20 replies to this topic

[LarryB713]

I was told by an SEO "expert" (not on this forum, by the way) that linking to sites that are unrelated to mine may get my site penalized by the search engines. Is there any truth in this? For example, I own several sites that are involved in unrelated businesses. I would like to link to all the rest from each site, especially from the older ones having a high page rank to the new ones that have not been indexed yet. But if I link from a used car site to a dress shop, is the used car site penalized?

[Jill]

The answer is that it depends.

People who buy dresses also buy cars, so they are not completely unrelated since the target audience might have some crossover.

However, how do you plan to integrate the link into the site so that it will make sense to the site visitors? If you have a way of doing that, then it's fine because that's all that matters.

But if you're just sticking the link at the bottom of the page, or worse, hiding it, then it's not going to provide you with any value either from the search engines nor from clickthroughs by interested users.

Hope this helps. It's really all common sense. Just think that way and you'll make the right decisions.

[LarryB713]

Thanks, Jill. In my case, I am stating on each page in the site that our parent company, xyz, inc., is developing new sites at www.domain1.com and at www.domain2.com, and have a click-through inviting our visitors to go there. In the future, we may put a blurb on each page saying "xyx, inc.'s other sites" and take the visitor to a page listing our other businesses with a brief description of each and click-throughs. My common sense tells me that this is not a problem. Do you agree?

Edited by Jill, 12 February 2007 - 07:06 PM.
removed large quote of text from previous post

[Randy]

No problem at all with that Larry.

If you always make sure what you're planning to do makes sense for real people you'll always be okay with the engines. No matter what some expert may say.

[bullet_prove]

yup..that right..Even i never get my site link with the unrelated site..but the same issues quite scary for me.

[Michael Martinez]

It's not what you link to that gets you in trouble, it's who you link to. There are sites about gambling and casinos that are perfectly interesting, informative sites. You can pretty much link to them. There are other sites about casinos and gambling that are spammed out (or were until a recent change in U.S. law concerning online gambling) and linking to them made your site appear to be spam-related.

Basically, if a search engine has designated a group of Web sites to be a "bad neighborhood", and if all or most of your outbound links appear to point to one or more bad neighborhoods, you are literally associating your content with bad neighborhoods.

So what would you expect the search engines to assume, except that your site is unworthy as well?

[Christopher]

That is not always true, there is a little penalty for every link that is given in terms of PR but if they are relevant then it can improve you in other ways. It's a give and take basically if you can avoid unrelated links that is good but a few won't kill you either.

[Michael Martinez]

That is not always true, there is a little penalty for every link that is given in terms of PR

There most certainly is not.

[Jill]

That is not always true, there is a little penalty for every link that is given in terms of PR but if they are relevant then it can improve you in other ways. It's a give and take basically if you can avoid unrelated links that is good but a few won't kill you either.

Huh?

[Christopher]

My understanding on this is that when you link to other sites you do pass your PR onto those sites... which I'm sure everybody is aware of here... but additionally it was my understanding that you also LOST a little PR or you had the potential to lose some with each out going link, however judging by the reactions.. I might be WAY off on that one.

[Jill]

but additionally it was my understanding that you also LOST a little PR or you had the potential to lose some with each out going link, however judging by the reactions.. I might be WAY off on that one.

Yes, you are definitely off on that.

[Randy]

ahhh... The old PR Leakage Myth raises its ugly head again.

[Michael Martinez]

Passing PageRank to other pages takes nothing away from your own.

[jehochman]

My highest PR site has a large number of external links. It doesn't seem to hurt. In fact, all those useful links are a good reason for people to link to our site.

[Christopher]

Well like Randy said.. it was a Myth and it has been throughly debunked at this point.. hey learn something new everyday... this certainly changes my opinion on a lot of linking practices I have had over the past 6 months.