Over-optimizing microniche site subpages for particular keywords - not good?

[markowe]

I am seeing some evidence that it is not a good idea to create microniche sites with individual pages for each keyword variant when they are overly repetitive.

For example I am targetting 'green widgets' and I create my site: greenwidgets.com. then I optimise the main page for 'green widgets', then I create some subpages:

'big green widgets'
'small green widgets'
'long green widgets'
'buying green widgets'
'green widget reviews'

i.e. the main keyword is in all the subpages (in link slug, content, H1 etc.)

I seem to have had trouble getting these sorts of site to rank lately, several don't seem to even surface from the 'sandbox'. I am wondering if this sniper-type approach has been overdone and this should be avoided, or do people think I should look for another explanation?

Mark

[auradev]

Its probably not that you have all those variations as pages, its probably that each page has text that is very similar to the other variations.

If each page has completely different text, then it should work. Also you'll need to build links to each page with anchor text that matches.