Microsite campaign good or bad idea for SERP
-
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.
-
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
-
Never mind Donnie,
It looks like you used Google keyword tool, exact...
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
-
@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.
-
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
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Meta-description issue in SERPs for different countries
I'm working with a US client on the SEO for their large ecommerce website, I'm working on it from the UK. We've now optimised several of the pages including updating the meta-descriptions etc. The problem is when I search on the keyword iin the UK I see the new updated version of the meta-description in SERPs results. BUT when my client searches on the same keyword in the US they're see the old version of the meta-description. Does any one have any idea why this is happening and how we can resolve it? Thanks Tanya
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TanyaKorteling0 -
Guest Posting Campaign For New Site
Hi looking at doing a large guest post campaign for a new site (no authority) of mine. In total the plan is to distribute 50 high quality articles to other blogs in the same vertical. The goal is to kick start my link building campaign doing this. However I know that Google has been slamming down on guest posts: http://searchengineland.com/guest-post-google-penalty-187707 AND https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/ What are some ways of doing guest posting and reducing the risk. Will keeping anchor-text brand based, be the best option? Kind Regards, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mikey0081 -
Possible for SERP appearance to change on a keyword?
Hi, We're currently working with a brand name which happens to be the name of a small town in the US (126 population). When Googling the brand / town name, there's a map on the right-hand side of the SERP. (Google Maps, with the town highlighted) We're based in Sweden, and this is even showing up on a search on the Swedish Google. I'm wondering; Is it possible for the map to "be removed" as our brand becomes more known? Does anyone have any similar experiences? Is it a better idea to just switch brand name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSTRANDELL0 -
Anyone know if seomaximus.com is good for linkbuilding
hi guys i find a service seomaximus.com want to know if anyone use it and if its good?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adulter0 -
Any ideas, what i'm doing wrong?
Hi, I have done alot of work over the past few weeks to fix errors but I seem to be slding down the rankings again! I have attached a screenshot of the competitive link analysis. The 2nd competitor along is pushing past me and I just can't see why. What steps should I take and what is the priority? Thanks, T23 auAMrVT.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tekton230 -
Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea
Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites. Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities. e.g. Stirling
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
Stirling paintball
Stirling Go Karting
Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns. At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive! Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit0 -
Any good recent guidelines on how to best configure Yoast SEO plugin?
Any good recent guidelines on how to best configure Yoast SEO plugin? I have it installed however there are a lot of settings that I am unsure of.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?
I had recently come across a meta tag that could cause a auto refresh on a users browser when implemented. I have been using it for a redesign and was curious if there could be any negative effects for using it, here is the code: All input is appreciated. Ciao, Todd Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichFinnSEO0