Network of 3000+ websites

[yosyos2004]

hi ,

early this year we started to build a network of financial websites.
there is 2 main sites we are aiming to be very big portals, and a network of 3000+ domains (keyword domain, each domain targets different keyword) that should rank for specific word.
the network is doing fine, the sites is getting nice ranking on google, but we have huge problem with the 2 major domains.

although that they are the source of all the content (usually original) that we spread all over our network, and the fact that they are getting hundreds of new links everyday from other financial portals all over the web.

the linking structure:
there are 2 kinds of links to our 2 portals :
1. we are spreading our content via rss to hundreds of other domains and getting links from inside the articles .
2. linking from our on network , on the footer of each site, we put link to our main site.

we suspect the source of the problem is that google marked our linking profile as unnatural .
the question is what we should do ?

should we take off all the internal links form our network to the main site in one phase ?

should we take them step by step

maybe we can try to speak to google via webmaster tool, and explain them that although most of our links, coming from our own network,
we are on the right side :) ?

please advice

Thank you .

[tedster]

Hello yosyos2004 and welcome to the forums.

I think you're right that it's your backlink profile. You're going to need to attract natural backlinks from high trust sites to get anywhere in the financial space. It sounds to me like your whole plan was built for Google rankings rather than to serve visitors - and that's not something Google likes very much.

I don't think you'll get anywhere with WebmasterTools communications either. Did your main domains ever rank well and then lose their rankings?

[yosyos2004]

no,
our whole plan was "totally white", we are investing thousands of dollars every month in order to create unique + quality content for our network. the idea behind the websites, is to create the most relevant website for each keyword! the link from the footer is for editorial reason only, "User that reads content a may also be interested in content on site b" and not for "seo" purpose.....

regards your question: as you understand, we are aiming for long tail, or even long long tail, we get every day couple of hundreds unique visitors from Google , most of them are searching for our "brand name" only very little amount is coming from long tail keywords. we never had good ranking for the "natural" keywords we are aiming too...
i suspect that from the very first moment, Google recognized us as a network and insert our 2 main sites into some kind of sandbox.

as you said we are trying to get as much natural links as possible, we are spreading our rss and get hundreds of new "good links" links every day.
the question right now is what to do with our "in network" links.
should we leave them as is , or get them all off in one phase ?

[tedster]

i suspect that from the very first moment, Google recognized us as a network and insert our 2 main sites into some kind of sandbox.

Did those sites used to get a lot more traffic?

[topr8]

>>our whole plan was "totally white"

saying it doesn't make it true!
FYI creating a network of 3,000 sites to link back to your main site for 'editorial' reasons is not whiter than white!

[koan]

we are investing thousands of dollars every month in order to create unique + quality content for our network

So that's, what, an average of a few dollars per site, most of it probably wasted on domain names instead of content. Doesn't sound like quality stuff to me and I think Google will smell it from a mile away too. Why not make one site?

Don't let tedster's famous diplomatic attitude fool you, when he says:

It sounds to me like your whole plan was built for Google rankings rather than to serve visitors

Someone less tactful would say: "your spammy stategy is not going to get you very far"

[Gorgwatcher]

Someone less tactful would say: "your spammy stategy is not going to get you very far"

saying it doesn't make it true!
FYI creating a network of 3,000 sites to link back to your main site for 'editorial' reasons is not whiter than white!

It sounds to me like your whole plan was built for Google rankings rather than to serve visitors

And who does not work for Google rankings?

People built sites with one purpose i.e. Business = profit maximization & this can be done only when your site is on top rankings in Google. So basically whoever is launching a website for doing business, WILL work for Google Rankings...

All websites are catering visitors need in one way or other . If you don't like a website,t hat doesn't mean that no one like that website.

Criticizing people, & doing nothing yourself, is becoming a new craze in SEO field. Show me your websites that are built for USERS and not for GOOGLE RANKINGS and then we will talk...

[koan]

The guy comes in with an expensive plan that might have worked 5-10 years ago but will probably waste all his money now, I think telling him the reality upfront is a great service for that person. All for free. We have nothing to gain here. Who knows who might have counseled him into doing this, maybe some out of touch so-called SEO "expert" who's just looking into testing his pet theories on his dime. That "expert" might even have told him it was "White hat SEO" because he heard that was the way to go while it is clearly not the case.

[lexipixel]

Criticizing people, & doing nothing yourself, is becoming a new craze in SEO field. Show me your websites that are built for USERS and not for GOOGLE RANKINGS and then we will talk
-Gorgwatcher

The trick is, and has always been to create content for users and to do so in a manner that will get you inbound links and thus build up decent rankings.

