1 to Many, or Many to 1 Content Distribution

[julian]

Ok, As SEO incarnate it hurts my pride to ask for help :grin: but I know my limitations and on this issue really I'm not really sure how distribution of content effects long term seo..

Say you have 10 established review/news sites in serps:

dishwasher news and reviews, fridge reviews, kettle reviews etc, etc

..you also have newish mega review site e.g. mega-reviews.com that you really want to push as the 'go to' place but still maintain the 10 established sites.

Option A.
So you have your latest 10 news/reviews and obviously it would be easier to manage and update just mega-reviews.com and let the smaller dedicated site pull the new reviews in - but not sure this is great.

Option B.
You update each dedicated site as normal and pull the news/reviews into mega-reviews.com - does this effect the dedicated sites, very time consuming..

Option C.
You write reviews for both - this is not practical solution in this instance

 

[cc976a]

Depends if your looking at this from a SEO point of view of other types of PR / Marketing or Advertising to drive traffic.

If SEO - then C

If PR / Marketing / Advertising - then A or B (I'd go for A)

 

[Murray]

You don't want to duplicate your content anywhere.

It would be the best SEO wise if you merged all your sites into one mega site and redirected all the smaller sites pages to their respective pages on the new site.

Though having all your eggs in one basket has it own obvious potential downfalls..

If you don't feel you have the time/resources to run a new unique review site alongside your 10 established review sites, then don't do it?.

 

[julian]

thanks guys..

So if we don't care about the serp hit on 'Mega-Reviews.com' in any way and it pulled perhaps just an excerpt and title of an article with a link straight back to dedicated site - would it effect those smaller sites that contain the full article as dupe content... seems to me it's impossible to know without trying.

The thing is you can't rewrite some of these news/articles even if you wanted to because of their nature and publish twice (which is the ideal solution) - it would be useful to bring them all together into one place that's all.

 

[Murray]

thanks guys..

So if we don't care about the serp hit on 'Mega-Reviews.com' in any way and it pulled perhaps just an excerpt and title of an article with a link straight back to dedicated site - would it effect those smaller sites that contain the full article as dupe content... seems to me it's impossible to know without trying.

The thing is you can't rewrite some of these news/articles even if you wanted to because of their nature and publish twice (which is the ideal solution) - it would be useful to bring them all together into one place that's all.

If you don't care about rankings at all, then just do a snippet and link back to the corresponding niche review site as you say, wouldn't cause a problem, I would make the links out nofollow though.

I wouldn't link to it from your other sites unless they were nofollow also.

If it's just one big thin site + what is on it is duplicate content, google wont look kindly on it, then if you start interlinking all these sites then it could potentially start looking like a manipulative network and you could get into a bit of a mess.

If you're going to work hard on this new site though then it seems a shame to tie your hands and make something that wont be ranking in google at all.

 

[Edwin]

Would it be possible to get a "custom summary" of each article drafted for the megasite i.e. each article is headline+summary+custom summary+body (headline goes on both sites, summary goes on the mini site, custom summary goes on the main site, body goes on the mini site)

That way you're killing 1.5 birds with 1 stone, and you're less likely to suffer duplicate penalties.

Also worth noting that it gradually becomes safer and safer to interlink sites the more high-quality links you build to each of them that are not duplicated. In other words, if you have the following:

external site A links to X, Y and Z sites on your network
external site B links to W, Y and Z sites on your network

it's not nearly as good as:

external sites A and B link to X site on your network
external sites C and D link to Y site on your network
external sites E and F link to Z site on your network

In other words, the more each site stands on its own feet incoming link-wise, the safer it becomes to do a bit of judicious interlinking with other sites.

For example, if A B C D E and F are all independently well-promoted minisites, and G is your main site, you could probably get away with linking certain categories on each of A, B, C, D, E and F to the corresponding categories on the main G site.

Whatever you do, don't make it a 2-way relationship i.e. don't link OUT from your main site to the mini sites, because that's the very definition of a link network!

