Linking a Network of Websites

[the goat]

I don't think I quite have my head around how to do this and get the most out of it so I figured I'd get some discussion going on it.

I have quite a few sites, a handful are PR 3-5 but the majority are 2 or less. Is it smarter to link the higher ranked sites to each other, or to use the higher ranked sites to try and boost the lower ranked?

Also, I never do reciprocal linking within my network, but I have also heard that creating a daisy chain is not good either. Am I right in my assumption that as long as you don't complete a circle when linking, meaning you always have a dead end somewhere you are OK?

I hope that all made a little bit of sense.

[billbenson]

If all the sites are on the same shared server or have the same whois information, G is going to know you are linking to yourself. I've seen people put sites in family or friends names and use multiple hosts for interlinking. Getting a circle of webmasters in similar industries is also a good approach. A couple of links is fine, but I wouldn't go crazy with it.

I definitely wouldn't do the daisy chain circle.

[vangogh]

I don't think it's that hard for search engines to figure out what you're doing. I'm sure there are those who know enough to get away with it for a time, but if you want to try you should be prepared to burn your sites in the process.

What would make more sense is to link the sites where it makes sense to link them. Don't worry about PR (you shouldn't be worrying about that anyway). If you have one site that sells shoes and another that sells socks it makes perfect sense to link them. A search engine shouldn't have a problem with that.

But if the only reason your linking them together is for the PR boost then a search engine isn't going to want to count those links and as soon as they figure out the chain you could expect the links to be worthless at best and your sites to be banned at worst.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have seen companies that own 5 or 6 sites link to all of them in the footer of each and still come out with a PR 5 and 6. Mind you they are all related in niche and industry.
Nightclub companies do this all the time.
I also do it. I link all my music sites, and sites that sell electronics together.

The way that I do it with sites that are not related is an anchor text link in the content.

I don't know if this will work for you, but it's how I link my sites together.

First I have 2 blogs that are sort of current event type blogs. I set myself up as different authors in those with link back to the related site, so, for instance...someone will send me an article about a music artist that doesn't exactly fit into my dance music blog, but I will post it on my Political blog under the "entertainment " category, an use the 124bpms.com author as the contributor. Same with the diet site, I make imixes for people to download from itunes of work out music, and those are submitted by 124bpms.com.

Most of my sites are on the same server, but different IP addresses, and I don't randomly link to unrelated sites, not even in the blog roll.

I also sponsor one site with another as the main advertiser and they are also related.

It's not as blatant as putting links to all of your sites in all of the footers, and it still may be considered some sort of link chain, but I have never seen much of a problem and any site that I have spend time on, still gets what I put into it.

My biggest problem is I hate setting up link exchanges with webmasters that I don't know because most of them are scammers. They will leave your link up long enough for you to see it, and weeks later they will remove it, while you still have a link to their site up.

You can pick up links in a lot of ways, articles, directories, press releases, etc.

I worry more about ranking for keywords and phrases than I do PR

I have heard many people say that you shouldn't link to your own sites, but when you look around at larger companies, all they do is link to their own sites.

Of course I have some sites that don't link to any others that I own. I say if it's related, do it.

[vangogh]

I don't think there's anything wrong with interlinking sites, but I do think you have to be careful about overdoing it. If the site are related and it makes sense to link them go ahead. I don't see a problem there. But if it's just a scheme to increase PR then you're probably better off not trying to manipulate things.

It's also questionable how much of an effect side wide links have in general.

[the goat]

That makes me feel better then. I only link sites that would want links with each other even if I didn't own them. I am certainly not in the neighborhood of manipulating top five rankings for big keywords or anything.

I hear a lot about how backlinks are worthless, but I have had sites with thousands of uniques a month be PR1 and then I'll put up a link from one of my higher ranked sites and they will jump right to 3.

I know pagerank doesn't translate into sales or conversions but here and there I will sell off a site I get bored of and people love to see that pagerank.

[orion_joel]

The main extent of my interlinking of sites, is to just throw an occasional post mentioning a post that i made on one of my other blogs. Mostly if i write something that is more relevant to one, but has some implications on the other as well. For example if i wrote a post about starting a business blog, on my blog, i may go and do a short post mentioning it on No Fixed Office, because it is relevant to both sites, but i do not want to flat out duplicate the content.

Also i have been thinking of having one site that i have as like a master site for all my sites, where i have different details about all the sites and then link to them all, this would probably be more a benefit if i was going to start offering services in setting sites up for other people though, not to sure.

[vangogh]

goat, PR is definitely a product of links. It's a measure of the PR of the links pointing to you and the way the formula works one high PR link could raise your PR a good amount. The more PR you have the hard it will be to go up a little more.

But what we all see in the green bar isn't the true PR that Google is using behind the scenes. And how much PR plays a part in where a page ranks is uncertain. It likely plays a part, but that part has diminished over the years.

[billbenson]

Goat, I just don't run accross anybody anymore that pays attention to PR. Maybe some people buying sites do, but I would certainly look at things like traffic, conversions, popular keywords, optimization, who's linking to the site (are the inbound links spam), etc. if I were to buy a site. PR is about the last thing I would look at.

Joel, if you are going to have a central site and a bunch of other sites interlinked, do some searches for hub sites. There are some pretty elaborate schemes, but it's not really something I would spend my time doing. Might get you in trouble as well. Now if its your corporate site linking to a bunch of more targeted sites it may make sense and be fairly easy. Allows you to optimize the individual sites as well. Get a keyword or two in the url perhaps.

[orion_joel]

The second thing that you mention is more what i am looking to do, have my business site setup and link in all the sites, more like a this is what the business does, and here are all the examples of how we do it. So was considering the central site more from a business point of view then a search engine marketing point of view.

The reason i would do this is because at some point i would like to start doing more sites for other people, but i need to refine my skills which i will do with my own sites first.