Microsite campaign good or bad idea for SERP

[Lifequotes]

I have a group of microsites for renters insurance, mostly geo long-tails.  I wrote some content and have a GREAT back-end through Kemper.  First 4 weeks they all did great.  It looks like Panda went through on June 25 and by the 27'th they got moved totally out of the SERP.  I have 67 microsites.  All have unique contact (about us, why us, benefits...).  I post to them often; not all of them but i put up about 10 new posts / week.  Havent done much SEO, no link building or anything that could be spammy or causeing trouble.  I have them in webmaster tools and no messages about problems.  If i've been penalized or if something is seriously wrong i'd like to know.  I know that Google can see 67 websites all on 1 ip but i'm not trying to fool or trick Gbot so not interested in using proxies or specialty hosts with many ip's.If there is no critical flaw, next i'm  just going to continue writing content, buy traffic, and build quality backlinks.  Your comments are appreciated.  Not one site is in top 1000 as far as i can see, and all were in top 30 by week 4.  Banned on week 5, today is week 12.http://onlinerentersinsurance.orgIf you want to see the other 66, click on the 'renters insurance' link on the right.  Its a random link through the micronetwork.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Thought I'd throw in my 2 cents and experience...

My experience: Built a network of about 50 microsites, SEOed them to the max, built some strong links to them and boom, week later was getting some real traffic. Time goes by, new algorithms released and the sites start to lose their rankings. In fact, the only thing they rank for is their EMD terms (which you don't have). Granted, you seem to have a better upkeep of them but the SERPs trend is not in your favor.

I agree with the others, you should focus on building 1 powerful site vs many microsites. Microsites were the shit back in the day several months back, but today its the big dogs that rank. First page results are filled with brands (usually multiple listings per domain) and microsites are trending down. Quality > quantity, for both links and sites.

My suggestion is to combine all those microsites into one super site that is most easily branded + contains all or a portion of your target keyword in the URL. Just copy/paste all the articles from the microsites to the one site and 301 redirect to the new respective pages.

Also, make sure you do a search before you jump to conclusions about keyword traffic. "life quotes" returns results about life related quotations. Trying to rank for insurance with that keyword is an uphill battle.

If you go through with the transferring all content to one site and 301ing the pages, be sure to post your results here!

Cheers,

Oleg

[Lifequotes]

Never mind Donnie,

It looks like you used Google keyword tool, exact...

[Lifequotes]

Hey Donnie,

I was reviewing your suggestions and have a quick question:  what is the number after the keyphrase you listed here:

online renters insurance - 210

Disability quotes - 480

consumer insurance guide - 58

life quotes - 301,000

renters insurance illinois - 46

e health insurance - 2,400

[Lifequotes]

Penguin bait?  We have a handful of professional writers in house putting up GREAT content at ConsumerInsuranceGuide.com,  and have done this before--successfully.  The last time we made this 'Penguin Bait' we sold it to QuinStreet for 16 million.  http://www.elliotsblog.com/insure-com-sells-for-16-million-7361  The value was in the 7,000 authorative articles and their respective pagerank and backlinks.  Like you say good content beats SEO every time.

Do you really think its 'penguin bait'????

What specifically (or generally) is wrong there??? Initially i wasnt posting question about ConsumerInsuranceGuide.com but now that you mention it i'm VERY interested--especially since we have several hundred thousand dollars spent there already on high-quality original content.

[EGOL]

I also own ConsumerInsuranceGuide.com and have 1000 articles published in many insurance verticals.  But I thought it was too vague.

I would call this Penguin bait.

I would attack this with one site, 20 articles that are best-on-the-web for their topic and all of my remaining resources would go into getting editorial links into those 20 articles.

If you are targeting "renters insurance in statename" then those articles would target the 20 states with highest renter value.   That might be units*household income.

These articles would not be yada yada yada renters insurance yada yada yada.  They would be kickass stories that people would link to and share on facebook.