 

[Murray]

Also worth noting that it gradually becomes safer and safer to interlink sites the more high-quality links you build to each of them that are not duplicated. In other words, if you have the following:

Walking a very fine line.

My feeling is, once you do something manipulative enough to make a real difference, that is when it becomes an obvious manipulation.

If you're getting quality links from elsewhere and interlinking your sites extremely sparingly and subtle then it wouldn't make too much of a difference anyway, then it gets to be there's no point taking the risk.

So it's either, do it gently enough that is doesn't make much difference, or do it so much it makes a real difference but then becomes too obvious.

 

[Edwin]

Not strictly true.

If you have 10 sites that all stand strongly on their own feet, then they can pretty safely each provide an incoming link to an 11th site so long as you:
A) do not link any of the 10 sites to any of the other 10 sites
B) do not link the 11th site to any of the 10 sites
C) link judiciously (e.g. certain category pages on each of the 10 sites to the equivalent categories on the 11th site) but don't link EVERY page!

This technique used to be known as "hub and spokes" though that was a few years ago and the terminology may have changed. AFAIK even with Google's many updates, so long as the "spoke" sites are built up strongly over time before linking them to the hub it should still be fine.

 

[julian]

The thing is I don't want to create/or am trying for a dodgy link scheme - just want to put a 'go-to' wrapper around lots of decent sites, it will be promoted offline but can't really stop G gobbling it up.

These articles are Medical/Critical things that can't be hacked up or rewritten by your average undergrad fodder churner (no disrespect to anyone here).

I suppose I'm going have to dump them all in the new mega-review.com to be safe, which is a shame as it was good serp fodder for the multiple site network :neutral: - you can see my predicament Watson.

Thanks for you input so far Acorn SEO Team!

 

[Edwin]

The other thing you could do (perhaps - not 100% clear from your explanation) is 301 all the minor sites onto the megasite, but to specific sections.

So if minor site A is about "grass" and minor site B is about "trees" then 301 all the pages of A to a "grass" section of the megasite, and 301 all the pages of B to a "trees" section of the megasite.

That way, the link building work you've done until now isn't wasted, as all the link juice is passed on.

Even if the megasite ends up having sections that were never covered by the minor sites, it's still a good solid start.

Of course, you end up with just 1 "live" site at the end of the exercise, but with a very solid link profile.

 

[Murray]

Not strictly true.

If you have 10 sites that all stand strongly on their own feet, then they can pretty safely each provide an incoming link to an 11th site so long as you:
A) do not link any of the 10 sites to any of the other 10 sites
B) do not link the 11th site to any of the 10 sites
C) link judiciously (e.g. certain category pages on each of the 10 sites to the equivalent categories on the 11th site) but don't link EVERY page!

This technique used to be known as "hub and spokes" though that was a few years ago and the terminology may have changed. AFAIK even with Google's many updates, so long as the "spoke" sites are built up strongly over time before linking them to the hub it should still be fine.

But the whole thing would be flawed from the get go.

If you have 10 sites in the same niche all with their own links and authority then what you should of done is have it all on the one site with every incoming link benefiting every other page on the site with it being totally natural and no manipulation needed.

Then when it comes to make a new section of the site, instead of a new site, it automatically gains all the benefit from the existing link profile, again totally naturally and no manipulation needed.

 

[Edwin]

But the whole thing would be flawed from the get go.

If you have 10 sites in the same niche all with their own links and authority then what you should of done is have it all on the one site with every incoming link benefiting every other page on the site with it being totally natural and no manipulation needed.

Then when it comes to make a new section of the site, instead of a new site, it automatically gains all the benefit from the existing link profile, again totally naturally and no manipulation needed.

Not as simple as that.

For example, imagine the theme is "outdoor hobbies".

So you make a fishing site, a bird watching site, a parasailing site, a mountaineering site etc.

All of these sites can legitimately be promoted in different ways, and acquire a different incoming link profile from different linkers.

