I have created 5 model specific blog sites which deliver links to my core site.
-
I post about 500 words of unique relevant content weekly to each model blog site. Each week, seo smartlinks delivers keyword anchor text links to my core site with a 3% keyword density. I have been doing this for 3 months and my core site traffic is stagnant or slightly down. Is this a good practice since its relevant content, or am I writing for nothing? Also, am I in danger of over optimized anchor text?
-
There are many ways of building links. The only limit is your creativity. I wrote an answer a couple of weeks back to a similar question, it might help...
http://www.seomoz.org/q/first-links-for-a-new-site
Glad you are finding SEOMoz useful - there's a great community here and staying ontop of things is easy because there are so many people doing their own testing and sharing results.
By the way, don't do too many press releases. Try one every couple of months maximum.
Matt
-
Thank you. The sites are new, and traffic and domain authority is low. Page rank is great for my target keywords but the only reason I wrote them was to try to reach a new market that my core site hasn't been able to reach.
They are hosted separately from the main site.
My content is good, but I'm not sure if very many people are interested in knowing all the details I write about.
Thanks again.
-
Thank you. Finding seomoz has been humbling, but having such good feedback is exactly what I needed. Other than press releases posting on other blogs, is there anything offsite that I should be doing?
Thanks again.
-
As stated already by other comments a few times, this method is very dated and will more than likely see your sites flagged as a spam network built purely for the purpose of link building (which is exactly what you have built it for)...
I would recommend removing ALL links to and from each site. Every single one.
However, there is probably no need to take the sites down, that's a little hasty.
If they are hosted on the same server then run them all separately as individual websites, write content on each and allow some nice guest posts on them. You can throw a couple of adverts on them and earn a little bit of £ if that is your ultimate goal.
If they aren't on the same server then you can use them as link bait. Write articles (good quality is the key here, as always!) for other websites and include a natural link back to your main website. If the website you want to host your article want something in return - for essentially giving you a link, offer them a guest posting opportunity on any of your other 5 websites. That way you both benefit from a backlink...
On a side note... SEO Smartlinks? Come onnnn.... you can do better than that! That is pretty much spam in its highest form! Maybe you should read up on Penguin and Panda and understand the clear goals of the algo updates of the past couple of years. Google's war on spam is a big deal!
Good luck
-
Do your model blogs have any traction of their own? What's the traffic and domain authority like? If they don't have any traction of their own, they're probably not worth much at all.
I'd argue that a single, well thought out guest post on a high authority website (e.g. SEOMoz, Sitepoint.com, etc. but something relevant to your niche) will be worth more than 10 posts on your "blog network".
Are your mini-blogs all hosted on the same C-block as the main site?
P.S. When you say "unique" I really hope you mean unique, and not spun!
-
Thank you for your advise. Are my model blogs worthless, or should I just remove the links and keep posting? My content is accurate and unique.
I also post press releases on prlog and freepressrelease and I submit slideshare.
Do you have any other ideas for placement of my content in addition to my core site?
-
Thank you, I will be changing my strategy. The content is accurate and unique on the sites, is it advisable to just remove the links or shut down the sites?
-
Thank you, I will be changing my strategy. The content is accurate and unique on the sites, is it advisable to just remove the links or shut down the sites?
-
Like David says,
What you're creating is a link network, which is a rather dated method of going about your link building. After the recent algorithm updates that sort of tactic really got hit hard.
High quality guest posting, press releases and other brand building exercises are going to put you in far better stead as far as your link building and SEO goes.
I've tried to change my focus with SEO this year. I now concentrate almost exclusively on establishing myself as an authority/expert and almost ignore "mechanical" link building methods. I believe that while I'm providing good quality stuff to a wide range of people, the links will come.
I also think that if you're still concentrating on keyword density then you're doing something wrong.
Write naturally. Show people why they should like you. Profit.
-
It'll likely be/get flagged as a link network, it's not a good SEO practice.
You'll be better off spending the time writing awesome content for your core site and looking into guest posting opportunities.
Good luck.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What do you when the wrong site links to you?
