Sitewide outbound linking and image hot-linking issues

[grandmac]

Question 1 If I have on my gift basket web site home page a link to my flower site (which is an affiate site with Grower Flowers with a unique url for the home page) as a link to a separate site and then at the bottom of each of my pages in my gift basket web site have included with my own links for categories of baskets a link that just says flowers with a link to my other web site, both hosted on same host, is this considered spam linking?

Question 2 I am having a terrible problem with people hot linking to my site from all kinds of message boards and blogs because they copy and paste my pictures and use them in their messages. I also have a web site that copied a bunch of my pictures on a message board individual page to try and sell gift baskets using mine and some other web site's pictures. Does Google see this has duplicate content or having links from bad neighborhoods? Some of these message boards are not good.

Thanks,
Carol

[Marcia]

terrible problem with people hot linkingThere should be a feature available in your hosting control panel that restricts which sites images or files can be accessed or pulled from. If not, it will take an entry in .htaccess - but it should be.

If that tacky forum site is doing nothing more than hot-linking it isn't much of an indexing issue, but the restriction should take care of it. If they're linking to your site, you can deny access to your site from theirs altogether.

For the gift basket site and the affiliate flower site, I wouldn't personally do sitewide links across the navigation to the affiliate site, especially if the both sites are sitting on the same IP or in the same c-class. I know people are getting by just fine with it, I've seen them; but I guess I'm super nervous about sitewides, especially when they're associated.

If I have on my gift basket web site home page a link to my flower site (which is an affiate site with Grower Flowers with a unique url for the home page) as a link to a separate site and then at the bottom of each of my pages in my gift basket web site have included with my own links for categories of baskets a link that just says flowers with a link to my other web site, both hosted on same host, is this considered spam linking?Yes, it *possibly* could be looked upon as being for the purpose of inflating the rankings of the affiliate flower site, depending on who is looking at it. Will it really and truly add value for your users, who are looking for gift baskets?

Others may see it differently, and may give additional input on it.

[grandmac]

Marcia,
Thanks for the information. My hosting does not have a way for me to deny the sites from hot linking. They told me there are lots of scripts available. I found one but do not really understand how to apply it. I will have to look for one that is easier.
With my flower site I have quite a few people who buy both flowers and gift baskets or decide they want flowers instead. They go nicely together in this particular market. But I will remove the links from the bottoms of the pages and just leave the link on the home page to be on the safe side.
Thanks so much,
Carol