Linking strategy between two related sites

Danger of being penalized for cross-linking?

[crom84]

Hi, I have a question about linking and having two web sites.

One site is for life insurance, and the other site does health insurance, employee benefits, travel medical, disability, critical illness and hybrid insurance. Note that both sites are hosted with the same provider; I think they come from the same IP block.

Quite a long time ago we decided to use two web sites since we do so many different insurance types, and getting all of that content into one site would result in a very, very busy site.

I have done quite a bit of reading about cross-linking and its dangers.

Both sites have main navigation menus along the top. Ideally, I would like to have each site link to the other via the main navigation menus. Of course this means that every page of both sites will be linking to the other site.

This would be very useful for end-users, who may end up at one site and then decide they also want to get quotes from the other site.

If I do this then do I risk being penalized? Our rankings are extremely important to us, and I cannot take the chance of being penalized. I’ve thought of trying to hide the links from the search engines, but I am uncomfortable doing this since I have always strived to follow the best practices as stated by Google, etc. I believe in white hat SEO, and getting good results by creating great content, etc.

Thoughts and input?

[cnvi]

Assuming that both are quality sites with plenty of original (and not turnkey) content, yes you can link the sites with no risk of penalities.

[crom84]

Thanks for the reply Cnvi :) Both sites have lots of original content, and no duplicate content at all.

[buckworks]

Something I'd add to Cnvi's specs would be to ask whether each site has plenty of independent, quality backlinks.

I can't prove this, but I'm convinced that the stronger the overall link profile for the sites in question, the wider your margins of safety for crosslinking between your own sites.

In my observations, crosslinking between sites does not seem to cause problems unless:
- it's overdone (example: stuffing the footers with crosslinks), and
- the sites don't have much else for backlinks

[crom84]

Both sites have lots of backlinks :)

Hmmm ... i think I will make these changes soon, and just monitor the rankings at both sites closely.

[nealrodriguez]

In my observations, crosslinking between sites does not seem to cause problems unless:
- it's overdone (example: stuffing the footers with crosslinks)

big g's take = no link schemes:

Examples of link schemes can include:

* Links intended to manipulate PageRank
* Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
* Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")

[google.com...]

just don't get excessive.