Here's my example linking scheme: Let's say I have a PR6 site and I need to build strong related links for my new logo design site "x". I create four new logo design sites (each with some unique content and hosted on a different server C class IP). I possibly manage to make them all PR5, as I will link them from my PR6 site. Then I will link from each of these satellite sites to my new logo design site and I should have four logo design PR5 related links. Can this work? Or will Google penalize my sites for such cross linking? Note: Each one of these 6 sites is hosted on a different server C class IP.
Well, C classes are just one aspect of what Google uses to establish linking patterns. I'd say other issues such as link placement, anchor texts, destinations (deep or homepage) and frequency play just as much of a role. I mean if you have enough time and resources to build 4 or 5 highly unique sites and are willing to put in even more effort to boost them to the kind of PR's your talking about then go for it. Personally I think I'd take a different approach - I'd rather invest that time and effort in adding content to your main logo design site which in turn will make the link building for that site a lot easier, plus Google and actual users will value one big, well structured site a lot more than a network of small sites. What worries me as well isn't really the fact that your wanting to go for a small network but the fact that your trying to hide it from Google, if you look at it from the reverse I think that would probably let you end up in more trouble than anything else. Perhaps a more effective approach to get related content sites pointing at your main page (aside from the usual link building) is to develop hubpages/lenses on sites like hubpages.com and squidoo.com. Here you have the advantage that there's already a huge userbase and if your pages are well done then aside from having keyword relevant content pointing to your main page you'll also end up getting traffic out of it. To give you an idea of where I'm coming from with all this - I work for an SEO company and we've got a client for whom we developed a large numbers of sites, similar to the network you describe just bigger. Our idea at the beginning was to not make the interlinking of these sites to obvious either, but to really achieve that in itself would've taken a huge amount of time and effort - and for what. Our sites are unique, related by content and linking is done when and where it makes sense. The only trouble we face is that upkeep and adding of content to that many sites is a real pain, nevermind getting them ranking well and if we had to do it over we probably would've pushed the client to consolidate a lot of the smaller sites into big ones. And we do use squidoo and hubpages ourselves as well, both can work well if what you put up is solid. Hope that helps, Regards, -CP-
Why not just link directly to site "x" from your PR6 ? Is the PR6 site already dominating the serps ? If it is I could understand your reasons for wanting to do this. Otherwise I kind of agree with Cyberpunked that your efforts are better spent elsewhere.