backlinking to self?

[dangerlarson]

I have a site that has a pagerank of 4. On the same web account, but in a different folder, I have another new site. The new site has a "0" pagerank, as I have not swung into marketing it yet.

If I link to the new site (pagerank 0) from the old site (pagerank 4), does that count as a quality backlink that could improve the pagerank of the new site? They have completely separate domain names.

It sounds silly, but basically I am asking whether I can promote myself without penalization from google, msn, or the like

Thanks,

[Rincewind]

It would count as a link. However, google would know that they both have the same IP and are therefor owned by the same people. So a factor would be added to water down the link because of that. If you just do a few links - no problem. But if you fully interlink every page, then google will just assume they are the same site. You can avoid this a bit by puting each site on different IP's (different web hosts). However, if you over interlink, google still assumes something odd is going on.

Linking 2 sites that you already own is a very good idea though. If will kick start the new domain and get it some traffic an hopefully some PR of it's own. Just keep it to one or two links - not dozzens or hundreds.