Two sites, best way to use one to advertise the other

[apauto]

I have an ecommerce site where you can buy widgets.

I also have a forum for widgets.

Each one is a seperate site.

I am using the forum to advertise the ecommerce site. What is the best way to have links to each category on the ecommerce site from the forum site, on every page of the forum site, w/o getting dinged?

Will a simple rel=nofollow do it?

Thanks!

[tedster]

Yes, rel=nofollow will keep you out of trouble. However, unless you intend to do really heavy cross-linking, I wouldn't even worry about it. When Google sees links between related sites, the most common result is just minimizing the value of those links. In my experience, penalties come from trying to use cross-links to manipulate rankings, not from normal user satisfaction and marketing purposes.

[apauto]

tedster,

As a precaution, I even put my links in a JS file and just did a JS include. However, I read that now Google can read JS include files, so I put a rel=nofollow on the links in the file.

It kind of is heavy cross linking, as these links are on every page of the forum, pointing back to the ecommerce site.

Should be ok? :)

[tedster]

Sounds fine to me - you're not trying to use one site to deceptively improve the rankings of the other, and that's when Google might react negatively.