Good strategy or accidental link farm?

[curtisreddehase]

I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this issue and want to make sure I know what I am doing before I let the Geni out of the bottle. Here is what I am doing. Our comapny has a website that does o.k. in the search engines. We require that all agents who have a site link to us from a page one deep from the their front page. What I am worried about is; The company website now has a blog where each agent in the company can post blogs under their name. Here is my big question; Will it hurt any of our sites if they link to their sites from their blogs on the company site, knowing they have a link in to the company site form their sites? Is this good or bad?

I do not want to count on using no follow, that would be to easy for someone to forget.

All the links would seem to make sense, but I could see how an automated link counter could misinterpret what is happening.

Are my concerns even founded?

[Mark Z]

Why not do a blog roll similar to this:
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/

It has a PR of 6, gets crazy traffic and a very popular site. The outgoing links don't seem to have a negative effect and there are a lot of outgoing links. Does this answer your question or concern?

[curtisreddehase]

I think so thanks!

[Brian Talley]

I'm no expert, but I've read that too much reciprocal linking is bad in the eyes of Google. This is probably why your asking the question in the first place, so sorry if that doesn't help.

[curtisreddehase]

That is my concern, but how is this different from active rain other than it is one market.

[Brian Talley]

I'm not sure about the answer to your question about Active Rain. Sorry for the lack of helpfulness here.

[Jaysonnhs]

Nice concern - hmmm

Yeah I don't know about doing all that. The big boys get away with recip. links and tons of other things but that doesn't mean you'll get away with it. National real estate franchise's do heavy link exchanges and many of the websites rank well.

It seems like something that a manual reviewer would catch and consider okay but it could very well be mistaken for something entirely different. Maybe just require a nofollow and try and supervise it as much as possible.