SEO and Cross-Linking your own sites?

It seems that Google frowns on inter-linking your own sites yet I see many of my competitors who outrank me for good keywords doing just that.

I've been thinking of starting some blogs that would relate directly and indirectly to sites that I already have. My concern is negatively impacting the standings that I now have.

I know a number of you have multiple sites in the same topic areas. How much, if any, inter-linking do you do?

If you start new blogs and link them to your existing sites then this won't in itself cause you any problems. If Google decides your blogs are spam then they might penalize you, but if you maintain them properly this is unlikely.

This is a well known and popular tactic. If you maintain your blogs, the worst that can happen is that Google will discount links from them, but chances are they won't do that, and your blogs will help your ranking.

I always link between multiple sites on the same topic.

Depending on what domains you start blogging. You could create some blogs on wordpress/blogspot; some of them on different domains, hosted on different servers.
If you have original content on them it will be great. Avoid duplicate content and spam.

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Interlinking is a good thing. It is better when you link to your main site from the others (without link back from the main site) but even a cross linking would help in both traffic and seo.

I guess it is not good as getting one way links, but yet it have some value (even links from inside the domain have some value so don't worry about that)

I have several sites directly connected too each other and it seems never be a problem. As anthonyw said create a website with real content or as Google says "Create websites for human"

As long as you keep the sites on different IPs, and make it difficult for anyone to conclusively decide you own them all, there's probably no harm in it.

As long as you keep the sites on different IPs, and make it difficult for anyone to conclusively decide you own them all, there's probably no harm in it.

That makes it more safe, but you have often no chance if you host your sites on a shared hosting account. Google is not really clear with those kind of links, but if the sites are related and the content is unique it should be fine (and don't use too much of them)

EDIT: Google said never it's forbidden to link your own sites

there's no excuse for the IP issue nowadays - not when you can get good hosting for a few bucks a month. For 100 a month, you can get dozens of different IPs. You can also 'autoblog' for free - the free wordpress / blogger-style sites all have different ips too. If you don't know what autoblogging is, there's a free ebook about it at http://www.bloggerhigh.com

getting a good hosting provider is pretty hard these days but thats a different story

I hope the days of autoblogging are coming to an end with the new crackdown by Google on using copyrighted materials for Adsense without permission from the original owner. There have been a number of threads on another forum in the past few days with folks moaning their accounts are in jeopardy or were banned due to this new policy.

I'm working on taking a poor performing site and transitioning it into a blog. It's installed, loaded and has the first few posts but I have yet to change the template to make it uniquely my own.

When I can figure out a great domain for a second blog, I will work on setting that up as well.

Look out world, here comes Michele and her blog empire. lol

I hope the days of autoblogging are coming to an end with the new crackdown by Google on using copyrighted materials for Adsense without permission from the original owner. There have been a number of threads on another forum in the past few days with folks moaning their accounts are in jeopardy or were banned due to this new policy.

I'm working on taking a poor performing site and transitioning it into a blog. It's installed, loaded and has the first few posts but I have yet to change the template to make it uniquely my own.

When I can figure out a great domain for a second blog, I will work on setting that up as well.

Look out world, here comes Michele and her blog empire. lol

totally agree, 'stealing' copyrighted material is just plain wrong. Creating new material based on it is fine, however. As is changing PLR stuff, your own stuff, out-of-copyright stuff, public domain stuff etc etc etc ...

Success Michele!

Wordpress becomes so great these days that it would be a shame to create custom sites at least if you don't need special site features

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind me "butting in", I found this thread during a google search.

Does anyone have any idea whether Google goes by DNS nameservers or IP addresses, or both?  I will be developing a number of blogs, some that have closely related subjects, the general topics will be similar and related, the content on each site will be unique and useful (I'm not trying to falsely inflate pagerank through meaningless links), but I want to have them separate in order to optimize for a single topic, but still have the related sites linked so they can benefit from traffic that's interested in the related topic.

I have two webhosts now, and I've just found a new webhost that allows multiple domains, and they also give you a certain number of dedicated IP addresses, each of which you can assign to a particular domain you're hosting through their plan. 

I think that might be another layer of protection (dedicated IP addresses) against being thought of as link farming, but I'm not sure what Google goes by, the nameservers, IP address, WHOIS, all of the above?  Thanks!

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind me "butting in", I found this thread during a google search.

Does anyone have any idea whether Google goes by DNS nameservers or ISP addresses, or both?  I will be developing a number of blogs, some that have closely related subjects, the general topics will be similar and related, the content on each site will be unique and useful (I'm not trying to falsely inflate pagerank through meaningless links), but I want to have them separate in order to optimize for a single topic, but still have the related sites linked so they can benefit from traffic that's interested in the related topic.

I have two webhosts now, and I've just found a new webhost that allows multiple domains, and they also give you a certain number of dedicated ISP addresses, each of which you can assign to a particular domain you're hosting through their plan. 

I think that might be another layer of protection (dedicated ISP addresses) against being thought of as link farming, but I'm not sure what Google goes by, the nameservers, ISP address, WHOIS, all of the above?  Thanks!

Presumably you mean 'IP' not 'ISP'. Google does use IP address as a factor in its algo

You're right, I meant IP address, no idea why I made that mistake, much less repeatedly.  I fixed it so I won't confuse anyone.

And thanks for the answer!

You're right, I meant IP address, no idea why I made that mistake, much less repeatedly.  I fixed it so I won't confuse anyone.

And thanks for the answer!

well done.

Are you sure it is only inter-linking that's helping your competitors outrank you?

Whatever you do, as far as link building is concerned, Don't make it look suspicious to Google. I mean, build links slowly and steadily.

I was shocked how inter-linked one of my competitors is. Seems like all of their sites should be banned for black hat instead of rewarded. And that's before one considers the terrible content in play and the shady nature of the sites.

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Michelle, I don't think that someone should be penalized for interlinking. They just wont get link weight for those links. Personally I link to almost all my sites in my network, and some of them get site wide links (which are the worst in seo terms) but yet I don't think there is a penalty.

yeah I have sitewide links too (on many sites) and still getting high high listings on Google

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