In doing research of our backlink profile, I've found a couple dozen of links from off-topic websites linking to us. You see, our domain is Voices.com and tends to scoop up links from unrelated sites that are clearly trying to link to another site such as evp-voices.com or areavoices.com or dozens of others. What would you do? Ask the webmaster to remove them because they are completely unrelated? Or would you keep them if you believed they aren't causing any harm?
Link Building | | voicesdotcom0 -
Any good site for Blog Submission (without any waiting/approval) ??
Is there any good blog submission site which does not have long waiting period before article is published and which allows followed link from blog? I have a list of such blog submission sites but they all either need weeks delay till it gets approved or never gets approved. So I would really appreciate If you can tell me some of such sites that you are aware of..
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Can these unnatural links from a site that was hacked hurt me?
After reading the article http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 I decided to do some investigating to see if I to have suffered from link penalties. After using site explorer I found a ton of over optimized unnatural links from jnjbtw.com and other pharmacy sites. See screen shot: My site is a website about kayak fishing we clearly have nothing to do with pharmacy, doctors or drugs. I know similar questions have been asked before about spam sites linking to you and if they affect you or not but this is about how overly optimized the links that are going to my site are. Would this flag penguin to add a penalty to my website? Any idea how jnjbtw.com has all these links to my site were they hacked?
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
Footer Back Links Question "Site by built by"
Hi all I design and develop websites for clients within the UK. With each website I build, I always add a link to the footer of the website which links back to my website. I have always used the link anchor text "Site By Jump" but then decided to try to use the link anchor text to our benefit by changing the links across all of our portfolio of sites to be: "Graphic Design by Jump"
Link Building | | yousayjump
or
"Web Design by Jump" In the hope that this helped us rank better for those keyword phrases. Now something occurred to me the day. Most of the websites I build have no relevance to the content on our website. For example, I could build a website for Baby Food and add a backlink to our homepage which doesn't even mention the words "baby food". In some cases, the websites can have thousands of pages, each with this footer link appearing at the bottom of each page. My question is, could these backlinks potentially be seen as black hat or spam to a search engine? I.e. thousands of backlinks from websites that have no relevance in terms of content all linking back to my homepage? Thank you for reading and any advice would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Is it worth me considering a reciprocal linking request to my authority site ?
My web site is www.swimmer.co.uk it sells waterproof mp3 players & is the authority site in its niche I have no out going reciprocal links I don't have advertising or encourage reciprocal linking as I thought it may devalue the sites quality & link juice I have had a reciprocal link request from a swim wear based website called www.onlyswim.com that has a reciprocal linking sub-page with many varied links on it that are not just on the subject of swimming I don't think I will get any direct traffic from this website so I was wondering if ts worth me agreeing to a reciprocal link page I think we both have a PR of 2 **Any comments would be much appreciated ** In research to try & answer my own question I have just read this on wikipedia "Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process.Google and other search engines now do not give credit to reciprocal linking as it does not indicate genuine link popularity."
Link Building | | ChrisBIlly0 -
Are link exchanges bad for SEO these days? Also, is adding my site to free yet relevent directory sites a bad idea?
I operate a computer services company in Eugene, Oregon called "Eugene Computer Geeks". We do a lot of web design, and need incoming links to my site very badly. Lately I've been asking clients if they would link to me, but they almost always ask for a link in return. If we exchange links, does Google penalize my site? Would the incoming link be better for SEO if I'm not linking back to the other site? ALSO Is it possible that manually submitting my site to free, yet relevant web directories would hurt my rankings? It's not a big deal to me if it doesn't help my rankings, as I see a benefit to having my site listed, but wanted to make sure there wasn't a chance that it would hurt my rankings. As far as I know all the directories are free from SPAM, porn, warez, or anything like that. Thanks!
Link Building | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2 -
How do you find out what (and when) new websites are linking to your site?
I may be missing the obvious here, but is there any way (a programme or site) of seeing what new links come into your site? Obviously as anyone who works in SEO, I like to see which links we have got with the work we put in contacting webmasters, etc. But is there a better way than just manually looking through ALL the links? Any help will appreciated.
Link Building | | Weerdboil0