December 13, 2008 by Simon King
If you have more than one blog, the notion of cross linking between them will most likely have occurred to you at some point. In fact, you may well already be doing it. Perhaps therefore, you were a little bemused when Google started to recommend that you don’t do this, unless the links are actually relevant. A few of our clients are even worried that this behaviour could lead to them getting penalised.
Google hasn’t made clear whether or not they plan to place a negative weighting on cross linking between sites or blogs that are irrelevant to each other. However, it’s often a good idea to take ‘advice’ from Google when it’s offered. You don’t need me to tell you it pays to have them on your side.
The real issue here however, is not actually an SEO one. It’s a question of user experience.
If a user sees a link on a sports blog they enjoy, sooner or later they’re going to click that link because of the blog’s tacit endorsement. When they do, they’ll expect to see a sports related site. If they find themselves at a plumbing supplies blog they’re going to be disappointed and probably annoyed. This will erode their goodwill for the site, which many would argue is as important, if not more important, than PageRank.
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I have 10 blogs and have used cross linking as all of them are relevant to each other and it is working fine with me
Comment by Shabbar Suterwala — March 19, 2009 @ 5:00 am