Link building and directory links to a new site

[Ron10]

I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder.  These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas.  Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective?

Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet.  If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links?  I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Take care,
Ron

[RyanKent]

Ron,

When you are performing an activity like this for your website, ask yourself "how do readers benefit from my actions?". If you are struggling to find an answer, then you probably should consider trying another activity.

• As Storwell suggested, natural links between your sites that help users find information are always a good thing. Google will recognize your sites are hosted together and you wont receive much, if any, actual benefit with respect to having your results rank higher.

• Directory links are a poor use of time and effort. If you spend that same amount of time writing one great article, you will receive better results.

• Figure out who the best past band was who played at one of your venues and write a great article about their visit. Include pictures, videos of their session at your place (if it's not a copyright violation), etc. Make the article something that all their fans would want to read. Readers should get the feeling "wow, I missed out on a great show! I wish I was there and I'll make it the next time they play there". Ideally that same band will be scheduled again and you can provide a link to a page that has their next appearance dates and info.

• You need to generate content others WANT to read. Content that people want to tell their friends about and link to. The payoff for a fantastic article that is well promoted will be more quality links then the rest of your efforts.

[adriandg]

Two things.

1. I would focus on nautral linking between your sites if you are going to link between them.  If you happen to be talking about something in a post on one of the sites that actually relates to one of the other sites, or content you have written for the other site, then place a link there, because that is what someone would naturally do.  Google rewards people for being people, not people who are trying to manipulate the search engines.  But like you said these sites don't have much page rank to begin with, so you will not ever see much of a benefit from your cross linking, mostly it is a waste of time.

2. Yes and no, on the one hand, i don't think the directories will help you all that much, in terms of gaining rankings again you should be focusing on gaining natural good quality links from other sources with good page and trust rank.  These directories will not help you achieve that.  They might give you a small/marginal boost in rankings, but they will not be significant.  Also do not be so afraid of being penalized by good.  If it was so easy to get penalized a Black Hat SEO could very easily take down the rankings of a competators site.  All that SEO would need to do is submit the site to directories, and boom google penalizes them, right? wrong!