How to avoid a potential Google penalty?

[bogdan_i]

We have a web site for our email related tools and services and I'm planning to deploy 4 new web sites, one for each product and one for the company and services.

My problem is how to do it in order to avoid a potential penalty from Google. I don't want to do it for SEO related reasons, but one way or the other I will have to link all these sites together and all of them will target almost the same keywords (since all our products are email tools). Although the content will be different on each site, I'm afraid that Google may interpret it as a link farm.

Do you have any suggestions on how can I avoid a potential penalty/ban?

Many thanks,
Bogdan

[flood6]

Here is a WebProNews article about what they call the "network penaly".

Garrett mentions a strategy to avoid getting penalized for linking a group of sites together too closely.

Good luck.

[sparky_t]

Bogdan,

If you follow the Google guidelines and only link for the visitors usage, it should not be a problem.

I have 3 related sites, all on the same host servers, all linking to each other, and have never had a problem.

Sparky

http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/guidelines.html

[bogdan_i]

Thanks a lot for your replies. My structure will likely be the following one: site A links to B, C and D, sites B, C, D will link to site E, while site E will link to A, B, C, D. There will be only one page on each site with these links (the 'about us' page).

Thanks again,
Bogdan