Linking Free Sites To A Hub
 

Which is better: (Assume the hub and all free sites are on the same domain) A hub with links out to free sites and links on those sites back to the hub OR links from the hub out to about half of the free sites (by not listing all of the sites) but links back to the hub from all of my sites, giving the hub more inbound links?

Also, would inbound links from a different domain make a difference or are inbound links inbound links?

The same domain would be internal inbound links, the ones from another domain would be external inbound links.

Since it's on the same domain, i'd link to and from each freesite. On the off domain freesites, maybe link to the freesite but link back from the main page instead of the page linked to (link to index, link back from main). I link to all my freesites in a similar way.

Why link back from the main page vs the index page?

Just thinking it may be more beneficial to have the links more as an a b c (pagewise at least) instead of direct in case any straight recip penalty may occur. Prolly nothing to worry about currently, but if you end up with 5,000 freesites all directly linking to and from the same page maybe it will get noticed or a penalty.

I have no proof so take it for what it's worth, but if they implement a recip penalty in the future it may be better to link this way. I am doing it now on my sites, but had done index link backs and more. As my freesites grow i'll stop index links and go with main links. Plus, if you have doorway the main page seems to get more longterm and overall traffic.

I'm in no way an seo expert so it's just my personal thoughts.