Creating mini-sites to funnel traffic into Main Site

[mkbowers99]

After the recent EMD update, my main site got fucked by G. After many unsuccessful tries, I still cant get any traffic into the main site. While brainstorming, I came up with this strategy and was wondering if the wise men here would care to comment:
1. Build mini-sites and rank them separately. These would funnel the traffic to main site.
Advantages: If one mini-site gets fucked by G, no problem, build another one. Flexibility to go after many different keywords and get LOADS of traffic.
Disadvantages: G sees this as a pathetic attempt to build a private blog network and deindexes the whole shebang including main site.

 

[davids355]

Are you talking about a 301 redirect to the main site after you rank it ?

If so, google would probably catch on pretty quick, unless you have the sites on separate hosting...

 

[mkbowers99]

Are you talking about a 301 redirect to the main site after you rank it ?

If so, google would probably catch on pretty quick, unless you have the sites on separate hosting...

No, no. These would have buttons like Click here with the main site's URL. Think of them like pre-sales pages. I think a similar thing is done in affiliate websites but the only difference would be that these would be all managed by me and are on the same hosting account.

 

[Autumn]

That's a pretty common technique which a lot of people call "feeder sites."

Works great as long as each feeder site stands on it's own merits and has solid backlinks. I would spread them out over several registrars, hosts, different whois, different templates info etc. to make it look more natural and don't interlink them, or interlink them very minimally.

You might want to consider making your ad links to your main site javascript or otherwise obfuscating them from SE bots to further hide the fact that you're only building these sites to drive traffic to your main site.

 

[studly]

This is a pretty good idea. But would it work with free domains

 

[Douffy]

This will work but I would suggest adding something on the feeder sites to hook visitors interest or your visitor visit time duration will be low which could impact on perceived feeder site quality in the longer term via serps. Interlink from home to deeper pages so traffic does not appear to have bounced or only visited one page.

Don't link the main sites analytics to the feeder sites and don't place more than 5 feeder sites per analytics account presuming of course you use this. Preferably less.

Do wp themes for feeder sites and something else for main site for example. Vary the themes per feeder and don't target more than say 60 kws per feeder. Dragging php into the mix too offers more diversity which is great for directory sites. Directory sites if properly implemented are perfect for localised kws; 'XYZ Service Texas', 'XYZ Service London' etc.

Do all the simple stuff on the feeders; site map, privacy policy, legal disclaimer, terms of service, contact us etc. Don't make the feeder sites too thin, the days of four page mini sites achieving long term ranking appear to have gone.

Banners ads on the feeder sites with text within images along the lines of 'click here for ....' but don't do as straight text.

Once operational still continue to do SEO for both the feeder and the main site where your own domains are competing against each other. Depending upon the competition of the kws in question, 3 - 9 months from now you should be where you want to be.

If the potential revenue stream from the main site warrants it I would suggest 10 feeder sites so each is only responsible for 10% of the kws targeted and keep the kw grouping tight for each of the feeders as the association of similar kws will help in this laser targeted approach. Once one falters or you come up with another idea to drive more traffic, roll the dice again so you continue to dilute the impact that one domain has on your traffic in case you come a cropper again.

Don't do anything silly or try to be cute like linking one feeder site to another or content duplication. For the work involved it is not worth the risk.

But.......
before doing anything, I would undertake due diligence on the original main site to see if it warrants this kiss of life as sometimes you are simply flogging a dead horse. Often you are better to move on as it can be quicker to achieve the desired objectives with a new site and the fresh domain has not been jaundiced by the historical grey/black tactics that got you penalised in the first place. Not judging, I'm trying to be helpful here

Good luck.

 

[mkbowers99]

Exactly what I was looking for! Do you think if it would hurt if all domains were on the same shared hosting? Right now, I am going to be starting with 3 feeder sites and going from there depending on how much money I make. Also, I totally understand what you are saying about flogging a dead horse but the thing is, I already did the whole new domain crap after I got unnatural links email in May and then I got busted for EMD/Panda/Penguin. Kinda sick of moving onto new domains everyime G nails me plus this is something which is brandable and customers dont appreciate me changing the name every 3 months. Will start taking action on your advice Sir!

 

[seowarrior008]

My question is if these mini sites could bring traffic through its on page links, like click here...., to your main website, once they are ranked high? or these high ranked mini website could raise the main website ranking as well, then more traffic to the main website??

 

[KHer0]

My question is if these mini sites could bring traffic through its on page links, like click here...., to your main website, once they are ranked high? or these high ranked mini website could raise the main website ranking as well, then more traffic to the main website??

It does both. It's actually pretty old method but you just keep developing it

These sites serve as a traffic funnel as you send people from there to the main site. And they are easy to rank as they are mainly compete in long tail ( low competition ) keywords.

It also plays it's rule as a great backlink resource. You have ranked site backlinking to your site. I had seen great effects of this. But don't forget the cost of the domain and hosting ....etc.

To conclude, The success of this method depends on how good your feeders will be

 

[audioguy]

Now your disadvantage can be prevented by spreading your domains through multiple hosting services. It is very common practice. Use custom templates for each one. Leave no footprint.

Then all there is left are advantages.

 

[thetermy]

I do this with 40 domains. All in the same analytics. All same registrar and all same c-class hosting package.

