Good afternoon,

NEWBIE here. ;)

I'm considering paying to submit my largest site to Yahoo's Directory, but before I do, I want to make sure that I'm not going to be bounced/penalized for interlinking sites (and also I'm concerned that this may have an effect on my Google placements).

I've done some reading here, and while there seems to be an agreement that interlinking *may* get you penalized by certain SEs, there doesn't seem to be consensus as to what level of interlinking goes "beyond the bar."

I have four web sites that are interlinked:

www.heavyharmonies.com
www.progaholic.com
www.brutalmetal.com
www.heavensmetal.com

While the sites share similar structures, they are each devoted to different genres of music and have different color schemes, graphics, etc. However, they are similar in that they are all music sites.

The extent of the interlinking is the bar across the top of each page that allows people to easily bounce back and forth amongst the sites.

The domains are hosted on the same hosting account.

Is this level of interlinking considered "bad" and will it cause problems for me with the various search engines?

If I were starting over from scratch, I probably would make it all one site with different templates for each genre, but the different sites were created at different times over the years, and I actually like having the different domain names.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions/advice/critique. :)

will it cause problems for me with the various search engines
Yes, it will cause ranking issues and problems. It's best to only inter-link sites that are hosted on a different Class C block of IPs.

Bumpity bump.

heavyharmonies - At first glance, anyway (I've only looked at the home pages on the four sites), the sites look similar enough to me that I can't imagine any reason beyond hoped-for SEO benefits that they should be separate sites.

The content on one just seems to be a subset of the content on another. I'm almost sure that you would have the dupe problems too if, say, the "A" pages of each were different pages on the same site. On different sites as they are, my guess is that, even if they aren't linked together, Google would see them as substantiallly dupes.

Additionally, my guess is that these sites are basically promoted simultaneously, which means that... as in this thread... the sites all get their inbound links from common sources. That's only going to make matters worse. The problem isn't just the level of interlinking... it's how independent in the wider web context each of the sites is from the other. I certainly wouldn't do anything to associate them more strongly than they are already.

PS to the above. I would guess that any Yahoo editor would click the top links, see very similar looking sites, and react, as I did, with some skepticism.

Yahoo editors don't check about class-Cs... that's a totally separate issue. Your concern with the Yahoo Directory is whether you'll be risking your $299, and my guess is that you will be. They may not give you a listing. Just a guess.

Thank you for the feedback.

The sites were not created with any SEO in mind. It's just been easier over the years, when I've created a site for a new musical genre, to clone the programming for the new site. HH was in started in 1998, then BM in early 2000, HM in late 2000, and now PA in 2005.

Combining them all into a single site would, effectively be starting over from a programming standpoint, especially since the feature set of HH is intentionally a superset of the others. Not only that, but I'm not sure how I would handle the existing domain names.

I'm guessing that probably the best thing for me to do is simply remove the links between the sites.

*braces for complaints from the site regulars*

I'm guessing that probably the best thing for me to do is simply remove the links between the sites.

heavyharmonies - See this thread, which has a somewhat related discussion, and check out the link to the thread I mention in my last post...

How To Cross Link Without Getting Penalized?
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=8598&page=1&pp=20

Thanks for the link; I caught that thread earlier today. After doing more reading here and on some other forums, it seems to be pretty clear that NO ONE truly knows the answer (or that there is no one single correct answer), despite what people claim. Answers are still all over the place. The only reasonable answer I've seen is to ask yourself "Would you still do this if it weren't for SE placement?" I believe I can honestly answer "yes" to that question.

I've had the navigation bar across the top of the sites for almost a year, and it does not appear to have had any effect on rankings of any of my sites.

I have, however, refined the interlinking a bit more, so the purpose of said links is clearer.

If I drop a bit in the SEs because of my interlinking, then so be it. In the long run, I believe those interlinks are of greater value to my viewership than not having them.

Thanks for the assistance.