Hub & spoke crosslinking

[LuckyShima]

I have a powerful hub which I have used to create some reasonable spokes.

All the spokes are linked to each other, but they don't link back to the hub.

I now want to link the spokes back to the hub, for the traffic and not for SEO, but I am a bit worried about changing anything that is already working ok.

I think about a year or two ago there was a penalty for cross-linking but it doesn't seem to apply much any more, especially for cross-linking websites that are on different topics (within a common theme).

Does anyone have this sort of interlinking happening successfully?

Thanks

(p.s. I am not referring to the sites in my sig)

[Chris]

I do hub and spoke and no spoke cross linking.

[LuckyShima]

Thanks Chris. This has bugged me for a long time how I want to crosslink for traffic, not for seo, but I am too paranoid that the search engines might give me a penalty. On one search term my hub is number 1 and 2 and its spoke is number 3 and 4 (they each carry different content in a similar theme) so I want people who go to the spoke to also know about and visit the hub but I don't want to do anything to jeopardise such listings.

[Emancipator]

This is somehting that would make a great article. Can you explain for me what exactly a HUB is and how it works.. a diagram perhaps? lol.

[Chris]

Maybe I will write an article then.

[michael_gersitz]

I have alot of hub and spoke linking webs... maybe I should optimize it better?

[Masetek]

Maybe I will write an article then.

Nice article btw :)

[LuckyShima]

I have alot of hub and spoke linking webs... maybe I should optimize it better?
Are any or all of your spokes linked together? Do your spokes link back to your hub?