Hello all.

I am in a networking group. We want to start a link program so that everyone's website is linking to the others in the group. Easy enough.

The problem is management due to the fact that there are 62 businesses in the group with new ones coming in and others leaving all the time. Therefore I believe the best thing to do is have this information stored in one place and everyone pulls it into their links page. This way you update the info once and each site will reflect it.

Is there anyone out there who has a good solution for accomplishing this in a way that helps SEO?

Excellent plan! NOT.

What you are creating is precisely what Google suggest you DO NOT do. And that is join a link farm.

BUT of course if your plan is to get all the sites penalised, you are bang on course.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Excellent plan! NOT.

What you are creating is precisely what Google suggest you DO NOT do. And that is join a link farm.

BUT of course if your plan is to get all the sites penalised, you are bang on course.

Link farm?
That is not at all what I am doing.

The members of my BNI chapter want to link to each other. It is a totally legitimate use of a links page. You are telling me that companies who do business together shouldn't link to each others sites? That is rich.

If it looks link farm, I suggest to create a directory page and categorize each link base on relevancy.

Originally Posted by gulfwebdev

Link farm?
That is not at all what I am doing.

The members of my BNI chapter want to link to each other. It is a totally legitimate use of a links page. You are telling me that companies who do business together shouldn't link to each others sites? That is rich.

That is NOT how it sounded from

We want to start a link program so that everyone's website is linking to the others in the group

Mutual (where a business site links to a GENUINE partner/associate) linking is one thing. Having every site link to every other site is a dangerous path to be walking as it looks (and is) contrived.

Members should link on each other sites from and to pages where it would makes most sense to REAL people. Read
Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking and concentrate on linking for people NOT search engines.

Well it seems to me that chrishirst's knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who mentions linking. I am here in an SEO forum asking for the right way to do this and get attacked like I am some spammer trying to manipulate the search engines.The ole "guilty until proven innocent" routine. Fine....

We would like to have a badge on our website saying "proud member of BNI" that links to a page with the other businesses in our chapter. The page text will say something along the lines of "If you are in need of services in the New Port Richey area, I highly recommend each and every one of the following business". We are a group of local businesses who pass referrals to each other. Why shouldnt our websites?

So I will ask again. What is the best way to go about doing this? Will having this links page appearing on 40-60 websites get us penalized? Surely we can set this up and still receive some SEO benefit as the links are trying to identify these websites as experts in the field.

Thanks for the Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking. It was helpful.

That is time wasting. I mean link exchange. Google do not allow that and can punish you. So why waste the time. Better invite something new in this way

Well it seems to me that chrishirst's knee jerk reaction is to attack anyone who mentions linking.

only when the other person apparently no idea about the right way to go about "linking"

It is hilarious to me that you self-proclaimed experts think it inadvisable to link the local companies you do business with in hopes of identifying them as an expert and passing them a referral from your website.

This is in no way black hat.

Nice forum.... thanks for wasting my time.


As for the moderator..... next time try reading the post before letting your knee give you a bloody nose. You totally blew over the first sentence and commenced to read what you wanted to read.

Originally Posted by rumsfo

Google do not allow that and can punish you

If I take anything away from this lovely exchange it will surely be this gem.

Let's make this very very clear.

There is absolutely no problem AT ALL linking to whomever and wherever you wish

There is however a potential problem with creating an interlinked network of pages/sites where every site crosslinks to each other as a matter of course.
By doing so you are creating a footprint so large it could be seen from space. With this scenario you are creating a situation where ALL the sites in the network could and would get penalised.
Seen it happen many, many times.
But of course if that is the plan you wish to follow, don't let me stop you.

Linking is an excellent way of advertising a site to visitors. HOWEVER your focus is PURELY (or so it seems) on search engines.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

HOWEVER your focus is PURELY (or so it seems) on search engines.

Ohh really? In the very post you are responding to I wrote

Originally Posted by gulfwebdev

link the local companies you do business with in hopes of identifying them as an expert and passing them a referral from your website

You are reading only what you want to read.

Originally Posted by gulfwebdev

Ohh really? In the very post you are responding to I wrote



You are reading only what you want to read.

You really need to re-read your opening sentence in the first post.

Gulfwebdev - If you are so sure you are doing the right thing, why not go ahead and see what happens? Testing is a great thing of finding out what works and what sends sites to the rear end of search results. This should be a non-critical site, though. IMO.

It is pretty obvious that a whole network of sites, all securely interlinked, looks quite suspicious. If it's inherently not what you are doing, feel free to clarify. Noone is accusing you of anything - it is just being pointed out to you that something like what you are talking about is very much likely to jeopardize your site.