Hello Everyone, I have a few sites, and some are kinda like others, meaning a visitor of one, might be interested in services of another. I wanted to advertise my other sites from older sites, but I wondered if this could cause the dreaded 'cross-linked penalty'. So, should I not worry about the penalty, and cross advertise? Does using the 'nofollow' attribute prevent being flagged as a 'cross linker' by search engines? Your insight, and experiences is appreciated. tom
I found myself in the same boat. My approach is that seperate and unique content and not going over-board with the linking means you are fine, and I've found that they are also counting as backlinks with Google.
If the links are related then you will be fine. Maybe try to avoid clustering external links together and don't put sitewide external links in the footer.
And I think the crosslinking penalty would be lower if you host the sites on different C-class IPs (more natural).
Funny you mention that, I was just researching the same thing this morning. There doesn't seem to be a consensus from what I can tell. Some people say that if you have enough links from sources outside your network-links, you'll be fine. Others say it's all about how closely they are related. It's probably a combination of relevance, % of total links, and a few other factors.
why not use a really small flash flile with a link of your other site - search engine won't be able to read that link and still your visitors can go to your other sites.
If the sites are somewhat related you shouldn't have a problem. Just try and avoid doing it too excessively.