Q's re setting up a basic web of sites and backlinks

[seosoldier]

I am an amateur web site builder and newbie IMer and am just now getting the hang of building backlinks and setting up my sites for SEO.

So I have a web site that sells water filters and I have several other web sites with keywords in the title and I have a couple wordpress blogs with keywords.

My questions are:
1) is the idea that I should use these various sites to point to each other? i.e. use keyword anchored links that point to and fro? I am somewhat confused about whether this is good because I've heard that if you own the sites it's not good to backlink to your own sites, that the backlinks need to come from independent sites? (obviously most should come from other sites with good ranking, I understand that, but is it worth it to use my own sites to point to each other?

2 of my sites are hosted at godaddy under the same "as many sites as you want to make" account, and I was planning to make a few more but if it's bad to do this pointing back to your own sites then I won't.

2) Should some of the links be only one-way links - one way back to my main site, with my main site NOT linking back to the other sites?

3) I also hear about Internal Links and I see that my competitor who ranks above me has a lot more Internal Links than I do but I have more backlinks. I thought the backlinks were more important than internal links, no? Isn't an internal link just a link to a keyword that I use to link to another one of my own pages on the same site? If so I have a lot of them but when I checked on one of those site explorer type sites it does not show my internal links. Am I understanding what an internal link is, then?

[Andrew S]

i wouldnt recommend interlinking your money sites unless you really know what you're doing

internal links are very important for your sites architecture and also have ranking benefits too

[Abledragon]

If your sites cover the same (or a related) subject and there's an article on one of them that's absolutely relevant to an article on one of the others, then linking those two articles is worthwhile. But there's little point in simply aimlessly linking the sites together, and none at all if they cover different subjects.

As Andrew S has said, internal linking is important because it leads people to other related articles on your site.

Again, internal linking must be to relevant articles - if it's not it will just cause frustration in your visitors.

You mentioned your sites are on WordPress - this article covers internal linking in WordPress:

Internal Linking on Your Website | WealthyDragon

Cheers,

Martin.

[seosoldier]

Originally Posted by Abledragon

If your sites cover the same (or a related) subject and there's an article on one of them that's absolutely relevant to an article on one of the others, then linking those two articles is worthwhile. But there's little point in simply aimlessly linking the sites together, and none at all if they cover different subjects.

As Andrew S has said, internal linking is important because it leads people to other related articles on your site.

Again, internal linking must be to relevant articles - if it's not it will just cause frustration in your visitors.

You mentioned your sites are on WordPress - this article covers internal linking in WordPress:

Internal Linking on Your Website | WealthyDragon

Cheers,

Martin.

Thanks for the link re internal links.

As to not linking to and fro my own similar sites, then what's all the talk about things like pyramids and schemes where sites link together in a circle or web type structure? I guess I just don't get when linking is good and when it's not.

[ShaneBoyd]

• Definitely link to your own pages. It’s crucial to your on page SEO

• So far, all of my links are one way links. I typically get to the first page of Google in less than 2 weeks. My most recent one got page one in 3 days. All my links are also NoFollow links.

• Internal links are important. I don’t know WHY…I just know THAT. According to Wikipedia, here is a formal definition of internal links…

According to Wikipedia, An internal link is a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the internet.
Links are considered either "external" or "internal" depending on perspective. Generally, a link to a page outside the same domain is considered external, whereas one in the same domain is considered internal.




You also mention link pyramids and link schemes. No thank you. Every time I got involved in one of those, my site just tanked. Build good quality backlinks and have about 2-5 links go out the same day. After all the changes with Google Panda and all, slow but sure wins the race.

Another note…if you see a product offering (arbitrary number here) 5000 links for $25…then just run. These are never good and your site may be penalized for adding junk links too fast.

Hope this helps.

Shane

[seosoldier]

Originally Posted by ShaneBoyd

• Definitely link to your own pages. It’s crucial to your on page SEO

• So far, all of my links are one way links. I typically get to the first page of Google in less than 2 weeks. My most recent one got page one in 3 days. All my links are also NoFollow links.

• Internal links are important. I don’t know WHY…I just know THAT. According to Wikipedia, here is a formal definition of internal links…

According to Wikipedia, An internal link is a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the internet.
Links are considered either "external" or "internal" depending on perspective. Generally, a link to a page outside the same domain is considered external, whereas one in the same domain is considered internal.




You also mention link pyramids and link schemes. No thank you. Every time I got involved in one of those, my site just tanked. Build good quality backlinks and have about 2-5 links go out the same day. After all the changes with Google Panda and all, slow but sure wins the race.

Another note…if you see a product offering (arbitrary number here) 5000 links for $25…then just run. These are never good and your site may be penalized for adding junk links too fast.

Hope this helps.

Shane

Shane, thanks for the info. I guess I did know what internal links were but I got confused because one of the site-checking pages I used to check my site showed that I have no or few internal links and that my #1 competitor had a lot more than me. I DO have a lot of internal links so I thought maybe they were talking about something else. So apparently for some reason, some of my internal links are not being counted by at least this one site-checking service. (I wish I could remember which one it was but I do not.)

I must have at least 20-25 internal links, maybe a lot more. Maybe I'll build some more though... All my links are made via Dreamweaver and they are links like from one page to another page on my site. So I can't see why they would not be counted...

I used to believe what you said about not using link services etc... but I don't really believe that any more. I have seen and read of many different services like those of which you speak, which help sites get to the first page of google. I have used some of these services and they have definitely helped my page ranking, and I have seen others here comment that their pages have also been helped by these "500+ backlinks" types of services. The way I see it, my competitors are using these services and if I don't, they're going to get ahead of me.

I hear people saying "Don't use "those" services", but it seems to me that most people are being rewarded, not penalized, by using them. Just my 2 cents.

Shane I read the pdf in your signature and I want to say thank you for that. I really like how you've written out a very simple, easy to understand strategy with specific links and services to use that anyone can read and follow. Good stuff! (As to whether it works or not, I have to take your word for it at this point, but I'll be trying it out over the next few weeks, so thanks again!)

[gtk29]

If you are using wordpress, then you can easily set "related links" for inter-linking your site.