Linking Your Own Sites

I've been doing web development for close to 10 years and I have quite a few sites. My own and client websites. I was wondering if it would get me anywhere to have them all linked together. I've been told that Google can determine the owner of a domain, even if it is a private registration and they will penalize you for linking to your own sites. Is this true?

 

I believe its based on the IP that your site is hosted on.

There is no penalty unless you have an excessive number of spam sites linking together but there's no benefit either except to get visitors going between your sites.

I link all my sites together and there's been no negative impact. They're all hosted on the same GoDaddy account and share a database that holds all the links they display.

 

If they are related then I see no harm in linking the together.

 

Ahhh well.... The only reason I would want to do it is to boost the PR of the sites on which I am running AdSense. If there is no PR benefit, there is really no reason to do it. I do have sites on multiple webservers, but they are all registered to me.

Cheers

 

The IP address doesn't really matter. Matt Cutts shot that myth down on his blog some time since. Links between sites on the same box (with the same IP) are apparently treated no differently than links between sites situated on different boxes (on separate IP address spaces.) I'll try to find the link to Cutts's remarks on this, but I have posted it elsewhere on this forum if you feel like running a search

 

If they aren't related, it's not worth the risk. Boosting PR is purely a link scheme to improve your ranking... which according to Google, it goes against their guidelines. This may help you short term but is not a practical long term solution.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

I would focus on getting outside links from other related websites you don't own.

Good luck!

 

TGW ~ Thanks for the tip. I'd appreciate the link to the Cutts article if you find it.

TonyHill ~ Some of the sites are related. They are vacation rentals sites. They are for different geographic locations, but all deal with vacation rental property. Some rank better than others and I 'd like to average the lower ranking sites out with relevant, related links. They just happen to be other sites I own.

Cheers

 

I don't think linking all your sites together is a link scheme per se. All of my sites are linked together and I've never seen any negative effects. I've actually had new sites go from PR0 to PR4 with no links other than ones from my network.

 

Here you go...

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/

 

I would say that interlinking should be a natural idea or thought. Not one based upon PR and ranking your site.

Though I have to say that linking those related site would make sense. It provides more options to your users... Say they were interested in a rental in Destin, FL but saw a link about rentals in Lake Tahoe that may sound more appealing.. or they know friends or family who may be interested and live near the area.

Just don't link your free games website with your Lake Tahoe site.. because your users aren't looking for free games.

Hope that helps bit!

 

The other reason for interlinking is that it helps get the search engines to index your new sites.

 

Thanks for the feedback. The general consensus seems to be that it might not help, but it can't hurt as long as the sites are related. I will run a test and link some of the higher ranked sites to a PR2 site and see if there is any improvement. Should I use 1-way links or reciporical?

Cheers

 

Recporical links get no bonus for you. You need to do 1-way if you want even a chance at a PR boost.

 

I have a network of over 100+ sites (all related) no negative effects that iv yet to see - and some are over 1 yr + - all interlinked and enjoying traffic and PR!

 

this is an seo question, you've posted it in the wrong forum.

there is no correct answer to this question, because you haven't give enough details... for instance, do you want to put up a 1,000 duplicate links on all 1,000 of your pages? or are you talking about 1,000 duplicate links on only one page from every site? or 50 duplicate links on only one page from every site? on the index page or a dedicated links page? etc.

duplicate links that are not the slightest bit relevant to each other probably won't help with p.r., and you should take notice that google has been cracking down on link schemes in general lately.

 

Thanks for the info!

Danimal - I suppose you're correct. I asked this question in light of an AdSense campaign I just kicked off and thought it relevant. My plan is to include a footer on my higher PR sites, linking to the lower PR ones. In light of KalvinB's advice, they would be one way links. What's your opinion (from and AdSense perspective)?

 

i would say that there is no relationship between adsense publisher income and google p.r. standings in the search engine.

however, some people believe that higher p.r. will increase your google search engine rankings, so in theory you might get more adsense clicks if you linked your sites together, because you'd be getting more search traffic from the higher p.r.

if you gotta do it, one-way links are probably the best choice... but would links to unrelevant sites affect the ranking of the site that is doing the linking? i have a lot of legacy interlinking that i wish i had never done.

 

I don`t believe that linking your sites together will do some harm...

 

I can do link exchange with you in a way of 3 -way linking, I own few vacation rental sites.

 

I guess it works for Ebay. They link all their properties together at the footer and they are not "nofollow" links. Of course we don't have the benefit of their popularity. The sites they link to are unrelated, but their sites that link back are more related. I guess they don't depend on G for most of the traffic.