important. Knowing how to develop a logical directory structure is important as is naming the categories. Knowing the keywords and the way people are searching for each particular theme and building unique and relevant content around that wouldn’t hurt. This content development includes pages with listings for links out as well as informational pages. A great editor is certainly a benefit as is a copywriter.
It’s ok to start with a core and build out slowly, linking up where it makes sense. Make yourself attractive to outside linking partners so you are the bait and let them come to you. Give them a quality site to want to link to and they will.
Smaller sites are different. Almost everyone can benefit from a hub, even if it’s the only site and that’s a hub. It means you’ve started with a core. Blah, blah, blah – sorry, I seem to be taking over.
an authority is a site that attracts lots of related credible domains linking to it. (usually what we call "information sites" with much original quality unique information like newspapers and magazines and government sites like UN, etc, blogs which provide original content themselves rather than mainly commenting on others' content but maybe these can also be corporate sites like ms.
to me they are extremes of a scale. It may well be possible you can be both, but "best" to be towards one end or the other.
I was under the impression that crosslinking is very risky
Agree with paynt, crosslinking itself is not the problem, adding the links for the sake of linking is.
In addition, the effects of crosslinking isn't always immediate, it can take months for a single link total affect to materializes, multiple this by 10, 20... 100 and so per site... and times this by 2000 (as in tinboye22 case) the end affect is totally unpredictable.
Immediate and noticeable improvement in link popularity, PageRank and rank position will occur, yes... but long lasting "exceptional" affects are unlikely, unless the total link structure is evenly distributed with reciprocals (crosslinks), one way inbounds, and one way outbounds.
Avoid pattern linkings or templating (e.g. always placing links at bottom of page).
Probably the very best all encompassing design is developing two to five sites as authorities (all inbounds links and only a few outbounds links per page) and another two to five sites as hubs all outbound links with only the authority sites as inbounds.
Each authority and hub divides the 2000 sites up in common themes (e.g. product sites only, image & movie only, and speciality sites) or something to that affect and develop the spokes of the hubs so that more specific sub-categories are apparent (e.g. similar to a directory).
Then all sites within the authority/hub arrangement point to the authority site (link out) and receive links from the hub and only the ones that are common in theme.
This way the crosslinking is effectively contains to only a few sites actually doing the crosslinking and no pattern across thousands of sites... the affect is just as good, and moreso.
All sites point to the authortiy sites which rank high & point to hubs that in turn rank high, and the hubs point to the individual sites which are the ones receiving the end traffic.
[edited by: fathom at 8:28 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2003]
The amount of linking (e.g. every page pointing to most pages of an adjacent site) is usually the problem where the intent artifially increases link popularity and PageRank beyond the original intent.
Just because you own or can influence the links of many web sites doesn't always mean you are indeed "more popular".
Fathom why must one not just keep adding links to the bottom of the page. I do not see why this can be bad
Most link schemes (link farms) are built on this practice - it is widely believed that Googlebot can detect such linking patterns.
As such if a out going link is indeed important to a page (it likely would "always be at the bottom and less obscure from visitors.
The PRZERO part1 thread: mentioning artificial linkage:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Part two:
[webmasterworld.com...]
some more on interlinkging:
[webmasterworld.com...]
I think the overall conclusion may be:
before you interlink heavily, get, earn, your own independant external inbound links just to be safe (as Webguerrilla suggested) here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
what if a person was to make catagorized pages then have a table linking to the pages, then place that table on every page?
This in itself is not crosslinking, unless each site does the same thing.
If only done on two sites or a few probably not a problem either.
You need to remember that the success of any strategy will produce rewards (more visibility) better ranking first, and if you are satisfied with that initial success no problem.
If you are under Google's radar the benefits are quite appealing, but most will see success (better ranking) as the tip of the iceberg, and do it more, and more, and more, reproducing that success again, and again, again.
This is where failure occurs and dramatically... you get so caught up in the strategy that one day your in Google's sights -- red flagged and that ban occurs - and you believe you have done nothing wrong because it worked for years.
If the domains/sites are disposal no problem, just start again... however if a livelihood is counted on the risk is alot, if you drop over the edge.
What does cross-linking mean? Isn't Internet a place where cross-linking is a natural thing?- irock
The reason fathom mentions we should “Avoid pattern linkings or templating (e.g. always placing links at bottom of page)” is because as an industry we have made our linking between sites unnatural. The more unnatural you make things on your site the easier it is to find and filter out those things. Site optimizers and promoters do tend to push the envelope a bit far sometimes and then we get something like the big PR purge of last year. I don’t want to listen to another 6 months of whining with people complaining about big bad Google and have a chunk of the problem come down to - push the envelope too far crosslinking.
I see crosslinking, and in fact elaborate crosslinking schemes working. Even the extreme link farms are beneficial, facilitating the movement of information, therefore we will never see them go.
Again, to know if those will work for you or are what you want, take it back to the core of what your plan is. What do you want to get out of your linking? Why did you create 2000 sites? Just to link them together or are you building out the content of each, these are the initial questions you ask.
A hub can be developed as a linking tool and bring sites together. You might want to start asking yourself how to do that, and each hub will naturally differ from it’s neighbor, even in the same industry.
Volunteer at a directory and learn how to not only list appropriate and related sites, but also develop the directory structure. If you don’t have time for that then at least research and study good directory structure.
Even the most cautious of the extreme crosslinkers go down. If I were to play that game again I know I’d balance it with a totally separate and clean linked site, as my back-up.
1) petty, or
2) business oriented
And I don't believe any business expends much effort on pettiness, so option 2's looking like a good bet.
Of course, if PR-penalised sites were banned from Adwords also, that would be a different matter. We could add a number 3) - An improved quality of visitor experience. Seeing as they're not, however...
{{{THANK YOU!}}}
Volunteer at a directory and learn how to not only list appropriate and related sites, but also develop the directory structure. If you don’t have time for that then at least research and study good directory structure.
I am volunteer at dmoz in the adult section, I have been for over a year now, but never edited linksites or hubs.
The structure of the categories (relationship between them) is the important part.
