Any success stories after removing excessive cross domain linking?

[ntcma]

Hi,

I found some excessive cross domain linking from a separate blog to the main company website.

It sounds like best practice is to cut back on this, but I don't have any proof of this.

I'm cautious about cutting off existing links; we removed two redundant domains that had a huge number of links pointing to the main site almost 1 year ago, but didn't see any correlated improvement in rankings or traffic per se.

Hoping some people can share a success story after pruning off excessive cross linking either for their own website or for a client's.

Thanks

[ntcma]

Hi, and thanks for the response.

1. Yes they are on separate domains

2. Do you have any references or experiences to share as per the question title? I.e., what actually causes you say that this will be "ok", whereas this will "cost authority", etc. This kind of information by itself isn't much to base a strategy on...

[BruceA]

First off, are the blog and the main site on the same domain?  If they are then they are almost internal links and this should be classed as such

If the links go to totally different domains, then this will be reciprocal linking, which is not liked by Google, but also recognised as required, but will cost some authority.  What is a big no no is back and forward irrelevent links.

What is OK.  but will cost some authorityParent company A has three brands with 4 sites.  The parent site, links to the brand site via "our other brands" page only and this is reciprocal from the brand site, from their "Our Other Brands" page linking back. 
This is logical from Google and the customers point of view

What is not OK and will definately cost in authority and unatural links penalties

Parent Company links to all the pages in all the brands pages and they do the same back and to each other.  Links are sporadic and all over the place.

This will also work with topics and also other content.

Hope this is of use

Bruce