About linking as many as 20 domains, Matt Cutts says that if all 20 domains cover same topic, then he would not advise linking them together as it would look spammy. Suppose you own a jewelry site with the domain name, www.beautifuljewelry.com. You create several other domain names, say www.butifuljewelry.com, www.beautifulljewelry.com, www.buybutifuljewlry.com, and more. If all these domains are talking about the same thing as in www.beautifuljewelry.com, then it is not a wise idea to link them together as a strategy to improve the PageRank of www.beautifuljewelry.com, as this site would be filled with large number of backlinks overnight. According to the Penguin update, websites should acquire backlinks naturally and at a constant rate. A sudden spike within a single day would look spammy.
According to Cutts, the following can be considered ideal domain linking practices:
- It is better to link your domains only if they are different versions in different countries such as Google.co.za (Google version South Africa), Google.de (Google version Deutschland) and so on. This, says Cutts, is a sensible way of getting one version of your domain to a different version.
- Placing large number of links even at the footer would also look unnatural. A wiser option is to put a link to a country locator page so that visitors can choose the country of their choice and thereby the relevant domain version. Placing flags and dropdowns on that page can help users make their choice.
- Links to all domain versions should be in normal static HTML. This will allow user to get to the domain easily and for Googlebots to follow them as well, and pass on the PageRank.
- Avoid the practice of massive cross-linking among several blogs. Very large blog networks having a footer with many unrelated blogs looks suspect, says Cutts. Google could look at this as deliberate scheme, even it this is not the intention.
A professional SEO company can manage your SEO and help your business gain higher online visibility with legitimate linking practices.