How many links is too many?

If I run 20+ websites, will I be penalized sticking an affiliates section at the bottom of each page of each site interlinking all of the sites?

The 20 sites make up 5 topics.. Entertainment, Forums, Hosting, Sport, Social

The sites range from PR0 to PR6

Most of the sites dont have many outgoing links already, just within the site.

 

Can't answer the main question, but...

...You could play it safe and make 5 mini-networks each with 4-5 sites.

-Choose one 'lead site' for each network, and link the 5 networks together.
-Every site gets at least 4-5 outbound links (to every other site in its mini-network).

This way your niches all turn into networks

 

Its okey i guess,, it you dont link farm.. than it can not hurt

 

First of all, pagerank on your site doesn't matter, Period!

Second, the interlinking is not a problem if the sites are related to the topics. But its hard to say without seeing how you are planning to do this.

 

Sitewide external links will give your site a penalty. Put the links in the content area instead.

 

I doubt sitewide external links will give it a penalty.

Some of the biggest websites have site-wide external links (A lot of them unrelated):

Most blogs
Most forums
ezinearticles.com
Myspace
Yahoo

 

SO lets say that I have 20 sites about proxy servers. Each site contains proxys from a specific country. If I place into each of my site links to the other 19 links would it be a penalty? lets say i have sites: usproxy canadaproxy englandproxy franceproxy etc..(20 proxy sites)

 

For some reason, the "big boys" get around the rules that we have to live by.

 

If your sites are hosted on the same server, or C-Block, then no do NOT do it.

Also, stay away from sitewide links - they are growing more and more detrimental to SERPs. I've been there.

 

yahoo doesn't have sitewide external links, does it?
Blogs don't get a penalty for them, because it's their standard format.

In general though, even there, links that count will be on blogs that are in your niche.

 

Most certainly they do however larger sites like Yahoo are not worried about SERP results.

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To the OP and others

Sitewide links to your own sites or any other sites are discounted to 1 link of value.

Google may seem stupid but they're not.....

Also do not forget a majority of the people in forums post things due to their one lone contact with something.....unless someone has years of experience across many different niches you should take their advice with a grain of salt.

 

This is speculation. Google has never said this nor has it been directly proven, either. People suggest it. Nothing else.

I suggest someone go make 10 sites, cross link them all together with footer links, and see what happens. Nothing good, I assure you

 

You just stated nothing good would happen by building sitewide links, but immediately prior said I was speculating.

It really is nothing more than common sense but since that seems to be lacking here at DP lets try something that will make sense and prove there is little speculation

Try to boost a website of yours in the Google SERPS with sitewides for two word keyword terms that people actually search for.

After this fails I am sure the speculation will be found to be valid.

 

Can you provide me a link to google.com tos or help system from google site where it is saying that reciprocal links are not good?

 

No nobody can ...it comes from years of experience, watching SERPS and building links in many categories and testing.

Besides I think this discussion in on sitewide links and not recips..

Lastly the search engine will not tell you what is fact, as to do so would be like handing over the keys to the bank vault and that is never going to happen. Hell they don't tell their blog puppets all of the formula... LOL

 

You are agreeing with me, but disagreeing in the same post. Weird. Ah well.

You suggest that a sitewide is discounted to a single link. My point is that there is no evidence to suggest this. This is the speculation that I refer to. I am not contradicting myself at all.

But (my next point) is that cross linking 10 sites with footers will hurt you, not help you. I think we both agree on this. There is evidence to support this, and I agree. While not 100% proven, enough evidence is out there to say "crosslinking - bad"

 

So my best bet is to use 5 sets of the affiliate links per niche? then use my main PR6 domain to point to all of them to maintain the higher PR link anchor and to keep them being crawled?

 

Not sure what you mean. Any interlinking outside of the content area is bad.

 

I don't mean to be stubborn here, but I looked at the yahoo homepage and all I see are internal links.

In general: any link that would make sense to a human isn't a problem. I would never go with 20 sitewides, mainly because it just doesn't look right. Have one central page on each topic that each page on that topic links to. On your 'about' page you can link to all 20 - on each site. The central page per topic should link to each site on that topic that you've got.

 

I mean.. my 5 myspace sites will all have links to each other on the bottom, and the same for the other 4 niche

then I will use my highest rated PR6 site, and have links pointing to each of the other 20 sites to show they are trusted and valued? as well it will keep them getting indexed faster and more