Is my strategy legit?

Will Google and MSN penalise me for what I am about to do?

[zorde]

Ok I am new to actually applying SEO techniques and don’t want to make any detrimental mistakes. I am hoping some of you gurus can guide me a little.

I have one main Domain that I’m wanting to drive traffic to. Call it www.MyMainDomain.com

I also have 5 domains with very relevant keywords in the domain name, eg. www.keyword1Keyword2.com and www.keyword1-keyword2.com etc..

I also have access to put subpages of content on 8 unrelated sites eg.
www.UnrealtedSite.com/myname/relevant_keyword.htm

I am planning on putting different but related content on the 5 non-main sites and cross-linking & back-linking everything.

1) Is it a mistake to cross link everything?

Is it better to link all of them to MyMainDomain and linking back to just one of them, and then chain all the other pages together in a ring?

2) What would you do with this setup?

3) Is it worth my while using the 8 unrelated-sites assuming they’re receiving low-moderate traffic?

A separate question based on a google listing phenomenon I discovered when my webserver was mis-configure.

I had myseconddomain.com (without the www.) serving up www.myfirstdomain.com content and www.myseconddomain.com going to the correct place.

4) My question is.. do Google and MSN treat myseconddomain.com (without the www. part) and www.myseconddomain.com as separate sites if they serve up different content and are linked?
Is it worth my time building content for the myseconddomain.com?

Thanks in advance

zorde

[caveman]

Is it a mistake to cross link everything?

Nothing wrong with this, in theory.

Intent has a lot to do with it. We have more sites than five linked, but we do not try to hide it at all. The sites are related in some ways, but different. Makes sense to the user and I believe our mini-network would easily survive a hand check...in fact I'm pretty sure that they have. ;-)

Depending upon similarity of the content, site structures, etc., once they are linked to one and other, any given site may run a greater chance of losing it's ability to rank with one or more of the SE's. The cleaner they all are the safer it is to connect them.

Is it better to link all of them to MyMainDomain and linking back to just one of them, and then chain all the other pages together in a ring.

Is it worth my while using the 8 unrelated-sites assuming they’re receiving low-moderate traffic?

Depends entirely on what you are trying to achieve with each site and each page, i.e., where you want the traffic and page/site importance to go.

Hate to sound so cliché, but I get the feeling you're worried a bit too much about the SE's. What would you like to do, and what in your opinion would be best for the user? Start with those questions, and then develop sites, pages and linking patterns that make sense in light of the answers.

I had myseconddomain.com (without the www.) serving up www.myfirstdomain.com content and www.myseconddomain.com going to the correct place.

My question is.. do Google and MSN treat myseconddomain.com (without the www. part) and www.myseconddomain.com as separate sites if they serve up different content and are linked?
Is it worth my time building content for the myseconddomain.com?

The www and non-www versions are technically different sites. Personally, I would not mess around with this stuff in light of the SE's track records in this area. Pick an authoritative version and redirect all traffic for each site to the version you picked (I prefer www only because I think people want to think a site is a 'www' site). If you have links to the non-authoritative versions try to get them changed. You don't want to lose sites over silly stuff like this, IMO.