Step by Step: Building a Niche Blog Network

[Sagar Mehta]

Hello Warriors,

A lot of Warriors have shared there techniques and I've learned a lot ever since I joined 2 years back. Thought I'd share something myself

Now, search engines are a great way of driving visitors to your website or blog. Organic traffic is NOT free though - you may not have to pay for it but you do have to WORK for it. Nonetheless, it is a GREAT way to send people to your site on a regular basis, once you get your sites up in the SERPS.

I'd like to share this little process I use to do just that: get my site to come up in top 10 results for my targeted keywords.

What I do is simply this: I build a "network" of say 2 or 3 blogs on a niche and link them to each other.

Before I begin, let me say that this is not the only method out there. This is just something that I've seen work myself and think would help at least someone out there. Plus, your results may vary

Ok, here's what I do:

Step 1:
The first step is, you guessed it, keyword research. The only tool I've ever used for keyword research is WordTracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool From Wordtracker

It's result may not come across as accurate but it gives you an idea of the search volume. You can also use AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool at: http://www.google.com/url?q=https://...rdToolExternal. But I don't like it as it doesn't show me the number of searches in figures.

So, I go on to wordtracker and enter the name of my niche or possible keywords my target market might use to search for a site like mine. That brings up a list of keyword phrases along with their search volume. I pick a keyword phrase and search for it at Google with and without quotes.
I usually pick keywords that have less than a million results without quotes and less than 500,000 results with quotes. I add all such keywords to my list.

Step 2:
Now I have a list of keywords that I want to target. I pick the top 2 or 3 keywords and look if I can get a domain name that contains that keyword phrase. I try adding hyphens at times - it never affected my search results. If I can find a domain, I buy it immediately.

Now this is not at all necessary. I've seen pages rank for keywords when they didn't even contain the keyword phrase in their domain name but it sure is a plus point to have it.

If you don't want to buy domains, you can always start up a blog at Blogger.com and WordPress.com. I prefer using my own domain and hosting because I'm a control freak: I want to control what shows up on my blog and what doesn't. Besides, WordPress.com doesnt let you post AdSense or other type of ads.

Step 3:
When I have my domains ready, I install WordPress on all of them. I simply prefer WordPress because I find it easy to install and use. Additionally, it's easy to optimize it using plugins and it lets me change the look and feel of my website using templates. So, I set up 2-3 WordPress blogs on my server. You can use other blogging platform if you like, or even static HTML pages if you're comfortable with that.

Step 4:
Next, I sit down to write my content. I write about 30 300-350 word blog posts for my blogs. I make sure at least one keyword phrase I chose appears in the title. Then, I pick other keyword phrases and put them in the body, making sure that they are part of the flow of the article.

Sometimes, I get keywords that don't quite fit a normal sentence. An example would be "motivation self understanding". When targeting that phrase, I make it a part of a sentence like this:

Through motivation, self understanding and blah blah blah. That does the trick

Step 5:
Now, I go on to post this content to my sites. I post 1 article on every blog in a day. When posting, I link a keyword phrase to one of my other blogs in the same niche. So, if you wrote a post that contained the phrase "gardening tips", you can link it to your blog on the other domain. This is simple backlink building via anchor text.

Step 6:
I install the All In One SEO plugin and make sure all my targeted keywords are put in it for every post.

Step 7:
Whenever I publish an article on my blogs, I ping it through Pingoat.com and Pingomatic.com. I also submit my feed to a lot of other sites. A good list is here: 45 Working Sites to Quickly Submit Your RSS Feeds

Step 8:
Using the Google Sitemap plugin for WordPress, I create a sitemap for all my blogs and submit it to Google via Google Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/).

Step 9:
You can track traffic using Google Analytics easily. I personally use the Google Analyticator plugin for WordPress as it lets you integrate Analytics very easily. GA also tells me which keywords people used to get to my site - pretty handy when you're targeting particular keywords.

As cliche as it sounds, I "rinse and repeat". To save time, I sometimes outsource the writing part. I like writing myself though, as it lets me add my own "voice" to the articles. When I run out of ideas for content, I try searching article directories and Google to help me out.

Hope this helps someone out there

Warmest Regards,
Sagar

[tommygadget]

That is a solid plan. Since it takes work, though, many will not bother with it.

TomG.

[Marhelper]

I agree. This is a solid plan and similar to what I have used to rank for keywords before. As was pointed out, the work may hinder some from trying it.

Originally Posted by tommygadget

That is a solid plan. Since it takes work, though, many will not bother with it.

TomG.

[SaSeoPete]

Hey Segar,

Cool plan. I do something pretty similar, except I try to post 3 articles a day on my blog in the first 2 weeks. One in the morning, afternoon and night. Usually after 3 weeks i start seeing 50+ uniques a day and it starts to rise very quickly after that.

Nice plan man!

[Sagar Mehta]

Tom, Mar: Thanks. Glad you liked it.

It's true this takes some work. It's not as "cool" as autoblogging stuff but it's still a way

I save a lot of time when I outsource the article writing part. One major benefit, in my opinion, of using this method is that there is no leak in traffic from author resource boxes etc., as in the some autoblogging methods. Nonetheless, every method has its place.

SaSeo: That's nice. I usually like to update daily for 10 days but sometimes do it all at the same time. Depends how much time I have available at hand

Sagar

[Adam Bshero]

You mentioned how to set up a blog, but how do you monetize it?

After all, what is the point of setting up a "blog empire" if you cannot make any money?

Clickbank products, adsense?

Post was great though.

[Sagar Mehta]

Adam,

Good point

Monetizing really depends on you and your niche.