I suspect from your posts and screen name here that you are very new to webmastering (and SEO).

If you read more and type less, you may learn a few things.

there is 2 main sites we are aiming to be very big portals, and a network of 3000+ domains (keyword domain, each domain targets different keyword) that should rank for specific word.
-yosyos2004

"keyword domains" don't rank -- content does. I can show you examples of nonsense words domains where (certain pages on those domains) rank #1 for certain keywords -- because of the content.


Here's a few options / ideas:

PLAN A:
=======

1). put 2,999 of the 3,000 domains on the shelf and build one ultimate, fantastic financial portal using 100% of your best original, constantly updated content.

2). As your site develops and you start seeing a distinction between different types of visitor and the content they browse, consider branching off some of the content to a second site, (then 3rd, 4th, etc if you have the traffic and content to support it).

3). do everything 100% above board and totally white hat so there is no question in Google's or anyone else's mind that you are an authority and source of timely, topical, quality content in your field.


PLAN B:
=======

Spam up 3,000 websites with circular linking patterns, plaster them all with Adsense ads, and hope that enough pennies come in to make it worthwhile.

Put all the sites on the same server and share (1) IP Address between them all to save money.

Use automated scraping methods to get content, (e.g.- RSS feeds stripped of the original site's links, mixed fragements from multiple sources hodge-podged together to hit keywords, and have monkeys bang on keyboards).

... but, I'd go with "PLAN A"

[jecasc]

The problem is that your plan to boost your main 2 domains with a network of 3000 websites built for one keyword each stopped working several years ago. Keyword domains don't work so good anymore. Your SEO strategy is a little outdated, I am afraid.

[driller41]

Well Plan A will let you go to bed knowing you are the cutest little boy scout in the pack, unfortunatley google does not give a damn about your site and another version of Panda could easily wipe you out.

btw some of my keyworded domains are doing great.

[Gorgwatcher]

The trick is, and has always been to create content for users and to do so in a manner that will get you inbound links and thus build up decent rankings.

I suspect from your posts and screen name here that you are very new to webmastering (and SEO).

If you read more and type less, you may learn a few things.

yes i am new to seo IF new means doing SEO for dozens of website successfully with domains having million of UV per day,. anyway unlike some of SEOS, I prefer not to brag bout it in seo forums :)

plus please tell how will you write content for users? Infact how will you know that user is looking for this content? Have you written some content without doing keyword research, even basic research?

How will you get inbound links? Infact WHY DO YOU NEED INBOUND LINKS?

Strange but you are making my point very clear :)

[Planet13]

@ Gorgwatcher

All moral arguments aside, do you think that the strategy that the OP (yosyos2004) laid out is an effective strategy for ranking?

My "guess" is that instead of spending resources to get high quality links to two sites, they are now going to have to get links to the 3,000+ sites which point to the two sites.

However, I don't run a network of sites so I have no idea whether what will be required to make their network an effective strategy.

[yosyos2004]

hi ,
thank you for your posts.
tedster - no , they are getting around few hundreds unique per day, 150 direct, and the other coming from referrer links + google . 70% of traffic from google coming from various variation of our brand name and only 30% from long tail. the traffic is stable for the last 4-5 month , the problem is that traffic from google isn't growing !

regards our network , i am not sure that everybody understand what we are trying to do , and why from my opinion it's not spam , and should mark up as spam on google .
let me give you example lets say that i am have the domain stocks.com , and i am building there very big and quality portal about stocks . on the second hand i have 1000 websites about specific stocks , for example
googlestock.com
applestocks.com
yahoostock.com
ect ect ..
and on each on of them i am building very good site that give daily unique analyze about the specific stock, and off course i give quotes&charts of the specific stock and any other valuable information.
and on the footer, that is well designed i am putting nice space with the last 3 interesting articles on stocks.com , and writing there "for more information about stocks go to stocks.com "
beside the 1000+ links from the "stocks mini sites" the stocks.com is getting thousands of links from other sites that getting daily rss and give natural links back....

is it going to tag as spam on google ?

thank you

[netmeg]

I would think so.

[randle]

IMHO you have the right idea, but the wrong approach. The Long Tail is definitely where the battle for traffic is being fought these days.

In stead of this;

googlestock.com
applestocks.com
yahoostock.com

I would highly recommend this;

stocks.com/google
stocks.com/apple
stocks.com /yahoo

The real trick is to get all these pages crawled often enough, and if your doing it with 3,000 separate sites, thats going to be very challenging, and eventually you will be tempted to, well shall we say, visit the dark side of linking techniques.