The secret is to have 40 sites worth looking at. Don't make feeder sites, make each site a main site. Google loves good content, who cares if the same owner makes all the content?

 

[infoasian]

No need to spend money on domains and hosting. Just use worpress, blogger or tumblr.

 

[Douffy]

On the hosting side of things I have read, as it sounds like you have too, that hosting should all be kept separate. I have not seen anything negative on shared hosting that implies that it needs to be split, this does not 101% mean it is safe either in this wobbley world of ours. It sounds to me like you are trying to build something for the long term here and are fed up with messing around with it. On that basis, for the price of hosting, I would say place the three feeders on separate hosting to the main.

You are correct with your comments in relation to customer continuity as you run the risk of losing them if you keep changing domain names.

In the same time period you are talking about, the most important kw on a site of mine got slapped from google serps 15 to back end of nowhere and it had taken months to get it there too. I mean this url is so far away from ever ranking again that there is more likelihood of finding rocking horse sh*t than this ever ranking again but I wanted to keep the domain as it was ranking for numerous other kws. I created a new url for the slapped kw and inserted an additional 's' at the end of the kw and then commenced SEO again on this variation. This is now ranking higher than the original url so there are other ways around this. If you have made a decision to stick with a domain then there is no harm in creating a new url for one of these slapped kws and seeing how you get on. A few months from now if you can see it is starting to rank you can repeat the process for the additional kws placing the new url in the site map.

I have just seen the post by thetermy and what is stated is my perception too. Don't build thin, weak feeder sites, make them all stand on their own two feet through quality and unique content. I am not so sure I would be as equally bold and confident with this level of shared hosting myself, but if success if being achieved by this without hindrance, my personal theories on hosting amount to nothing if in practice it has proven to work.

 

[jascoken]

I've been doing this effectively for years now. I had one sector last year that had a main brand site and nearly 200 feeder sites, all providing lead-gen for the main site. None of mine actually directly linked to the main site though to avoid any issues, (plus I wasn't doing it for ranking purposes); they all fed to a google 'non-indexed/blocked' site that acted as a lead collector for the brand site. I wanted to protect the brand site above all.

The entire objective was the attacking of thousands of long-tails via separate domains; with each long-tail being targeted by at least 1 page on 10-20 of the sites, so in effect, trying for 10-20 ranking pages for each longtail.

Each site had around 300-600 pages built out from a large database of massive UberCubez (huge hyper-spun constructs of high quality).

I had over 900 good terms that were ranking with multiple page 1 entries. You also hopefully end up with 10 in the top 30-50, so you have pages 'close' to the top, ready for a 'push' to replace any lost higher ranking pages.

 

[Douffy]

jascoken. I am interested in this high quality autospun content you refer to. What did you do with this scrape loads of articles by kw then auto spin synonyms and auto post back to site. A link would be useful if this was a tool that you purchased as this tool type saves a lot of effort.

That was a very intensive project you undertook of a lot of grunt work. Bravo for the dedication.

 

[jascoken]

jascoken. I am interested in this high quality autospun content you refer to. What did you do with this scrape loads of articles by kw then auto spin synonyms and auto post back to site. A link would be useful if this was a tool that you purchased as this tool type saves a lot of effort.

That was a very intensive project you undertook of a lot of grunt work. Bravo for the dedication.

take a look at:

http://www.ubertoolz.com/UberCubezCreation.html

UberCubez are hyper-spun constructs that take some time and effort to build to achieve the quality you need, but provide billions of permutations. They're not auto-spun/scraped/auto-produced low quality content; that's why they're successful as network/site building content.

I've built several large networks (250+ sites each) and MANY smaller networks utilising our own bespoke network creation software (not for sale or license - sorry). All our content comes from around 400 UberCubez we've built over the last 4-5 years. You could do this for yourself on a smaller scale, but I do own an SEO company and a software house, so I have access to a lot more resources than the average IM'er; just making the point that its not quick and easy!

 

[aka sam]

After the recent EMD update, my main site got fucked by G. After many unsuccessful tries, I still cant get any traffic into the main site. While brainstorming, I came up with this strategy and was wondering if the wise men here would care to comment:
1. Build mini-sites and rank them separately. These would funnel the traffic to main site.
Advantages: If one mini-site gets fucked by G, no problem, build another one. Flexibility to go after many different keywords and get LOADS of traffic.
Disadvantages: G sees this as a pathetic attempt to build a private blog network and deindexes the whole shebang including main site.

The idea is quite good and common.

The best way to put this into practice is ...Make some 15-20 web 2.0 blog and put real informative content on each of them and then target different keywords though them...and use them as a passing authority to your site ....

 

[Duxx]

After the recent EMD update, my main site got fucked by G. After many unsuccessful tries, I still cant get any traffic into the main site. While brainstorming, I came up with this strategy and was wondering if the wise men here would care to comment:
1. Build mini-sites and rank them separately. These would funnel the traffic to main site.
Advantages: If one mini-site gets fucked by G, no problem, build another one. Flexibility to go after many different keywords and get LOADS of traffic.
Disadvantages: G sees this as a pathetic attempt to build a private blog network and deindexes the whole shebang including main site.

Hi did you continue using this strategy?. Seems pretty good