If you were targeting a niche like "Poker", you can't put up AdSense as Google prohibits gambling ads. You would go for Poker products that pay an affiliate commission.

I prefer affiliate products because it makes more dollar per sale than AdSense does per click.

It's fairly simple to pick up products from Clickbank for your niche and AdSense can be added to. For AdSense, there are a number of plugins for WordPress.

Sagar

[Evita]

Great post, Sagar

Do you set up the blogs using same ip addy?

Evita

[Arunabh Singh]

Great Post.

I am sure this plan will work pretty well in the long term. You can almost dominate SERP's by implementing the plan.

I have a couple of questions though.

Do you host all your blogs on the same ip?

When you create more than one blog in the same niche, what you do - reciprocal linking or 3 way linking?

[Sagar Mehta]

Evita, Nunu - thanks for your kind words. Glad you liked it.

YES, all my domains are on the same IP. I have a hosting account at HostGator which I host them on. Never had a problem although I have heard it's good to host them on different IPs.

Sagar

[visual-propaganda]

Thanks, that was a very cool post. For someone like me (newbie) is is pure gold.

If I now only find someone, who can show me the nut's and bolts of Keyword Research

[MarkoD]

Now that's called a great plan. You've already earned my thanks.

[blakesmommy21]

This is fantastic! I'm somewhat a newb and I've never thought of creating a network of blogs. Sure makes sense though.

[Sagar Mehta]

Thanks Blake, Marko and VP. Hope this gets some brains twirling with ideas

I overlooked this question before:

Originally Posted by nunu

When you create more than one blog in the same niche, what you do - reciprocal linking or 3 way linking?

Reciprocal linking. If I have 3 blogs say A, B and C - all of them are linked to each other. That is, A to B & C, B to C & A and C to A & B.

It's hard to say how far it helps/harms search engine results but my blogs rank well even with reciprocal linking.

Someone asked for help with keyword research, here's a nice video I found:

YouTube - SEO Keyword Research Basics

Regards,
Sagar

[kcartlidge]

Originally Posted by Sagar Mehta

Reciprocal linking. If I have 3 blogs say A, B and C - all of them are linked to each other. That is, A to B & C, B to C & A and C to A & B.

I must admit to being a little surprised. Maybe I've just been unlucky but I have done this on a few occasions and testing showed that in my case I was penalised for linking between blogs that were not enough steps away from each other. So A->B->C->A was an issue, but A->B->C->D->E->A wasn't. Also, I found that having the same host penalised me, presumably because even if the IP is not identical the c-block often is and perhaps Google saw that as evidence of dodgy inter-linking.

If yours are getting listed fine then that's great. In these difficult economic times it may well be that as long as they are seen to act responsibly on occasion, the search engines are mercenary enough to let some things slide as they know our industry drives them quite a lot of ad revenue

[Sagar Mehta]

Kcart,

You know, sincerely, that is also what I knew myself that search engines penalize sites hosted on the same IP and that having reciprocal links is not too good SEO-wise. But I guess I have a case of results defy the wisdom then

One of my blog networks kind of dominates the top 10 results in Google, Yahoo and MSN for most of its keywords. They're all on the same IP (host) and have reciprocal links in many posts.

I'm not too sure why your sites are not ranking. With reciprocal links, I think they are given less weightage than one way links but penalizing for reciprocal links is something new to me too. Could it be because of high competition for your keywords? If sites you are competing with have more one way links, then they'll get preference over your sites which have reciprocal links. Sorry, I know I'm guessing wildly here...

Sagar

[kcartlidge]

It's all shooting in the dark until the day some uber-hacker gives us Google's source code (hopefully it's written in nice, clear Python).

As to my sites not ranking, I don't actually operate in that area of business currently (haven't for a while). When I did they ranked fine after I inserted another couple in the chain so that no two blogs were seperated by less than four others - which I wouldnt expect to make too much difference if it were down to keywords alone.

It's an easy business to get traction with, so if Google is a bit more lax about it than I felt at the time then who knows, I may yet dabble once more

[LegitBlogger]

That's a good one. Thanks. But a good way is to try to automate as many steps as possible, even getting the content to use on the blogs and posting them on the blogs.

[Sagar Mehta]

kcartlidge,

Google's source code? LOL. That'd be interesting to have

LegitBlogger: Yeah, automation IS good. As I mentioned in one of my posts above, this isn't as cool as auto-blogging

Nonetheless, my reason for doing it this way is to keep all that traffic to myself. Personally, I don't feel like having all those resource boxes on my blogs. But yes, if you're just starting out, it's a great way to build up a niche blog quickly without writing a word.

But hey, every method has it's place :-)

Sagar

[Kamran]

I think I understand what is the difference between the blog networks of kcartlidge an OP. kcartlidge, I guess u link between blogs using the blogroll where as the OP does it within the text of a post. Even I have noticed that, you can have lots of blog in the same host, there is no penalty if you write an article and have a link to one of your other blogs. These links are contextual. However, when I linked to other blogs in the same host using the blogroll, either it wasnt beneficial or it was penelized. So the key to successful blog network is contextual linking

[Paul Buckley]

Originally Posted by nunu

Great Post.

I am sure this plan will work pretty well in the long term. You can almost dominate SERP's by implementing the plan.

I have a couple of questions though.

Do you host all your blogs on the same ip?

When you create more than one blog in the same niche, what you do - reciprocal linking or 3 way linking?

Great plan. For SEO purposes it's good to have blogs on more than one IP address pointing to your money sites. I accomplish this by having several hosting accounts.