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Personally, I also believe that Google makes a distinction between links within a site and links from external sites.
So is this a good idea to link own websites?
No. You risk being seen as a link-farm.
Best wishes,
GoogleGuy
There are very different websites in my new network with different look, content and so on.
Maybe they shouldn't be a "network" of sites or cross-linked. I don't think Google minds if you put very different content on a single site and link the pages, but when you start doing it across sites, it could be considered spamming the search engines.
Do it for the benefit of your visitors.
The web is built on links.. keep them clean, on-topic, and in plain sight and you can't go wrong.
If there is a good reason to link to a different site of your's go ahead.
If you are just linking to boost it's rankings, be careful how you do it and try to come up with legitimate reasons to do the linking instead.
Heavy cross-linking, for no obvious reason, is asking for trouble if someone from Google checks it out.
I don't really thing that there is a cross-linking penalty. I believe that they do consider cross-linking as a factor, that when combined with other factors can lead to a penalty.
If you are just doing this as a way to increase your PR, then go for the hub and spoke method to be safer.
All your sites in the network should also stand on their own. Ask yourself if the site would be able to draw its own natural link from other sites, or is it just being a resource for the sites you are building?
While the internet move database [imdb.com...] is an amazon site, and it gets a lot of links from them, it is also a valuable resource for the public in general and receives all sorts of links for that reason. It would pass the test.
You also don't want to have all your sites filling up lots of searches, because it then becomes a quality control isssue for Google. Then they might have to ding you just to maintain *their* quality.
I'd be careful with brand-new + lots of sites + lots of cross-linking to make sure that it wouldn't look bad to someone checking out the site.
Someone checking out the site? Who would be checking out the site?
Do you mean a visitor having a look or someone carrying out somekind of "do I list/penalise this web site" kind of person?
Beaker
1. Competitors and webmasters ranked lower in particular searches, who might then file spam reports.
2. SE techs following up on spam reports sent in by competitors or generated algorithmically.
All of my sites link to each other. I rank well on Yahoo and Google.
Just from reading that, what that sounds like is a "directory" or link section that's possibly there for the purpose of interlinking them. There better be plenty of links to and from independent, unconnected sites other than those - in fact mostly others or it could stick out like a sore thumb.
>>all other unique websites ( newspages, not content ).
That's one clue - is it content, what would read like original, unique content on each site, thematically different enough to warrant having different sites, or is it just news, which could be links to news sites or articles or just newsfeeds with some select outbound links - with keywords in the anchor text of those links for the purpose of ranking for them?
Get some sites done that way ranking nicely and there will be people churning out more of them daily to do likewise.
>>But I read something called PR0 <=> Bad ranking. So is this a good idea to link
If there's valid original content on each it's one thing, but if it's a site each about internet news, computer news, business news, fashion news, new books released, music industry news, etc. - and it's newsfeeds or just links to other sites with stories and there are few quality incoming links to the sites except the ones each other it, it could easily raise suspicions.
There are people who look at sites when surfing, something unusual catches their eye, and they go digging around - checking backlinks, looking at the code, the works.
If I ask myself, would I do this if there was no search engine, then I would say, Yes, each site has unique content and would definitely help the users to see content from different sources.
What do you guys say?
Do it for the benefit of your visitors.
SEO is often overused, it pushes mediocre sites at best to the top of the results, If no one spent time doing trickery and just built quality (which more people would do if they didnt have to worry constintly about people trying to cheat to the top) then the best would naturally rise to the top.
Guess that just my little Utopia Internet world...
Ohh yea and my point, crosslinking sites and internal links... I would say the best way is just to keep it simple. After all everybuddy understands simple.
1) Link to others freely, link to yourself carefully.
2) All your sites in the network should also stand on their own.
Bottom line, there are landmines out there that you have to avoid, and I don't think that you are well served by people telling you just to build for users.
I think this is a very important change with Google that now affects everyone, no matter how well rated their site is or was. Half the trick now is to know what not to do as opposed to know what to do, and this avoidance of filters brings the issue to every business on the web, no matter how much they are thinking of users when they design / update the site.
The search engines (not just Google) are at war with the spammers (define spammer as you please), and the battles are getting hotter and there's a lot of collateral damage taking place.
You sure don't want to be the enemy, or look like the enemy, and come up on the SE's radar screen.
But you can make your site squeaky clean and still step on a land mine, or find yourself positioned too close to ground zero on a nuke attack. And friendly fire incidents are on the rise.
These days you need to design for collateral damage. There's going to be casualties, and some of them will be gut-wrenching.
A casualty strategy is just as important as a link strategy.
But you can make your site squeaky clean and still step on a land mine, or find yourself positioned too close to ground zero on a nuke attack. And friendly fire incidents are on the rise.
That's a good reason to have more than one site. If something happens to one site, you still have the other sites. Just don't cross link them unless you're sure you won't be penalized.
The third site will be a Yachts for sale and marine classifieds. All use the same host and there is 1 solitary link between the first two sites. The new site is complimentary to the network but it's new and I want the traffic (The other two are 12 months plus and doing ok) It seems completely reasonable to me to link from my first two sites to the new one. Dare I? (and if I do how many links would seem reasonable?)
