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First post, so please be nice :)
The company I work for runs a number of ecommerce sites. All are mainly different, with a little bit of shared content across a couple.
There is no linking between the ecommerce sites. However on each page of the sites there is a link to the company's main corporate site which does link back to the ecom sites from a directory page.
Would this be considered as crosslinking? I am concerned about penalties we may incur as I have taken on the responsibility recently of search engine marketing and it seems a little more complex than i first thought :)
Pardon me if this question has been answered before, I have tried the site search but I cannot find an answer to this specific question, if it has been answered before would you be so kind as to tell me where to find the answer.
Many thanks in advance
There are also many variables to consider - a huge site that has been established for a long time can probably get away with more cross linking than a small brand new site.
I am sure somebody can tell you what they think the threshold is but be warned some Google penalties are hard to lift once they are triggered.
[google.com...] is a good thing to study closely and keep returning for newly added information.
Like Brad said, no one knows with any exactness what makes or breaks the camel. But what you describe doesn't really seem to be a problem to me. And I'm one who inadvertently did something to get dropped! The only difficulty I had getting things corrected, by the way, was in actually getting to someone at Google who could tell me how we erred so we could correc it.
I hope some day Google finds a way to be able to offer an avenue for re-evaluation and reinstatement. I know this would open up a huge flood of emails, but it would be good for those who are just wanting to do things right to not be left in limbo being penalized with the spammers we all wish would not cause these problems for everyone.
I never had any problems with either sites for over 5 months. Took the links off in the end for other reasons.
Craig
What you're describing is a very common "hub and spoke" model of linking, and is generally fairly safe.
Cross linking penalties are usually dealt out to multiple sites which do extensive interlinking on multiple pages to many other sites within their own network. (spoke to spoke as well as hub to spoke)
The primary risk in what you described would be if there are very few inbound links to your sites from outside sources. This can create a "closed loop" which could be easily flagged by filters as a potential trouble spot.
The more inbound links you acquire from quality sites outside your network, the safer you'll be.
we do have links in to all our sites from all the major directories etc.
also our corporate site has a few external links. so i hope that we are safe.
one final question: in this "hub & spoke" model, do you think that it matters how many spokes you have? we have close to ten and are planning up to twenty. and is it a problem with having crossover content across these spokes?
thanks again
