Build Other Sites To Promote Yours ? Options

[MainStreet228]

Hi,

Is it rec. to build other internet sites to help promote yours ?

[sanity]

Do you mean other websites to promote your website?

If so wouldn't it be better to spend that time and money on promoting your initial site?

Is there any particular reason why you want to do this?

[MainStreet228]

Hi,

The reason why I ask is because don't a lot of large sites own smaller sites that promote there products ?

Thanks !

[Nadir]

Yes, many websites do that. You'd be surprised to see the number of large online companies using this technique.

I heard that the head of SEO for a large travel website did that kind of thing. He basically created dozens of blogs that all have their own topics, ie. "visiting morocco" , and had people filling them with content where they plugged links towards the travel website. Some may call that black hat, but I don't thing it's more black than buying links on random websites.

This technique can also be used if you thing your original site is penalized or if it's sandboxed.

Anyways, if you have time to build some extra sites to promote a selected number of products, or to get some links, just make sure that you have unique content and have these sites hosted on differents IP's.

[MainStreet228]

Hi Nadir,

Nadir, is it possible for you to list the travel site(s) ?

Thanks

[send2paul]

I think, (and I maybe wrong here), but that technique of linking, (particularly blogs), back to one central website to try rank the central website higher in SERPS is better done if all the linking blog/websites are hosted at different places/different IP addresses.

I beleive that search engines will "de-rank" your website if they "see" that you'rer being linked to a dozens of blogger blogs, or other websites, (which you've created yourself), from the same host/IP address.

Paul

p.s. I watched one of these "internet marketing videos" once on this subject - very instructional!

[A.N.Onym]

Paul, they won't de-rank your site, but such links (when it is obvious that you are the owner of all the site network) will count for less, than if they were from other people. If you have quality, unique content on all the sites, it is just another reason to show them in the SERPs and the main site they all refer to, too.

[vangogh]

I think if you leave a very clear footprint that you're interlinking your sites the search engines may see it as manipulation and it could lead to results you'd rather not have.

I can't speak from experience here, but I think it depends on how interlinked the sites are with each other and how connected they are to sites outside of your self created network.

I can see a search engine simply discounting many of the links, but I would think if you're going to create a network of sites solely to promote some of your other sites you'd be best hosting with different class c ip blocks and even using different information in the domain registration. It would probably be best not to leave an obvious footprint.

[A.N.Onym]

I guess it depends on how large the network is and how quality the content is.

If you have under 10 sites with quality content, then linking to relevant stories on them should be fine. Even helpful.

If you have thousands of websites with scraped content, then it is another story and you may be penalized (though there are no penalties for spam sites, right?).

I don't think the line lies as close as you put it, Steve. Interlinking sites on the same topic for the benefit of the readers (take our blogs, for instance) is only helpful. Even if you link a little, but for the search engines, you may go under the radar. It is when you go mainstream with interlinking (a clearly high number of cross-links) that you may get noticed.

Then again, if you interlink sites on different topics a lot, you will not get much benefits. However, if you do link naturally (as in to show something on another website), I doubt you'll be hurt.

Let's go easy with assumptions on being penalized, when it comes to linking for the humans, shall we

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Jan 9 2007, 03:32 AM

[JohnMu]

I don't think any of the obfuscation techniques are really necessary. If you can create a series of sites that is relevant, that has (and gains) link-value of it's own, then it can sometimes make sense to have them separate from your main domain and linking to it. This is nothing to be ashamed of, really . You don't have to hide that you have multiple sites which point to the same domain.

If those separate sites all make sense and all provide some sort of value to visitors and gain links (or can be promoted accordingly) then they are just legitimate, related sites that happen to be owned by the same company / person, perhaps because they have know-how in that area of business (eg travel blogs made by a travel agency). Of course there are some that abuse this kind of thing, but I assume that in the long run, it would be more work to keep "junk-sites" floating (or to keep making new ones) than it would be to promote the main site normally.

The question to me would be: can you provide value to those separate sites with less expense (work) than it would take to promote your main site to the same level?

John

[rmccarley]

I've done this a couple times when it made sense. The first was for a comapny I used to work at. Each site represented a division of the comany and each division was marketed seperately so each having theor own sites made sense.

Currently I have the Linker's Union project (some day soon I'll finish it and start posting -- really!). I made it because I realized that questions about links could dominate my main site. I intend to use LU as a resource for anyone interested in link building techniques - especially me. And I'm adding some tools to help people (me) out as well. It's a win-win. Think of it as a notepad on crack.

Anyway, having more than one website is not a crime and the SEs don't mind that you own multiple sites. They also expect you to do some cross-linking. Just don't make a farm and when you do link between the sites be sure it makes sense to do so. There probably in't a good reason for a mortgage broker to link to a website about how to birth bunnies but an SEO company and a link-development site have stuff in common.

