When linking my own sites together, how much is too much?

• we've been told to avoid excessive inter-linking of our own sites when link building. What is considered excessive when it comes to linking our own sites together? Are we in danger of a penalty?

Answer: Excessive inter-linking of various sites you own can get you in trouble if you take it too far.

When we say inter-linking, we're referring to links between sites that all belong to the same company or organization and could be interpreted by search engines as a linking scheme built solely for the purpose of increasing your PageRank and/or link popularity.

This is primarily a problem when each site being linked has few incoming links from sites outside of the linking network of sites all owned by the same entity.

If each of your sites also has link from outside your own network that they've earned based on their own merit, then there's not usually much to worry about. But anytime your own links become the majority of the incoming links for a specific site you're at risk of incurring penalties.

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