Cross-linking between your own sites

[penny-slot-machines]

Hi

I have eight gambling-related sites, all concentrating on different areas, but is it safe to cross link between them?

At the moment I don't do that, but I think it would be useful for visitors on some occasions.

- Would google see this as an attempt to gain position on the serps and penalise me?

or,

- Would google see them as valuable back-links and improve my rankings?

The sites are all registered under the same company name, all on the same IP - even if I were to change that, the past history of their IP etc would remain the same and that would look dodgy, imo, so I won't be going down that route...

So, what are other people's experiences on linking between your own sites?

Is it a good, valuable thing that could benefit rankings, or would you recommend nofollowing all of the links? Or simply not cross-linking it at all

[elgoog]

a few links can help
but don't overdo it
do not interlink all sites visa versa
be very cautious, especially because they are on the same ip

caution!

[mojo]

Rut Ro. I do this on all of my pages between my sites.

My traffic is good but could it be better if I don't do this?

Good topic.

[casinojack]

Some good questions

At the end of the day, what does Matt Cutts say ?

http://www.seobuzzbox.com/what-matt-cutts-says/

Also, I link my sites together based on graph theory. This might be overkill but in all these years never an issue...

In other words, make sure you don't use a "link wheel" concept, try to be random, but make sure you have a path through the list,....If you like i can later on throw up a diagram to make this click, if you interested,

[robyroy]

Hi

- Would google see this as an attempt to gain position on the serps and penalise me?

Soon or later, yes you will get penaltyes.

[penny-slot-machines]

Cheers for the contributions, much appreciated...

So has anyone here has actually been penalised for cross-linking between a few sites?

I know these things gets mentioned by Matt Cutts et al, but does it turn out to be only of concern to webmasters throwing tens or hundreds of self-made links around?

If nobody has been penalised for this type of thing when it's done on a relatively small scale, then it's possible that it could simply be another of those seo myths

[penny-slot-machines]

If you like i can later on throw up a diagram to make this click, if you interested,

Yes, would be interested in seeing what you mean

Cheers

[elgoog]

So has anyone here has actually been penalised for cross-linking between a few sites?

Yes, a close friend of mine had three sites completely out of the index for over a year because of crosslinking to much

[penny-slot-machines]

Yes, a close friend of mine had three sites completely out of the index for over a year because of crosslinking to much

Out of interest, do you know how many sites and how many links your friend had put up to get penalised?

[pokerextras]

I've totally cross linked my two sites zenrakeback and zenkickback and never once considered that i'd get penalised for it. I don't see how having all the pages on one domain or spread over two domains and linked could be classed as trying to gain anything by google. If anything, i would have thought that spreading your content over two domains would only give you two domains with a lower position than one with all the content on it, so would actually hinder you in the serps, and couldn't be seen as trying to gain an advantage. I only spread my pages on two domains as i couldn't advertise certain networks on the rake domain. I'm no expert though.

[elgoog]

Out of interest, do you know how many sites and how many links your friend had put up to get penalised?

2 sites that interlinked realy a lot

[Chalkie]

I used to link my sites in a big circle but now i got it all confused and my links if mapped out now would like like a spider had walked on the page. Thats probably confuddled google, so not too bothered

Hey, Jack let us in on your secret though, sounds interesting!

[universal4]

There was once a very VERY large affiliate that interlinked their site consitiently....

In fact I remember one group of sites this person owned....was about 30, 40 maybe even more sites....and on the home page of each one was a set of links pointing to the other 30 or 40 or so....

Each of those sites was not huge...and some were one-page-wonders and they all had decent pr....

That person sold their sites some time ago so I do not know if they are all still interlinked or how the pr/traffic is anymore....but that person was very successful....

As a disclaimer I will say thet the person I am referring to had a few hundred sites so not sure if muct traffic came from the interlinked sites or not.

Rick
Universal4

[penny-slot-machines]

2 sites that interlinked realy a lot

That's interesting that it was just two sites. Seems quite extreme to get penalised for that, rather than google not simply ignoring any pr passed-on from them

How did your friend find out it was that cross-linking that caused the penalty? Is it flagged up on the webmaster tools or something like that?

[elgoog]

good questions

It was not comunnicated by google... so not 100% sure this was the reason,
but it is the only thing he did wrong.... as far as he knew

[Chips]

All of mine are cross linked, and the newer sites point to my main site w/o a backlink. Latest update (this month) was very favorable to my main poker portal, and to the new mini I made that points to the main site. I have had my sites cross linked for over a year. They share the same i.p. except for one that is on a dedicated i.p. Who knows what is the "correct" way. All are relevant to each other, my hosting site does not point to any gambling sites nor the gambling to it.

[tobik999]

I linked the sites listed in my signature to each other without any effect to my search engine rankings in google.

[casinojack]

Well, Matt Cutts in a few interview has discussed how they look for patterns of these type of link farms, and mentioned "Graph Theory". This is complex but using basic basic do this.


Ok here goes. This works best n odd numbers over 5. Each link farm or mini net should be a different number. In the attached I made a 7 site sample. note the direct path all the way throough bot not a complete circle. This is illustraed with the red line.

Next try and get each site to have 1 - 2 additonal links

Now at the end , most ofthe link juice should go to site 7. Ste 7 then would go to your main site or blog..

Thats the basics...Make sense?

EDIT: Ps, sorry im on my laptop and no visio...so had to use MS paint...ugly huh ?

[POlka]

A penalty for only two interlinked sites seem really unlikely, iam by no means an expert but ive seen a lot of pretty obvies linkfarms with low content blogs on a much larger scale.

[bbonline]

Choose a site that has a high PR and make it sure that your links are live on their page. Sometimes, if you do link exchange, try to check on the other sites page if you think they deserves a quality backlink.