Now you acquire the domain "OutdoorHobbies.com" (ok, it's not actually very exciting but this is an EXAMPLE) and you decide to be THE go-to site for all outdoor hobbies.

Then the method that I outlined makes a lot of sense. You already have your nice stand-alone sites, each thematically independent yet under the same much broader "topic umbrella".

And the mega site covers everything, so it's handy to be able to drop a few fishing-related links from your fishing site to the fishing section of the mega site, a few mountaineering links from your mountaineering site to the mountaineering section of the mega site, and so on.

Had you gone for the mega site strategy from the start, you might never have got anywhere for a number of reasons:
- Subject is too big to tackle with any level of depth (like trying to drain the ocean with a drinking straw)
- Some directories only allow one link per unique domain. So you could get 1 link to your mega site, but that's it vs 1 link to your fishing site, 1 to your mountaineering site (from a different directory category; to a different domain) etc.
- Opportunities may arise to focus more on one topic or another as you find one or other specialist sites starts to "pull ahead" of the others. That's something you may never spot if you're in Jack of All Trades mode from the start.

 

[Murray]

Not as simple as that.

For example, imagine the theme is "outdoor hobbies".

So you make a fishing site, a bird watching site, a parasailing site, a mountaineering site etc.

All of these sites can legitimately be promoted in different ways, and acquire a different incoming link profile from different linkers.

Now you acquire the domain "OutdoorHobbies.com" (ok, it's not actually very exciting but this is an EXAMPLE) and you decide to be THE go-to site for all outdoor hobbies.

Then the method that I outlined makes a lot of sense. You already have your nice stand-alone sites, each thematically independent yet under the same much broader "topic umbrella".

And the mega site covers everything, so it's handy to be able to drop a few fishing-related links from your fishing site to the fishing section of the mega site, a few mountaineering links from your mountaineering site to the mountaineering section of the mega site, and so on.

Had you gone for the mega site strategy from the start, you might never have got anywhere for a number of reasons:
- Subject is too big to tackle with any level of depth (like trying to drain the ocean with a drinking straw)
- Some directories only allow one link per unique domain. So you could get 1 link to your mega site, but that's it vs 1 link to your fishing site, 1 to your mountaineering site (from a different directory category; to a different domain) etc.
- Opportunities may arise to focus more on one topic or another as you find one or other specialist sites starts to "pull ahead" of the others. That's something you may never spot if you're in Jack of All Trades mode from the start.

It's a whole lot easier to promote one site than 10.

If you don't have enough time to promote the fishing side of a outdoor themed site, it would still benefit from the link juice gained from perhaps a more popular caravan section via internal linking.

It would also get traffic from visitors who came to the site for other related reasons.

It's not always practical to have one large site granted, it would be less practical (unless you have a lot of resources) to try and run 10 independent because you would be spreading yourself quite thin.

Some sites would get neglected, and they wouldn't get the easy benefits of being on a major site as mentioned above.

+ as already said, it's much easier to expand a big site than create a new one in future.

I guess the important thing overall is don't bite off more than you can chew.

ps. Sorry Julian, don't mean to waffle on on your thread.

 

[julian]

Now you acquire the domain "OutdoorHobbies.com" (ok, it's not actually very exciting but this is an EXAMPLE) and you decide to be THE go-to site for all outdoor hobbies.

.

This is exactly the situation. Murray you are right it maybe easier to promote one 'go-to' site if one could wind back clock but thats not the situation we're in. The situation is with 40/50 great ranking stand alone medical sites covering highly specific, unique topics with no real crossover e.g. Aids, Dementia, Flu, Diabetes etc and all ranking ok - but they are all going under the umbrella of 'common-medical-problems.com' because its easier to promote 'common-medical-problems.com' as the go-to for medical problems. :-?

The practical work load of updating 50 websites with unique content a week is a beast , but that's ok to carry on if pullign them into mega site won't damage them.