[EGOL]

I work 8 minutes on all 300 sites and get as much done as most people can in 40 hours!

I know  that is efficient.  I use a similar method.  But  that is only good for the factory work part.  To win in this niche you gotta promote the site and have at least one page of great content on each domain.

You put one page of great content on each of your domains and I'll put all 300 on mine.  I am going to win.

When that is done you still have just 8 minutes per week to promote your sites and I still have 40 hours.

[Lifequotes]

Tell that to  Dick Portillo, millionaire owner of Portillo's hot dogs chain, one of the best in Chicago.  He makes more money than Jean and Georgettis (best steak house in Chicago).

Anyway, this rhetoric isnt helpful to any of us.  I'm looking for opinions based on working knowledge of microsite campaigning vs. single site.  Obviously your hunch is that a microsite is a 'losing battle'.  I get it.  Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

By the way, all 300 sites are build dynamically from 1 page of code using Wordpress as CMS.  I work 8 minutes on all 300 sites and get as much done as most people can in 40 hours!

[SEODinosaur]

@EGOL lol/lmao..  @lifeQuotes I would focus on one site and add the SEOmoz blog feed to your RSS for some ideas : )

It's challenging but not impossible.

[Lifequotes]

On the right nav (middle) if you click 'renters insurance' it randomly goes to one of the 67 live sites.  Click and look at the domain

[EGOL]

Anyway, i asked google for a list of the next 300 best 'renters insurance' keywords and bought ALL 300 exact-match domains.

speechless

These types of battles are not won in a factory.  They are won using content, smarts, and solid promotion.  The more competitive the niche the more solid promotion will be needed.

Your niche is pretty competitive.

You build your armada of hotdog stands and I'll build a single website.  I'll work 40 hours a week on my site and you work 8 minutes per week on each of your 300 sites.  I know that I am going to win.

One of the main strategies of battle is to "divide and conquer".  The hotdog stand  strategy plays to defeat.

=============

Full disclosure...  I used to own an armada of hotdog stands... then build a big site that kicked all of their asses - and their competitor's too!

[SEODinosaur]

I clicked on the renters insurance tab however I don't see the 67 links. However I see the quick links to instant quotes which link to external sites like lifequotes.com.

I've never really heard of a microsite campaign however in my opinion yes it's bad because it's spread out.

I do know that having a URL structure of www.brandname/keyword allows you to build a brand rather than a bunch of micropages. Google wants to rank sites that will help their users.

[SEODinosaur]

I see,

However these are not exact match domains.

An exact match domain must be exact:

If I wanted to rank for cars and I had cars.com or cars.net those would be exact.

These are you links...

• Auto Insurance
• Business Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• Health Insurance
• Home Insurance
• Renters Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Travel Insurance
• Long Term Care Insurance

These are your URLs:

online renters insurance - 210

Disability quotes - 480

consumer insurance guide - 58

life quotes - 301,000

renters insurance illinois - 46

e health insurance - 2,400

You have a gold URL out of all of these...

I would forget all the other URLs and invest all my time on lifequotes.com

You can still have lifequotes.com/auto-insurance and that counts as having the keyword in your URL. In fact Lifequote is your brand name in this case and all your anchored text which are [exact] will also look natural.

[Lifequotes]

Hey Donnie,

Duplicate content:  Thats just my footer (same in all 67).  Should i block that from the bot(s)???

Also:  the microsites were an effort to target long-tail keywords with exact-match domains.

OK:  blocked s of 4:30 pm 8-24.  I get a clean copyscape now

[SEODinosaur]

All have unique contact (about us, why us, benefits...).

Unique means exclusive one of a kind...

Type the URL you provided into: http://copyscape.com/ Seems like you have some duplicate content.

Also, I don't understand why you built soo many microsites.. You're better off having one quality website with all of the targeted keywords. It's easier to get ranking to a page that also has some Domain Authority.