Whitehat VRE Empire: Why Multiple Sites Make Sense
As we get started with building our virtual estate empire, we have to ask ourselves this question: Do we build a network or small sites or one or two really large sites?
The answer is that it’s better to create a network of sites. There are several reasons for this, but the most important reason is that you simply get more links with more sites. More links generally means more traffic. More traffic means more money.
One of the things you’ll do to promote your sites, for example, is submit them to various web directories. In general, each website can only be submitted once to any given directory. So if you have one gigantic website, you only get one link back from the directory. And that link is from a single category. If you have twenty websites, each website can get its own directory link from a very targeted category. You’ll see a similar pattern with social bookmarking sites.
Then there are the links between your own sites, which will carry more weight than links within sections of a site. Yes, Google knows they’re all your sites as soon as you put your AdSense code on them, but so what? As long as you’re linking smartly between sites (links from similarly-themed sites — see How To Link Multiple Sites) then you’ll benefit.
Then there are the other reasons for using multiple sites:
- Keyword-based domain names: Having a relevant keyword in the domain name is an easy search engine optimization technique. You can’t do that with one site that covers multiple topics.
- Saleability: You can sell individual sites in your network if you need to raise some quick cash.
- Ad targeting: Although Google does a great job at targeting ads most of the time, on larger sites certain ads can “take over” the ad slots for most of the pages, even if those ads aren’t necessarily relevant to a specific page’s topic of discussion. Having a site focused on a single topic ensures that the ads stay focused as well.
The downside to having multiple sites is that there’s more to manage. When Google requires you to change the privacy policy on your sites, for example, you’ll have to do it N times. You’ll also have to track domains and web hosting accounts.
Then there are the expenses for domain name registration and web hosting services. It’s cheaper to run a single site than a network of sites.
But the advantages of having an AdSense network outweigh the management effort, in my mind. So that’s what we’re going to do in this series: build our virtual real estate empire using a network of websites.
Next we’ll look at creating the first site in our network.
Comments
17 Responses to “Whitehat VRE Empire: Why Multiple Sites Make Sense”
[...] Whitehat VRE: Why Multiple Sites Make Sense [...]
It’s mostly psychological, but I find it easier to add content to small sites. I neglect some larger sites because it takes to much effort to remember how I have things organized, checking to see if I have already written about something, etc.
I guess I was a little confused before. Currently I use a reseller account so I can have a bunch of small sites. But I know for example HostGator lets you have “unlimited” sites that you put into one main domain. The sub-domains though have their own domain name and are treated as separate sites.
But if you have just one domain “MyDomain.com” and just have a bunch of sub-domains for your different niches, yeah that’s loads cheaper but I don’t like doing that either, for the reasons given.
Rich, don’t confuse hosting accounts with subdomains. A subdomain is a domain that is a subdivision of another domain, i.e. foo.blart.com and silly.blart.com. Depending on your hosting service, you can have separate accounts for those subdomains or they can be controlled from the account for blart.com.
I didn’t really talk about subdomains, and I probably should, though.
Eric
I agree. If none of the other reasons, then Ad targeting is a major factor in chosing multiple sites over one.
If google sees an ad is profitable for that domain I think it tries it out as much as possible resulting in rediculously irrelevant adverts on some pages.
That has driven me insane in the past.
How many sites should host on one account?
Does having different IP’s for each site matters?
I plan to use a resellers account and host 10 sites or less on each IP. The reason for this is because my “Empire” will be topped with a store that sells the products in that niche and I plan to use my “Empire” to get it to the top of the SERP’s.
so far I do like your series. but could you get a bit more detailed. Just a request. Thanks
Just wanted to say thanks for the great info.
We are just getting underway with building our site, increasing traffic etc. We are considering
Adsense so this info is very helpful!!
I thought Google Media and Google SEO spiders work separately. In order to avoid conflicting situations. For instance: The SEO spiders could give an unfair advantage to websites with Adsense.
If that´s not the case then it would be of no use to get get multiple hosting accounts, in order to get different IPs.
So this was actually my plan..building a network of blogs that could utilize either adsense or payperpost as it’s primary source of income…I had a couple of blogs set up but I realized ’cause of the time constraints and what I like to write about it was difficult to pull off now.
I’m (sort of) doing the flagship blog bit but the problem with that is that the current time constraints are also hampering those efforts as well.
I’m going to have to think about this some more…though I like your series and will come back to read the rest and keep up on what ’s to come.
Godaddy (and maybe others) allows registration of .info domains for only $0.99 for the first year, so I’ve been using those a lot to get the so-called “keyword rich” domain names.
What I don’t know is if .info domains are penalized at all from an SEO perspective, in addition to the fact that I’m only registering them for 1 yr (which I hear the search engines don’t like as much as longer registrations).
Some people say .info domains are penalized, some say they aren’t… best advice is to try it for yourself and see, I guess.
Another positive to multiple sites is that it is less risky. Some sites will perform better than others. If you only have one site and choose a bad topic then you have invested all your time and energy into a dud.
Though I agree in many cases having multiple niche sites is better than have one big catch-all site. It really depends on the topic and type of site. I run a movie website that we have chosen to make big instead of break it up. The benefit is we have all the user data tied into everything.
Do you host the multiple sites on shared hosting, or purchase a different hosting package for each mini site? If they all have the same IP address would it not reduce the effectiveness of what you are trying to achieve.
Very excellent article. I’ve always found multiple sites to be absolutely vital in any SEO campaign. One other benefit is that sometimes you never really know what’s going to strike a chord with prospective customers, and testing multiple sites/domain names/layouts/ad copy all help to narrow in on higher conversion rates.
Great point. I hadn’t really thought much about how people make bank off of those free services.The sub-domains though have their own domain name and are treated as separate sites.
Khaled: Strictly speaking, separated IPs is better, yes, but if you’re doing whitehat stuff I don’t feel it matters that much. The key is to only interlink sites that are related… then it doesn’t matter what the IP addresses are.