Link building strategy - black hat or white hat?
-
I have a competitor who always ranks very on alot keywords relevant to our business and using Open Site Explorer I note they have a tremendous amount of links. I also noticed that it appears their web company has gone out and set up numerous websites with relevant content, and then have linked back to the competitors main site. Is this kosher? I ask because before I settled on my current domain name, I purchased several keyword rich domain names; should I be thinking of setting up websites with relevant (and original) content and link back to my main site?
-
We've seen a great potential here with some of our projects' competitors and are also thinking that there's a point to go for this strategy ... as long as you're not promoting one site that then links to your main site, but use your satellite sites to promote the main site, I believe there's a good potential.
-
I would agree but I'd add a limit to how many satellite sites you create. Google is a registrar and they could possibly find out about these sites. So don't use this as your main link strategy by any means. We usually create 4-5 satellite sites (wordpress blogs) and do what the above poster suggested.
-
That depends on your time and resources to build and market them - better to go with a solid single one then 10 weak ones.
Best scenario is 10+ solid ones
-
great advice, how many satellite sites would you recommend?
10 or so?
-
Thanks everyone for the answers; they were all extremely helpful.
-
Its all natural to me, I think that a white hat, gray hat or black hat depends on the intention of the webmaster. If those micro sites don't encroach on any google guidelines then it is okay. ^_^
-
Not black hat, but on the other hand, perhaps not worth it - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-microsite-mistake
But if you go for it, then eyepaq has a lot of good advice.
-
I am doing the same thing for several projects. If done with extra care there is nothing wrong with it.
There is no black and white hat seo - there are no clear rules - we're all cowboys.
There is nothing white with anything we do - [natural links] is ... white - and that is not sustained by anyone - it's just natural - it happens. If you have the best site ever you don't need SEO to improve the traffic and make it look natural as you force it
If you have good domains you can build quality content sites and use a solid and not aggressive link building techniques to your main site. You must however host those satellite domains on different hosting accounts (different IPs).
In my opinion this strategy works and works great. It will give you more options in the Search results, options that you can control and it will rise your main domain because of the links that will point to this domain.
However is time consuming as you need to do SEO sessions for each satellite but is worth it, especially if you have great domain names for those satellites websites.
There are a few things you should consider (again, this is just a suggestion):
1. Don't host the satellites on the same IP class.
2. Don't use one page / Landing page and link to your main domain.
3. Treat them as independent projects with separate accounts on Social networks, blogs, submit articles to digg or whatever in each site name.
4. Build links to those satellites - you can risk some shady techniques as the risk is not as high as with the main brand.
5. Don't place junk or duplicate content but if you do make sure it's from your competitor as maybe you will outrank them in the future - just kidding on the last part... or not ?
I don't think this technique can be called spam if you do build good content sites on those satellites and use the juice to boost your main brand.
-
I would certainly rate this strategy as grey if not black and avoid it. This is one of the area in search marketing where lot of sites tend to get away with but may soon face consequences. SEO / Link building companies mainly located overseas rely on this technique heavily.
It is definitely painful and unfair when a competitor with spam links ranks well for highly competitive keywords set while a professional SEO spends months working hard playing the clean game. However, the reward from white hat is unmatched.
One last thing that I would like to point out is links from website hosted on the same IP blocks are less valuable links from different IP blocks. This is same as the domain diversity concept.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Link Building
Hi Mozzers, I work for an IT company specialising in outsourcing Cisco Engineers worldwide. Due to being involved heavily in outsourcing, I'm finding it impossible to generate genuine and organic links to our website. My question is that is it essential to have back links back to our website to achieve high search engine rankings? I'm unable to get clients and other partners to provide links as we're the outsourced company,but I can get backlinks from unrelated c ompanies. For example we're running a CSR initiative with a National Gym relating to health & fitness, also links from our web designers etc... Do these links have any type of value? Any help and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Jason 🙂
Link Building | | 4Cornernetworks0 -
Link building for a non-linkable site?
Hello, I am trying to zone in on a link building strategy for a non-linkable site. What I mean by non-linkable is I have a construction site. It's a family owned and operated small business. Our clients are farmers and older people usually. We go do a job, do it right the first time, and leave. Basically even if a couple of people who link to me for some weird reason, this is no way in the realm of 6,000 that my main competition has. I have tried to get as many quality citation resources as possible by using get listed, and white spark. My domain authority is only 16 though, so I must be able to increase this somehow. I have listed with Google +, Bing, Yahoo and every other major citation I could find. So now with trying too increase links with other ideas. I read somewhere to donate to charitable organizations, but if they link back to me as a donor, in an unrelated field, isn't that spammy like? So a construction site donating to a disease website, and then getting a backlink in return, does that look weird. It just seems like there are so many rules that I do not want to mess something up. I do not want get spammy links, but not sure if citations count as links so I am doing a win-win thing? Thanks for any tips Chris
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
Do you stop link building once you have your desired rank?
So with all these updates hitting sites left, right and center. Now you have your desired rank on Google, do you stop link building for that project? I can see some positives in this You will not add links that will get hit by future updates. If you do get hit in future updates you have less links to remove. Obviously it an outstanding link came along from BBC or CNN you would go for that. But press releases etc would you now stop anything like that?
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
How do you put together a link building strategy?
I know after all the Google changes link building is different than it used to be. How do I put a link building strategy together that I can understand and follow? I have fixed most of the crawl errors and my site is still low on the search for most of my targeted keywords. Is link building the answer? Or are there other options I'm missing?
Link Building | | JHSpecialty0 -
What are your favorite link building tools?
I know there are a bunch out there, but I'd love to hear your guys thoughts. The more tools you post, and the more unknown they are (i.e. everyone knows OSE, Raven Tools, Buzzstream, Ontolo, etc.), the more I'd love the answer. Also, it doesn't have to be a comprehensive tool. Even if it's a bookmarklet, or something that solves one specific tedious task, I'd love to hear about it! 🙂
Link Building | | pointblankseo0 -
Best way to create deep links - Building links to inner pages
I am looking for a cost effective way to rank 30 inner pages, which are all low competition, long tail keywords. What type of links are the best for this type of project, social bookmarks, article marketing, high pr links, etc.... Also who would be good to hire for this type of project?
Link Building | | newcitymoving0 -
What are some of your best tips, strategies or resources for link building?
I currently work for a contract manufacturing company so when I think about building links it seems as if it's going to be a daunting task. Mainly because any kind of content that you can come up with is rather dry. When I go about searching for links I usually run into a lot of directories that charge anywhere between $25-$50 for a listing. I've had a hard time convincing marketing that we should start a blog which may be a good way to build some links if we come up with quality posts but those posts may be few and far inbetween. Does anybody have any recommendations for building links for this type of company or subject matter? Also, and I'm sure we have all heard this. When I mentioned the fact that we should be building some quality links to the site marketing first asked why and then commented "Well that shouldn't take you too long". Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
Link Building | | TRICORSystems0 -
Where did the link building section go?
Used to be a section on link building before the redesign. Where did it go?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0