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I run two websites that sell basically the same product which we make ourselves but to two separate audiences.  I've made my living off them for the past 6 years or so.  I used emd's in both cases to rank for my main search terms.  We dropped a few places last October but not too bad.  I was thinking of combining the sites under one brand name hoping that they would rank better combined.  Both sites have similar link profiles but with some links unique to each.  For instance, I buy a yahoo directory listing  for each site but each site has some unique product reviews on blogs.  Is this a good idea or am I better off leaving them separate?

I have an odd situation.  One of our most powerful links comes from a not-for-profit whom we have an advertisement with.  That ad gets us half of our business.  Recently, they slipped for the term that got them the traffic that flowed to our site.  I was thinking of linking back to that page to boost them up a bit.  Their page is a deep page on a high authority domain with only a few links.  I am an authority site for my niche.  I'd like to boost them up without diminishing my rank for other related terms. I'm willing to consider linking to them from my homepage, blog or link page.  To play it safe I could just link build  to them from outside my domain.  Can I just link to them and its not a big deal?