What to do with all my EMDs?

Build more backlinks to them, add more content, you can recover them with a lil work.

I like though the blog network idea.

madoctopus said:

Dilute your anchor texts and you'll be fine. Generally EMDs are hit because of anchor text over-optimization. Also if they are shitty 5-page thin sites that's a problem too. I have used EMDs since years ago and I'm still using EMDs and never had a single EMD get hit. But there are some particularities to SEO for EMDs vs. regular domains. EMDs are and will be the s#it forever. Problem is most people think only at the SEO aspect of them and in a messed up manner - they think if they have an EMD and put 5 pages on it to make a shitty, useless site that is a great strategy. It is not. A EMD is an opportunity to be bigger than others not a shortcut to mediocrity.

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Word! I'd like to add even my new emd's that are still being built that only have a few pages are still ranking good if not better after the update.

I'm hoping people start dumping them so I can grab some sweet money makers..

See if you sites still hold PR after the next PR update and does not get back anytime soon to their initial ranking, then you can use networks like backlinks.com to sell blogroll and contextual links on monthly basis. The way I work around this is I make sites on really competitive niches (like credit card) with unique design and about 10 quality articles. Wait for next PR update. You can achieve easily PR3 with such sites even if you don't do much backlinking (but it won't rank anywhere on SERPs. I don't put up any ads on it as well).

So once you achieve PR3 for homepage and some PR2 and PR1 on inner pages (its natural to get many PR2 inner pages), just apply for networks like backlinks.com (there are many others too like this). Add your site and get an editorial review for it. If you have a good design(unique design will help instead of a generic theme) and content without other ads, they will easily give you 4 stars out of 5. So thats our USP, once you get 4 stars then your site is more visible and you will start getting a lot of paid links from the network. I cap my links to 10 per page. This is easy work and you can get $20-$30 per site easily atleast with it. The sites that buy links on such sites are really the ones with high budget and they keep their subscription for months.....I would say I have many sites that are still with me since last year.

Cons: Google will reduce your PR in the next PR update to probably to PR2 for selling links. So always create one article per month and do some mild backlinking for PR and not ranking.

Pros: I receive a lot of guest posts as well on such sites from SEO agencies working for bigger clients like American Express. So once in a while I receive free guest posts as well as paid posts (I got $160 for a American Express campaign). Its natural to ask for atleast $100 from such agencies.

So this works well for me instead of adsense (in terms of money as compared to almost no traffic received by such sites). However you always risk your site PR in next update, so do some mild backlinking(your own private network can be a asset here) and content addition. A unique professional design is also your USP for SEO agency and backlinks.com