How safe is it to link from one's own sites?

[Jez123]

Hi,

In your opinion(s) how safe do you think it to link within my own sites? I have some that are similar that have a link or 2 (nothing drastic). Then I have one or 2 that are wordpress sites that are linked from all pages. The wordpress sites are mostly affiliate sites.

I have always believed that linking between own sites was acceptable and google gave little or no weight to these links but now I am not so certain that google does not look upon them as unfavourable.

What's the general opinion on this please?

[aristotle]

From what I've read about this, it seems to depend on how many sites are interlinked. Apparently you can get away with interlinking a "few" of your own sites, but if you exceed a certain limit, it might have a negative effect on your Google rankings for some (or all) of the sites. But it isn't clear how much interlinking you can safely get away with. The limit may depend on other factors such as how many other backlinks the sites have.

[bwnbwn]

I don't know about any limit there may be but the best way to figure if your doing yourself harm or not is ask yourself this question. "Am I linking my sites together to better a VISITOR or am I doing it in a way to INCREASE SE positions" You know linking using desired anchor text set in articles that tend to help in SE positions.

I interlink many of our sites and have for years but I do it for the people that come to the site as a way of providing additional information that will benifit their search experience, and not a way to push the term up in the serps.

All my interlinking is done from the header of a site and I use most of the time the domain name as the anchor text as to keep from being seen as an artifical push using a desired anchor text and I add a no follow tag to the link.