Good/Bad: Making your own web of links

[villan]

I currently have 5 sites and am thinking about building link pop via a footer with link to each other site. This would be on everypage and use quality anchor text. I'm not so much worried about a temporary sandbox, but are there any other factors I should be looking into? Should I change up the anchor text from site to site? Right now everything is hosted on a dedicated server I run, virtual hosts on the same ip. Will Goog think something is up with everything being on one ip? I have 5 others I could use, but dont want to set it up unless neccessary.

[caine]

why would you want to link every single page to every single page? Is it going to increase traffic?

[villan]

Sorry maybe I didnt explain it correctly. Everypage would have a set of links to the other domains in my network, not every other page.

[martinibuster]

>>>are there any other factors I should be looking into?

Yes. Heavy interlinking = :(

Has been bad news for many years. Take a look at this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[fourstardragon]

Hello villan.
"Everypage would have a set of links to the other domains in my network, not every other page."
I think you would be playing with fire. You could easily get penalized in Yahoo and Google. So I don't reinvent the wheel, search this forum for "cross linking." I just did and found several useful threads. HTH.

[Crush]

We had a set of 5 sites all doing great until they got a penalty. What it taught me is to promote indepedently. That way you lose 1 site at a time not 5 all at once.

[Chad]

Hi Villan,

Don't cross-link between your sites - especially if you have many pages. I recently lost a popular PR8 site this way. It's a painfully effective way to flush six month's work down the drain.

If you must cross-link for organic traffic then perhaps cloak your links with Javascript to hide them from the grumpy Googlebot.

- Chad

[JohnieWalker]

If all five are somewhat related, I see no problem interlinking them all together.

If the only thing related is that they have the same owner keep them independent.

if you're risking with some illegal gimmicks on one of them - host them on different ip blocks.

[martinibuster]

...if you're risking with some illegal gimmicks on one of them - host them on different ip blocks.

No. Different ip blocks won't save your hide. If you have five websites, develop unique backlinks for each of them before interlinking.

[Small Website Guy]

If you have five websites, develop unique backlinks for each of them before interlinking.

Is that really what will keep you from getting a penalty? Make sure each interlinked website has backlinks from independent sources from outside you're network?

There have been many posts about interlinking, but no clear advice on how much interlinking is too much. Certainly I see interlinked sites show up in the SERPs all the time.

The thread that was linked to involved a guy who made 70 duplicate copies of one site and had all seventy sites having seventy links on each page pointing to the homepage of each of his 70 sites. That's a pretty extreme example. What happens with more moderate interlinking?

illegal gimmicks

Illegal is the wrong word to use because you're not violating any laws by interlinking websites. You're just doing something that Google's algorithm doesn't like.

We had a set of 5 sites all doing great until they got a penalty.

Did any of the 5 sites have their own independent backlinks? Did every page of all 5 sites have links to the homepage of the other four sites? Did the sites contain any duplicate content?

[rmjvol]

In general, the more natural, independent links that a site has, the less likelihood of a penalty.

And unless there is some obvious, non-SEO reason to link them extensively, I'd generally only have a few links back & forth. Certainly not a common crosslinking navigation element on all sites.

Natural links are the way to go unless you only care about short term results. If that's the case, go ahead & try the heavy crosslinking, it may very well work for a while.

[chrisnrae]

Cross linking is not to be done by the inexperienced. It is a risky SEO strategy. Between them being on the sam IP and owned by the same person, you run a risk of getting caught. Add to that the spam reporters as well.

If the sites are all unrelated, then there is no natural reason to link them, even if they weren't all owned by the same person and on the same IP. If they're too related, you've created a map.

They'll still need backlinks from outside sources - and if you get them all the same set of backlinks from those outside sources, even bigger flags.

But, it depends on your objective with the sites. If it is longevity, don't do it. If they are disposable domains, then you could give it a shot, just study up a bit more on A: the risks and B: sites you see doing it effectively that have been a long time.