At the end of the day, via separate domains, or pages on one domain, there all pages unto themselves. However, from a linking structure its more controllable to spread out from one domain, and I think the Google Traffic Gods will look more kindly on this approach as well.

[tedster]

To clarify my point, it's really about priority. The main motive behind any web business should be bringing your particular service or product to the public - and having something you believe in as better or different than the many alternatives that are available in every niche. Having that core offering is the top priority.

From there, of course you publish with the clearest possible signals that you can muster for Google and other search engines. But the problem many run into (and this network of domains in particular) is when those search engine signals take top priority and the rest of the actual offering is just TweedleDum joining all the TweedleDees that are already out there. There's no way I can see that a solid business concept "needs" 3000 exact match domains for proper execution.

More and more, Google is not pleased with the "SEO-first" approach, because it generates content farms and even spam networks - a flood of content that no one really needs or cares about. If your "SEO" approach mirrors those footprints, then you will be in trouble eventually, if not sooner.

[Panthro]

Maybe your main sites just need to out-compete your competitors' sites. You say the strategy seems to be working for the small sites, but not the two main sites. Do the two main sites cover broader topics than the network sites? If so, it's likely there is far more competition for Googlers making searches relating to those topics than the more specific topics that your smaller sites cover.

Maybe your link profile needs to be adjusted, but maybe your main sites just need to become more competitive irregardless of the link profile.

[HuskyPup]

is it going to tag as spam on google ?

Would seem so to me and a few others here therefore G's more than likely to take an interest in what you are doing.

Also quite a few of us here have been through all this before and experimented with it during the 90s and early 00s, it used to work however it's fairly pointless now.

A network of sites can work however it has to pass the sniff test and, as one last observation, I would have thought keeping 3,000 sites running smoothly would be a nightmare once quit a few pages have been uploaded to each site.

[graeme_p]

You claim to be producing analysis on 1,000 stocks. In my experience, producing anything worthwhile will take a team something like one team leader, two senior people, and a bunch of cheap but bright more junior people. Assuming you are getting them from a low labour cost country you MIGHT be able to do it for $10,000 a month. If you did it in the UK you would have to pay that just to the team leader.

If you are spending any less, I KNOW that you are publishing junk.

Add to that the cost of running another 2,000 sites, and there is no way you are doing anything worthwhile to visitors on thousands of dollars a month.

You can reduce the cost by licensing in the content (in which case it is unlikely to be unique) or by auto-generating (in which case its still junk).

Stuff like quotes and charts is not unique either AND it means you are competing head on against Google, Yahoo, MSN, CNN, Reuters and lots of other established sites.

If I am wrong sticky mail me some urls.

So given the combination of non-unique content in a competitive niche, plus possibly some low quality unique content, I think your SEO has been quite successful.

[walkman]

3000+ domains (keyword domain, each domain targets different keyword) that should rank for specific word.

That's spam and as soon as Google catches it all sites are gone. It's too obvious.

Edit: Google hates 'too perfect' things. AppleStock.com and all you have is info about one stock is not going to fly if you get flagged. I understand the 'unique content' but I also know that it's not easy to get it for 3000 sites. In short it's on very shaky grounds, it can disappear in one shot.
Your BEST bet would be to buy a decent domain and then, 301 AppleStock.com to www.topdomain.com/apple-stock-appl . If it's linked you can probably even get some exact domain match juice .

[edited by: walkman at 8:50 am (utc) on Jul 5, 2011]

[martinibuster]

Show me your websites that are built for USERS and not for GOOGLE RANKINGS and then we will talk...

Hey Gorgy, I sent you the URL. Here is what I have to say about that site.

Check out the source code. The description meta tag on the home page is there but the content of it is empty, I kid you not. That site is the least SEO'd site out there that is related to finance. Yet that site ranks for a ton of one word, two word, three word and longtail phrases. The pages that rank in the top ten for the one-word phrases don't even that that word in the keyword meta or meta description, much less in header tags or bolded or italicized. Quantcast estimates it receives a bit under a million visitors per month. And to frustrate the toolbar fanatics, it has a measly PR of 5.

Keyword in the domain is nice to have but I don't feel it's as important as the content plus a meaningful name that is easy to remember and type.

