Building a private blog network - Brighton SEO - John McElborough

Building a private blog network
John McElborough
Brighton SEO, September 2011

Do blog networks work?
Yes & No
Small private networks work best
Useful for targeting lots of keywords
Very effective on long to mid-tail keywords.
Not effective on short tail

What role do blog networks play?

The problem with public blog networks
Low quality domains
Sold on PageRank metrics
Expensive
Spam signals
Mostly US based

Benefits of running your own network
Low(ish) risk
Value add for clients
Intellectual property
Focus effort on higher value link building
Monetization opportunities

Network setup checklist
Get some domains
Install & host Wordpress
Add unique content
Build links
Repeat

Domains
Don’t buy dropped domains
Use .co.uk or .org.uk’s
Mix up the registrars
You can ‘opt-out’ of Whois with nominet (or just make up the details)
http://www.nominet.org.uk/other/whois/optout/
Or
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com

Why I avoid dropped domains
Expensive
High PageRank but usually few links
Links lost over time

Hosting
SEO Hosting – mostly expensive & unreliable
http://www.skynethosting.net
http://www.seohosting.com/
http://www.seohosting.co.uk/
Spread over multiple IP addresses, but don’t obsess about C-class Ip’s
Look for separate A Class IP’s as well
Mix up nameservers as well
Don’t understand this stuff? Hire a sys admin to do it for you

Setting up the network
Install Wordpress on each domain (http://www.wpdesktop.com/)
Make the sites look ‘real’
Use pro themes
Show adsense
Install GA code
Create about us + contact pages
Block Majestic, Yahoo*, Linkscape bots

Centralized publishing

Q Network
Install wordpress on a private ‘hub’ domain
Connect network sites with Q Network plugin
Use hub site as CMS
Push articles onto your network sites
http://jmc.im/qnetwork

Content
Only use original content
No spinning/ scraping
“Quality content”
Launch with 5-10 posts
Link out
Include images

Where to get the content
Textbroker
oDesk
Interns
Students
Writer samples

Building links to your network
Need 50-100 linking domains per site
50 blogs x 100 links = 5000 links
Outsource or automate
Or outsource the automation!

Link building tactics
Get your hands dirty…
Blog comments
Blog directories
Other blog networks – www.buildmyrank.com, www.linxboss.com
Forums
Article marketing
fiverr.com
Interlink your blogs (carefully)

Costs
Costs estimated based on a 50 site network

www.jmc.im/brightonseo
john@ioptimal.co.uk

http://www.johnmcelborough.com	1128
http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk	417
http://www.razvanalexa.ro	89
http://feeds.feedburner.com	50
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	3
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	3
https://my.scribeseo.com	1
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1

Building a private blog network - Brighton SEO - John McElborough

by johnmcelborough on Sep 13, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

8 Embeds 1,692

Statistics

Building a private blog network - Brighton SEO - John McElborough — Presentation Transcript