Should I link from my PR7 site to my PR2 site?

My PR7 site is completely irrelevant to the PR2 site.

[martingale]

I have a site that has been around a long time with real content and a lot of legitimate links that is now PR7; it is the homepage for a software product that has not been actively developed in a few years.

I am developing a new site in a completely unrelated field, nothing whatever to do with software in any way. I have a PR2 at the moment, the site has been around just a few months. I am just setting out to start trying to build links and traffic to this new site.

Should I put a link on the PR7 site to the PR2 site, even though they are absolutely unrelated? Will it hurt the PR on the PR7 site? Will the link from an irrelevant page actually help the PR2 site?

[martingale]

What if I make the link look like an ad or something, "Sponsored by X" or some such? The thing is readers of the old site still aren't going to care even if it's a "sponsor" but at least then it wouldn't look totally wacko.

[phantombookman]

I just add staright forward links in between all my sites with no problem at all, obviously only one link to a site.

Your PR2 may go PR6, certainly PR5

[kaled]

A link with relevant anchor text would be sensible. Linking back (from PR2 to PR7) is probably a waste of time.

Since the other site is unrelated, placing a border around it and adding a small graphic would be sensible to ensure users are not confused. I would also use a different link style i.e. hover, etc.

Kaled.

[steveb]

They are "related".
They are yours.
That is a legitimate reason to link them.
That is also a legitimate reason for Google to consider taking the link less seriously.

[rfgdxm1]

>What if I make the link look like an ad or something, "Sponsored by X" or some such? The thing is readers of the old site still aren't going to care even if it's a "sponsor" but at least then it wouldn't look totally wacko.

I'd say better to have a "please visit our other sites" and then a link. "Sponsored by X" would make it look more like you are selling PR. It is perfectly natural for a webmaster to link to his other sites. Self-promotion. Even if the sites are unrelated, someone visiting site A may also have an interest in what you have on site B. Look at it this way: if Google didn't exist, wouldn't webmasters naturally link to their other sites?

[julinho]

Maybe you could try to make the pages more related.

You want to link a PR7 site about widgets to a PR2 site about gadgets. Create a page on the latter describing, e.g., how many gadget boxes fit in a widget, or which widgets are best to eat with gadgets, or whatever relationship may exist between widgets and gadgets; put "widgets" and "gadgets" on Title, bolds, etc.
Then, link from the widgets page to the gadgets page, and from the gadgets page, link (with relevant anchor text) to the other pages in the gadgets site.

[siteseo]

Be careful about "artificially" inflating your PR. To me it makes more sense to have one master site from which you link to all your other sites with a one-way link. IF some of your other sites have a natural relationship with other sites, by all means link them. But don't interlink all your sites just to inflate your PR. If you have plenty of IBL's from sites you don't control, you'll get crawled frequently anyway, so interlinking your sites won't have much benefit.

I like julinho's suggestion, too. Use your 7 to boost your 2 page - and any others you might have as well.

[itisgene]

Link directly from PR7 home page to PR2 Home page. As suggested by others, one way link is way to go. I also agree that it is "related" because they are yours. Just think about the Anchor texts carefully so that it doesn't confuse people and search engines. Sub pages will have less than PR7. Linking from sub pages is waste of time.

[martingale]

I've done it. Cleverly, I posted a little note on the PR7 site's homepage talking about how the PR7 site's software could be useful even in the operation of a business like the PR2 site. It was a massive, massive stretch, but at least it has some context and doesn't look totally stupid.

I have firefox with the PageRank plugin, which is very convenient for seeing which pages have what PR. The PR7 site is odd. The main page has PR7. Most internal pages have PR0, but a few have PR5 or PR6. I find that really odd. You'd think that the links from the main page would pull those other internals up to at least PR1 or PR2. There's no robots.txt, and the pages aren't dynamic (well they don't look it, static structure).

It's not a big deal, the site gets lots of traffic through the main page, but I find it odd the PR didn't diffuse through the site a bit.