Correct themed crosslinking

Crosslinking on them, without penalization

[nuevojefe]

We have sites that have similar content, in terms of what the bots see, but what humans see make the content quite different.

Each of the sites has different categories, if someone deosn't like for instance, category 1 on site a they may like category 1 on site b.

Both categories are the same, say black cats, but one is fat black cats the other is ugly black cats.

There are multiple instances of this throughout each site.

My question lies here: clearly it is link spamming to have every page of every site link back to every sites' homepage. 1. But how many inner links to the other site's similar inner pages can be allowed?

2.I mean, is there a certain number of back and forth links that will trip the wire, and more specifically do you think they are counted by URL or domain?

3.Would just one link for each homepage to all the other homepages set it off?

4.What if the the main site links once to each child site, but each child site links a lot to the main site but not to each other. It's still somewhat of a circle, right?

[rogerd]

Nuevojefe, there's no specific rule to follow for acceptable crosslinking. An "all-to-all" linking arrangement is usually considered particularly risky, though.

Consider a pyramidal linking structure with your most important domain at the top of the pyramid as one option. Or perhaps limited crosslinking as might occur naturally on the web.

The most important thing you can do, IMO, is get good, independent links to each domain. The better linked the individual domains are from outside your circle, the less likely you are to have a problem.

[nuevojefe]

RogerD,

Thanks, good suggestion.