Creating a sister site, footer links?

[animalstyle]

Ive been pondering an idea for a second sister site to my existing authority site. The two sites would be closely related both from a user interest POV and a keyword POV.

I could stamp out this second property pretty quickly since I know it and already have a formula.

With closely related sites like this, is it wise to create footer links on each site, linking back to the other,like a two site network?

 

[OliDale]

I do this and it works well.
I think its fine as long as they are legit sites, lots of companies with multiple brands do it.
Take a look at this post - http://www.viperchill.com/google-control/

 

[Future State]

If it's so close as to have that much user interest and keyword crossover, why not add the new one to the first one? I remember you having some 301 site migration issues recently, but this would dodge all of that. Or is there some reason not to do it?

The footer links are fine if both sites are legit, trustworthy, high quality, have similar WhoIs information, and you aren't hiding anything. If it's completely transparent, the algorithm seems to assume there's nothing shady going on.

You can see tons of huge empires all sitewide interlinking in the headers and footers and widgets. It's fine when it's legitimate.

 

[animalstyle]

If it's so close as to have that much user interest and keyword crossover, why not add the new one to the first one? I remember you having some 301 site migration issues recently, but this would dodge all of that. Or is there some reason not to do it?

The branding of the first site is pretty specific. It is topic+word.com I have the same domain theme for the neighboring niche. The topics are similar but target different audiences and will have different data presented.

Separate domains brands them together nicely while providing topic separation.

plus my ego thinks it sounds real sexy to own a “network”