How to best utilize network of 50 sites to increase traffic on main site

[deuce1s]

Hey All,

First off I wanna thank everyone who has responded to all my previous questions! Love to see a community that is so willing to help those who are learning the ropes!

Anyways back to my point. We have a main site that is a PR 3 and our main focal point for lead generation.

We recently acquired 50 additional sites (all with a PR of 1-3) that we would like to use as our own little back linking campaign with. All the domains are completely relevant to our main site as well as specific pages within our main site.

I know that reciprocal links will get me no where and that google is quickly on to the attempted 3 way link exchange.

My question is how do I best link these 50 sites to not only maintain there own integrity and PR but also assist our main site.

Thanks All!

[deuce1s]

This should be fun... lol

Thanks for the advice!

[Dan-Petrovic]

My vote goes for 1) as it goes in line with Google's request for disclosure and it will contribute to your branding as well.

Best of luck!

[deuce1s]

Even if we have the 50 acquisition sites separated into 3 different hosting sources/companies and the main site hosted with a 4th? Damn google... Too smart.

We were considering one of two options:

1. Place our main sites brand on the acquisition sites so that the client knows that they are in our network. The majority of the sites have a geographical term (Canadian city, province etc) in the domain name so there shouldn't be any disconnect when hopping from that child site to our main URL and application hub. More than a warning.. a blatant disclosure

2. Brand each site individually.

Obviously there is tons more work with the latter option and not necessarily realistic give our current resources.

Pandora's box or not, I need to make a move... Oi

[Dan-Petrovic]

50 sites is enough to hurt your rankings if Google should detect a scheme (either by algorithm or manually). Without seeing details it's hard to say how high your risk is but I would refrain from exact match anchor text, heavy interlinking or anything that may be seen as blatant manipulation. If you're compelled to do something then I will share things I have seen and experienced, but cannot endorse or recommend as it's all pretty much greyhat:

I have seen examples of mini sites created on exact match domains and harvesting traffic that way sending it back to the main site. It's an effective exploit of Google's preference for showing brands for branded search, and almost not an SEO tactic as it's dead simple to achieve - however again it is a scheme.

Some webmasters use their microsites to offer links to naive webmasters and ask for links to your site in return. The odds are, you won't get any great link from that.

Another option comes to mind... if they have really good content I would move it to your main site and redirect these 50 domains to your main domain. Again, something Google might find suspicious, even though you did it for legitimate reasons.

Perhaps a safe way to link would be to provide a disclosure type statement on these sites advising that this site has been acquired by [you company name].

My overall judgement is - it's a pandora's box. I'd be scared opening it!