Creating a Topical Web site Network

Creating a Topical Web site Network

Note: This is an advanced SEO technique most webmasters do not need to do.

With how many pages there are on the web, quality will usually win over quantity. With that being said, sometimes it will make sense to have multiple, similar websites covering slightly different topics. Doing this can help you create topically authoritative inbound links to different sites in your network and give you a multi-branded approach to marketing.

However, you want to make sure your sites are all different and unique. If your sites are extremely similar, then your sites may receive a spam penalty or have the nepotistic link popularity discounted. Even worse is that if you interlink them all, then all of your sites could get penalized at the same time.

Those using strong brands and good ideas can usually do well without creating a topical network. If you create a topical network expressly to deceive search engines, then you are taking a risk and your sites may get removed from the search indexes. In addition, some search engine relevancy algorithms, such as Google’s current algorithm, tend to favor one authoritative domain over using many smaller similar domains.

Many of the more aggressive techniques are used by people who create crash-and burn-domain names. They use a site until it gets penalized and then use a new one. They actually start building up multiple other sites and networks before the first even gets penalized. If your brand and domain name are important to you, then make sure you use caution to protect them.

How you wrap/package/sell the content is important. Many blog networks seem to be able to get away with murder right now because they are called a blog network. Other publishers that have tried similar network approaches have got banned for it. Over time, how blogs are treated may change though, and any way you slice it, you still need to get links from outside your network.

Keep the following in mind when developing a website network:

●     Make unique sites. Make sure each site is unique enough that it can stand on its own merit.

●     Only cross link the sites where it is logical. Blogs being part of a blog network might be considered legitimate cross-linking if it does not look like it was primarily done to spam the engines.

●     Use various hosts. This way, if any of your sites go down, not all of your sites are down. Also, some search algorithms can devalue links that come from sites hosted on the same C block IP address. Some hosts also provide random C block IP addresses for each of your sites for a rather reasonable price on a single account.

•       Get inbound links from external sources. Register your sites with directories and other topical sites to make sure you have plenty of inbound links into your link network. This will help prevent your sites from looking like an isolated island or link farm.

•       Use various link sources. Each of your sites should have many unique link sources outside of your network.

•       Do not interlink hundreds of domains together unless you are actively trying to get penalized.

•       If you are creating and interlinking sites exclusively for the reason to manipulate search results, then you stand a good chance to eventually be penalized.

•       You probably do not want to use the same WHOIS data on a large number of sites if the sites are made with deceptive intent. Additionally, you may want to register sites at a variety of registrars so that there is no discernible pattern. If you register a ton of your domains via proxy and cross link them, that too can look somewhat suspicious.