SEO Guidelines for Partner Links

[DOLdatacenter]

We decided to follow an aggressive strategy with cross linking. We have cross linked all all the 6 different brands just above the header of a News Portal. You could see what i mean here www.in.gr
Do you think that i should enable the nofollow so as not to get penalized by Google. We tend to use the same cross network linking scheme (in the header) for all branded sites.

Google’s guidance on link schemes doesn’t specifically address these types of partner links, which don’t really fit the mold for “excessive link exchanging.”

Thoughts appreciated.

[FedeEinhorn]

I'd suggest you nofollow all those links. You say "which don’t really fit the mold for “excessive link exchanging.”" but you are forgetting that each page will contain the same link, therefore creating god knows how many backlinks from ALL the pages in your site to the other sites, and the same for all the others.

As an example, I had a manual link penalty applied, and when applying for a reconsideration, which was declined, the example links given by Google included a link to my business site from MY OWN personal site, something that said "I am the Owner of X" being X the link, and THAT link was one of the 3 examples in the negatory.

So again, I'd suggest you nofollow all those links, and actually only doing it if the sites are really related to one another. Read the article about something that Amazon is doing and EVERYONE thinks they should be penalized for: http://www.seroundtable.com/amazon-footer-links-spam-17857.html

Hope that helps!