Returning to content, this is why I feel (based on my experience and observation) that the content is important. Useful content is easy to get free links to from sites that are the hardest to obtain links from, the ones that are as far from SEO/spam/professional webmaster nonsense as possible. In my experience, those links assist the good cause, regardless of the PageRank.

Gorgwatcher has a legitimate reason to be skeptical
I am not denying that there are crap sites ranking with crap links and crap content. There is a lot of nasty stuff ranking that shouldn't be there, sites with content that is grammatically wrong and with backlinks that are not legitimate citations. I think the algo needs improvement.

Gorgwatcher has a legitimate reason to be skeptical. There is a lot of crap ranking in Google with crap backlinks. I am only pointing out that this is not an absolute black and white issue. There is an alternative to what is currently working on the black hat side.

[nickreynolds]

I think I remember Mr Cutts saying a little while ago that they want people to focus on having one great site, not lots of little ones. Did i dream that?

[driller41]

They certainly want you to have one great site, in an ideal world i have no problem with that, but after all the updates including Panda I would question the wisdom of the one great site model.

[Gorgwatcher]

Hey Gorgy, I sent you the URL. Here is what I have to say about that site.

sorry i was busy in other stuff :)


This is an interesting and a real useful site but th point is you are still using title tag with keywords, H1 with keyword, H2 with keyword, keyword in url & you are also using related articles for internal linking. There is load of content on the website and you probably wrote this content after researching what people are looking for, what they re searching for.

when you are writing for obtaining links from other sites, you are actually doing SEO :)

The point, WHAT PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR, is the beginning of SEO.

I am not rand fishkin or danny Sullivan but sorry to say we have actually made a simple thing into a complex thing by using theoretical hypothesis, when we all know that by just sticking to basic SEO like structure and content and you will eventually get ranking.

There is no White hat or ethical seo, SEO is nothing but exploitation of a system. Google Algo is a system and we game it, exploit it by different approaches. So the question of white hat or ethical just not seems right.

Anyway sorry for the rambling but to me anyone who can get top ranking is a better seo than the one having hundred books on X number of strategies on data correlation and rankings :P

[walkman]

I think I remember Mr Cutts saying a little while ago that they want people to focus on having one great site, not lots of little ones. Did i dream that?

Yeah, so they drive you to bankruptcy faster by pandalizing that one site. Don't listen to it, have several but not connected sites.

There is no White hat or ethical seo, SEO is nothing but exploitation of a system. Google Algo is a system and we game it, exploit it by different approaches. So the question of white hat or ethical just not seems right.

If you have what the users want...

[nickreynolds]

@walkman - I agree with you. My problem is that I probably over-diversified, resulting in too many sites with not many pages but that were quite tightly targetted.

In the context of the OP though I think the 3000+ domains certainly goes against the grain of what Google say they want and so will be ineffective.

[martinibuster]

This is an interesting and a real useful site but th point is you are still using title tag with keywords, H1 with keyword, H2 with keyword, keyword in

Gorgwatcher,
1. That's not my site. It's a high ranking/high traffic site I know of that is not SEO'd.

2. Take a second look at the source code. The H1 tag is used in the OPPOSITE manner of SEO. That site is NOT using H1's with keywords in a meaningful manner for SEO. Take a look at the source code. Here are two examples (there are MANY more) of the non-SEO use of HTML of that high ranking site:

<h1>Top Articles</h1>
<h1>Thanks for commenting!</h1>

You consider that SEO? The use of header tags at that site is not for SEO, nor for creating a hierarchical structure of meaning. It is being used for decorative stylying purposes- which is the opposite of SEO.

The H1 is used in the titles of paragraphs, but they are not wrapping around SEO focused keyword phrases. Those H1's contain an element of the phrase but the rest of it is descriptive of the article. Which is the semi-correct use of it, not the SEO'd use of H1. If they had used it in the correct or even SEO manner, they would have one or two H1 tags, and the rest of those H1 paragraph tags should have been h2, h3, etc. But they did not, because the H1 is being used to style the words for users, not SEO.

Gorgwatcher, go back and take a second look because that is not an SEO'd site.

Show me your websites that are built for USERS and not for GOOGLE RANKINGS and then we will talk...

There are always an exceptions. I showed you a site that is built for users and not for Google rankings. It's not the only one.

[lucy24]

You consider that SEO? The use of header tags at that site is not for SEO, nor for creating a hierarchical structure of meaning. It is being used for decorative styling purposes- which is the opposite of SEO.

They've never heard of CSS?

[Planet13]

They've never heard of CSS?

Sure! That's one of them detective shows on television...

There are LOTS of table-based html sites still out there.