I have many sites but they are all about totally different things. My question is.... is it affective if i link my sites together even though they are not related? For example, if a paid posting site links a myspace site.... does the myspace site benefit?
if your content is unique and cool, you'll have NO problem into linking to serious high-PR sites. most of my sites are in DMOZ and Yahoo directory for example. it takes some time but been there done that. after all the time it takes to spam non-related trash is not much less than the link-building you need to get 1000-2000 uniques/day.
by opposite, some of my competitors are linked by About.com how the hell can i even contact about.com ?? there seems to be no way, and they keep linking ugly sites from 6-7 yrs ago but yet they rank always in the top 10 in the SE.
If you have a new site and don't get many links - but the links are quality, on-topic links - you'll get a reasonable flow of traffic from Google but nothing from MSN. If you get a large number of unrelated links, you'll get no traffic from Google but MSN will love you.
Seems like it is a game of balance there. I personally get myself linked from directories and if possible, websites of the same genre or at least remotely related. The non related links are usually those of the advertisers.
Relevant links are the best. There will always be non-relevant links on your site due to the nature of the internet, but you want to focus on having relevant links on your site and then getting links from other relevant sites.
..and more specifically, how trusted in Google is the site for the industry that you are dealing with...other SE's are less finicky, but Google seems to like industry related or relateable links. The more that you get off into the fringes, the less value the links seem to have IMHO. Eric
Yes if some of you are sites are new and some are old then cross linking them can help you in geting in indexed quicker. Akash Kumar
Get many links to unrelated sites and Google will punish you. You could even end up banned eventually for linking to unrelated content. Warkot
Getting banned will be too serious and I doubt such a case will happen. Many natural links are somewhat unrelated so they help but are not as effective as the links that are related to your website.