[Ruud]

How many people will you have on this project? For how long? If you have limited staff (maybe just yourself), how many man hours are you willing to devote to it? Where and how do you feel in your gut that those hours would give the project most value?

If you have limited resources, how could you otherwise set up a network of sites? Can you engage people to write about the main site (link baiting) or could you setup an affiliate network instead?

[Nadir]

Nice questions Ruud. Indeed, we're not talking about building splogs here, but rather hire real people to write real content for real people. I'm afraid I can't reveal the name of the company, and I don't think that you need to see an example to start doing the same thing.

Just find the time and the motivation to do it, and I'm sure you will be happy with the outcome.

[MainStreet228]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all of the responses. I would like to do it but the items that I'm selling a regional based ( I'm not selling clothing, toys or anything like that ) My items are rather " big ticket " items. Do you think this is still possible ?

Thanks !

[rmccarley]

So let's say you are selling RVs in Sacramento, CA. You can create a small site dedicated to RV extras and add-ons. Another to the safety factor of various RVs. Another that has RV driving tips. Another that explains how to use the various components of RVs (septic, water, storage compartments, latches, etc.), another on how to make the RV safer with "lock down" tips for traveling, and still another on the history of RV dealerships in Sacramento and another on the history of RVs in CA. Maybe even have a site dedicated to the various uses of RVs like temporary housing for Hollywood celebs, travel busses for musicians, temporary housing for victims of natural distasters, etc.

This is all off the top of my head and all around the main site them of [rv sales sacramento, ca].

You could also do regional sites that don't have anything to do with your product other than they are in the same geographic area. It all depends on the KWs you are targeting and how much imagination (and time) you have to put into it.

[Ron Carnell]

Count out one hundred pennies and throw them onto a large piece of graph paper. Let's pretend those one hundred pennies are web sites, and more, let's pretend that five of them belong to you. Now, draw a line between any two web sites where a link might exist.

If your five web sites all link to each other, you're going to end up drawing a nice little circle that encompasses them. It won't matter if the sites are on different IP blocks, different servers, or registered under different names, those lines are still going be patently obvious to anyone willing to draw them. You've created an Internet island, and that's not usually considered a good thing.

An island needs bridges.

Start drawing lines (links) from pennies you don't own to those you do, and the circle you first drew will quickly become obscured by all the incoming lines. The bridges will turn your island into an integral part of the mainland.

I don't think there's anything wrong with using Site A to promote Site B. It only becomes a problem when Site A is the ONLY thing you have promoting Site B. When push comes to shove, Site B has to be able to stand on its own, as part of the mainland. If it's just sitting in the middle of an artificial island, the engines are going to pretty much ignore it.

[joedolson]

Ultimately, it seems like the question is whether it's more valuable to have external sites with specialized content linking back to your main site or to have that specialized content present directly on your site. There are good arguments either way: such as streamlining your navigation. If you want to provide a large quantity of additional information, but don't want to create any confusion in your main navigation, it may well be more usable in the long run to place that extra information on a separate domain, with a completely different design and navigation.

This way, your users are less likely to get lost: rather than attempting to use the site navigation to get between "How to Park an RV" and your luxury RV listings, they'll know full well that they're on a completely different site and they should either use the back menu or some other means of navigation. And the logic works both ways.

Keeping the information separate and providing internal links between the two sites can be, in some ways, beneficial to usability.

[vangogh]

I'm reading over what I wrote last night and I don't think I did a very good job of saying what I meant to. I was thinking of it in similar terms as you describe Ron. I think having that circle or bubble around your network wouldn't be the best of ideas and that a search engine seeing all the links to each of several sites only coming from other sites in that network would probably want to look twice at the network.

I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with interlinking sites. It depends on how much interlinking is going on and whether or not those sites are linked anywhere outside the network.

I would think if you created a bubble around a network of sites and there isn't any linking in or out of that bubble to sites outside the network it's going to look a little funny and a search engine might think they're being manipulated.

[diddy1]

If this truly works then it would be amazing to see the results. Especially since the high relativity of the websites inter linking would boost the main site in SERPs tremendously. Though wouldn't hits be much more affective if the "supporting websites" were all on different c-class ips?

Thank You

[A.N.Onym]

The thing is, if you have content on the same topic for the same topic, it'd most likely be more beneficial to host it on a single domain, so it is more visible.

If we see your main site as a homepage, and other sites as site sections, making other site sections less visible would only hurt you. Not to mention if you do make all the site sections visible from the homepage, the diverse, quality and unique content will be more noticeable, too.

Frankly, and I think we've discussed this before, is that you only need to separate your content, when the audience for your content is different. Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense (to me at least) to separate the sites and the effort.