Network my local geographic sites or Not?

3 replies
  • SEO
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Due to privacy, I don't want to list the sites, but here I what I can tell you:

I have used Google keyword tool to find the most common search terms for this business in my local area. I then found some available domains that have the keywords in them. I bought 7 domains. They are all for the same industry and for the same geographic area.

I will be installing wordpress, and I have a plan for on site SEO and backlinks. My goals is to be the Google #1 listed site (or sites) for the search terms that target my geographic area. The goal is to generate leads that I can sell to businesses in my area that are in that particular industry. To that end, I wish to dominate the local market for the search terms I am targeting. Having all of my sites take up spots #1 through #7 in google would be good, if thats a viable strategy.

Questions:

should I set up each site independent of the others (so they would be competing with each other as well as the sites that are already out there)?
The sites would not link to each other and they would appear to be sites by different people (different themes or skins).

or

should I have one main site, and only a little content on each of the other sites, but they all point to the one main site (the one that targets the highest number of searches for that term) ?


I ask because option 1 will be a lot more work, and I am unsure if having all of my sites competing with each other could be counter-productive. Also, creating many backlinks to all 7 sites will be a lot of work/money/time.


I was wondering if option 2 would give me additional backlinking juice?
Option 2 also would require 1/7 as many backlinks as option 1.


Or, is there another strategy I should consider?
#geographic #local #network #sites
  • Profile picture of the author karakoram
    Wow, no one has an opinion?
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  • Profile picture of the author orvn
    Well, I think the reason no one has replied is because this is really a question of keyword competitiveness.

    Let me get this straight. You have seven sites in the same niche/industry, all Wordpress based and locally targeted.

    Option 1 = Cross linking all of the seven sites.
    Option 2 = Hub & spoke, with one central hub site and a series of smaller spoke sites linking back to it.

    If this is the case, I would generally suggest option 1, but this depends entirely on the competitiveness of your keywords. If they're very competitive, having all the spokes feed a single hub may be your best bet to get high rankings.

    Alternatively if the keywords are not so competitive, (which is probably the case considering it's a local niche you're targeting), I would suggest building all seven sites and dominating the rankings for a variety of keywords.

    So it comes down to a matter of checking the durability of your top competitors' backlinks.

    I do not understand why you think option 1 will be a lot more work than option 2: in both cases, you need to link build all the sites.

    Don't forget to cross link using keywords as anchor text!
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    Orun Bhuiyan[@orvn] [linkedin] See what I've been doing lately by visiting my marketing agency's site. SEOcial specializes in content marketing and integrated optimization. We create conversions for businesses by gracefully connecting the realms of design, development and marketing.

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  • Profile picture of the author karakoram
    I think option 1 would be more work because I would have to do SEO for all 7 sites, and have backlinks pointing to all 7 sites independently, as if I did not own all 7 sites.

    I put the thread here because this is the "SEO discussion forum", but maybe its in the wrong place?
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