E-Commerce site and blogs
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We have e-Commerce site and an official blog to give advice about our products. This blog exists under our domain. Usually we build links directly to our site. Recently our ranking started going down. Also, we have been experiencing backlash for spam based on our link building (we are working on this, including a change of staff,but we cannot be sure that this will not happen again). This backlash has come through our social networking outlets (Facebook) in the form of very negative posts to our pages. One of our "SEOs" has devised a plan to use secondary blogs which we would start building links for. This blog would contain links back to our website. The idea is that the blog acts as a gate in a sense, in this way backlash is either posted on the blog or is directed at the blog. Also, we would be attempting to raise the page authority of these secondary blogs so in essence they act as high page authority links back to our website. The concern is that these secondary blogs may undermine the legitimacy of the official primary blog, which is still in its early stages as far as ranking and authority goes. Also, we are concerned that this technique would further undermine the legitimacy of the website itself by creating a larger "spam-like" presence, since visitors may see through the use of the secondary link through blogs.
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I can't remember where I saw the data, but the benefits of a link drop dramatically after the first few. So, spending all that time building links to a secondary blog that will only give you good juice on probably two links seems a waste of time. You would be better off buying a well established blog, drop a couple links to yourself, and continue to utilize it for its intended purpose.
If it were me, I would put that quality content with the products themselves, and work on getting them ranked. With a well designed page you should be able to convert these people for the phrases they searched. If additional help is needed, link out to it from this page, and not as a separate blog. It will benefit from the very relevant link on your own site, and you can continue to build links to it if its a popular search phrase.
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