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Lets say they are of similar theme, but sell completely different products. Like Car Tires for one and Car Batteries for the other.
Would I get in trouble if I interlinked them extensively? (I was just going to place a well-visible text link from one to the other on ever page in a footer). No tricks, not hidden.
Would it help if I hosted with seperate IP's?
Or should I just take it easy on the linkage, and only put it in scattered places here and there where it sounds appropriate? I would rather boost the new sites PR rather quickly if possible, but I don't want to penalize my established site. Thanks.
We can't give guarantees about avoiding Google penalties, but with just two domains I wouldn't worry about linking them together heavily.
I don't see it as spam, since I am not making a "." a link, and it is perfectly visible and meant to drive traffic as well. But if it's the kind of penalty that will give my established site a "life penalty" then perhaps I won't try it.... ?
Wish I had Googleguy to confirm :)
If I did get a penalty, would it be a severe one?
Unfortunately, there's no rule book that says what will and won't give you a penalty and the degree of penalty if you do get one.
I've seen some sites get slapped with what appeared to be a slight penalty which was then removed after the next crawl if the 'bad bit' was removed, while others seem to have vanished from google and show no sign of ever returning.
What you are describing is certainly not spam (I personally think that word is being used way to often now and the meaning of it is being altered over time) but there are dangers in heavy crosslinking between many sites as most of us here have seen one way or another.
only put it in scattered places here and there where it sounds appropriate?
That's what I would do. If I had related sites, I would always try and link them together where appropriate and of benefit to my visitors. If there is a section on your site about red widgets and you have a page on another sites about blue widgets, then I would link them together as my users may be interested in the blue widgets as well.
I think google has scared people in a big way and it is making everyone question how they should build their sites.
Personally, I build and link to sites that my users would be interested in and not worry about what a search engine thinks although it's a fine line if you want to link to a PR0 site!
I think that "artificially trying to inflate your pagerank" would be a better description of any potential problem rather than "spam"
