Cross-linking multiple sites?

How for optimal PR?

[cwebb]

Suppose I have sites on different topics, like about-blue-widgets.com about-red-widgets.com and widget-makers.co.uk and obviously they all have content that might interest visitors.

HOW should I link between those sites to achieve maximum PR for each, right now there is a link from every page to all the other sites' homepage.

PLUS: If I always use the same link, could there be problems with having too much of a specific link text, could the sites be banned if all links have "About red widgets" as link text?

[ciml]

You'll get as much PR as the group of pages get from outside. The link structure can alter which of your pages get more PageRank than others of your pages, but the flow of PR will be just as if you have one big site (assuming that you don't trigger a penalty).

One suggestion though, keep the number of links on each page reasonable. Google suggest this on their pages, and my own experince is that there's a point beyond which some PageRank is lost.

[cwebb]

Well, reasonable, we also link to every subcategory on every page, plus 2 links to our other sites, they use similar layout but have unique content and lots of information.

Thanks anyway...

[tigger]

>keep the number of links on each page reasonable

How many would you say?

[ciml]

I'm not sure tigger, but Google's suggestion of 100 fits my experience.