SEO, Social Media & eCommerce Talk @RTMLWise

Some time back I was consulting for a website for optimization. As it often happens we learn more from our clients while consulting. In this case I was profoundly impressed with their home grown SEO techniques. Not that they are flawless but nevertheless important techniques which you can try with variations.

Multiple blogs to support your website

This is a fantastic way to build links to your main website. There are many free blogging sites and setting up a blog is easy and fun. Search engines do not differentiate between paid blogging sites and free sites. So, where is the catch? You need content to fill into these blogs and that’s where you are likely to hit a wall. The best way is to engage freelance writers who can write decently. This can cost a bit and that’s why I call it strong arm SEO tactics. What you should do is calculate the cost of the entire process. I would say that you need at least five blogs to be effective. Making one blog entry a day for each of the blogs would work well. One major issue is the time frame. How long should you continue feeding your blogs to achieve critical mass? What happen once you stop making blog entries? This is something which needs some research. Probably, you can space out the blog posts after some time so that the blogs are alive and attract search engines thereby keeping the links alive.

Another issue which you need to consider is the human factor. Are these blogs only meant for search engines? Since you are providing links back to your main site, it would be ideal if you have something interesting to say on these blogs as well. By doing this you can divert real traffic to your site.

Multiple sister sites to link to your main website

This works the same way as the blogs .But here you have to pay and register the site and then get it developed. Obviously this is much more costly than setting up a blog. I was actually shocked when my client who I mentioned earlier told me that they have 500 sister websites to feed their main site. Now this is sheer brute force and cost a packet. What about creating several landing pages with marketing material? The problem here is that search engines give least weightage to sites with low content and the links will be of low value. But more than 10 websites would add up to considerable optimization even if individual contribution is low. By optimizing your main site and then adding sister sites would eventually lead to better search engine ranking. Ideally sister sites should have multiple pages with adequate content. If you are selling a product, every sister site may even act as an affiliate. The added advantage is that visitors to the sites would think of you as a big player. By registering with Clickbank , you can create a complete affiliate ecosystem which would attract search engines like a magnet. The process of creating sister websites needs some thought and perseverance. You really don’t need 500 sites to get there on top of the first page.

Chain link building

Another variation of link building is chain links. For example if you have ten sister sites, you can chain link them in a way that each preceding site links to the next in a chain. This means there would not be any reciprocal links. Search engines would therefore not nullify the effect of these links. But doing this would mean one effective link to the main site. One can try and include three websites in a chain with many such clusters, all having the main site. Remember what I mentioned at the beginning of the post. These are strong arm tactics which may cost a lot of money and initiative. Then why am I recommending this? Sometime competition for some keywords is so fierce that normal ways do not work. This is where you must resort to brute force. In such cases even small things matter. Time is another big constraint if you want to build organic growth. Unfortunately not everyone has the patience to wait.

You must appreciate that search engines have to crawl through billions of pages. Any changes you make to the website would probably take a while before taking effect. Some clients just don’t want to wait – they want results yesterday. When cost is not the main criteria, one can resort to the strong arm tactics I have mentioned in this post. By this you can quickly build up critical mass. You can always follow traditional methods as you go along. With time your effort on maintaining sister sites and blogs can be reduced as your other SEO techniques take a firm hold.