Little Comparison of Tiny Sites That Don't Surive and Those That Do Survive
- SEO |
Figured it's best to open a new thread for this so people can learn something from it without being distracted too much.
In the past I've had a period where I sold some complete domains, mostly without content, sometimes with and I just found 4 batches that I like to explain:
Batch 1:
- 10 sites in the insurance niche
- client took care of content
- each site has 4 decent written posts, each featured on homepage
- some contain an image, others a video
- hosted on SEO hosting
- random ugly theme (looks nothing like a real site)
- anchor text links are long sentences
- linking out once in each post, once to the money site, 3 times to an authority site
- sites are build on high relevant expired domains
0 domains deindexed
Batch 2:
- 10 sites in a different insurance niche
- I took care of content
- each site has 4 unique written posts with a static homepage where one shows
- hosted on SEO hosting
- random ugly theme (looks nothing like a real site)
- anchor text link at the bottom of the homepage article, URL anchor
- linking out only from the homepage to the money site, no other OBL
- sites are build on high relevant expired domains
0 domains deindexed
Batch 3:
- 50 sites in a local contractors niche
- client took care of content
- each site has 3 written posts, featured on the homepage
- hosted on SEO hosting and shared hosting 50/50 really
- random ugly theme, looks nothing like a real site
- anchor text links are mostly money anchors like: Plumber in San Diego
- linking out from every single post to the same site or other sites from the same owner
- sites are build on expired PR3 domains, non relevant to the niche
20 domains deindexed, about half of them on shared hosts have been deindexed and the other half on SEO hosts.
Batch 4:
- 40 sites in complete different niches
- I took care of content
- each site has a static homepage with 100-400 words of content
- hosted on 40 different shared hosting plans
- 40 good looking unique HTML themes downloaded from the web and heavily edited
- all the sites look completely legit on first glance though the nav links are not clickable
- anchor text links, each site has a list of 8-15 links to several clients, only URL anchors used
- sites are build on expired PR4 domains, non relevant to the niche
0 domains deindexed
The conclusion I draw: Manual reviewers only give the site a quick visual look and there seems to be some focus on money anchors based on the large amount of deindexations from batch 3 though not hundred percent sure.
I am heavily surprised that the two insurance site batches had zero deindexations, though might have to do with the fact that the domains it's posted on are hyper relevant, eg an article about personal injury lawyers on a domain named: personalinjurylawyersboston.com, just to name something. I am 100 percent sure these domains have been through a manual review cause I lost quite a few other weak sites on those hosts, those from the local contractor included. So a thin somewhat crappy site on a hyper relevant domain and hosted on the worse hosting you can imagine survives a manual review.
Few lessons to learn from this in case you plan to build a network on a budget:
- source cheap domains at expireddomains.net or with Hayden's method and make sure they are hyper relevant
- post a minimum of 4 articles
- only link out from max 1 article to your money site and to preserve link juice you could make that one article as a static homepage and link to the other articles from the sidebar
- or alternatively link out to other authority sites from your other articles, same like that client of mine did
- for more strenght, build backlinks to the domains as most what you find for registration fee is pretty weak in nature.
HTML sites are also a solid way to dodge bullets and don't require much content at all, there are 1000's of free themes available and it just requires some editing and replacing homepage text's, heck some of these HTML sites have only 80 words of content, though have to admit that these HTML sites haven't gone through any manual review as they are hosted on 40 brand new hosting plans. Downside is that I haven't seen much of a ranking boost (if at all) when I placed those URL anchored links there as each of them link out to 8-15 different topics and obvious there's zero relevancy.
In the past I've had a period where I sold some complete domains, mostly without content, sometimes with and I just found 4 batches that I like to explain:
Batch 1:
- 10 sites in the insurance niche
- client took care of content
- each site has 4 decent written posts, each featured on homepage
- some contain an image, others a video
- hosted on SEO hosting
- random ugly theme (looks nothing like a real site)
- anchor text links are long sentences
- linking out once in each post, once to the money site, 3 times to an authority site
- sites are build on high relevant expired domains
0 domains deindexed
Batch 2:
- 10 sites in a different insurance niche
- I took care of content
- each site has 4 unique written posts with a static homepage where one shows
- hosted on SEO hosting
- random ugly theme (looks nothing like a real site)
- anchor text link at the bottom of the homepage article, URL anchor
- linking out only from the homepage to the money site, no other OBL
- sites are build on high relevant expired domains
0 domains deindexed
Batch 3:
- 50 sites in a local contractors niche
- client took care of content
- each site has 3 written posts, featured on the homepage
- hosted on SEO hosting and shared hosting 50/50 really
- random ugly theme, looks nothing like a real site
- anchor text links are mostly money anchors like: Plumber in San Diego
- linking out from every single post to the same site or other sites from the same owner
- sites are build on expired PR3 domains, non relevant to the niche
20 domains deindexed, about half of them on shared hosts have been deindexed and the other half on SEO hosts.
Batch 4:
- 40 sites in complete different niches
- I took care of content
- each site has a static homepage with 100-400 words of content
- hosted on 40 different shared hosting plans
- 40 good looking unique HTML themes downloaded from the web and heavily edited
- all the sites look completely legit on first glance though the nav links are not clickable
- anchor text links, each site has a list of 8-15 links to several clients, only URL anchors used
- sites are build on expired PR4 domains, non relevant to the niche
0 domains deindexed
The conclusion I draw: Manual reviewers only give the site a quick visual look and there seems to be some focus on money anchors based on the large amount of deindexations from batch 3 though not hundred percent sure.
I am heavily surprised that the two insurance site batches had zero deindexations, though might have to do with the fact that the domains it's posted on are hyper relevant, eg an article about personal injury lawyers on a domain named: personalinjurylawyersboston.com, just to name something. I am 100 percent sure these domains have been through a manual review cause I lost quite a few other weak sites on those hosts, those from the local contractor included. So a thin somewhat crappy site on a hyper relevant domain and hosted on the worse hosting you can imagine survives a manual review.
Few lessons to learn from this in case you plan to build a network on a budget:
- source cheap domains at expireddomains.net or with Hayden's method and make sure they are hyper relevant
- post a minimum of 4 articles
- only link out from max 1 article to your money site and to preserve link juice you could make that one article as a static homepage and link to the other articles from the sidebar
- or alternatively link out to other authority sites from your other articles, same like that client of mine did
- for more strenght, build backlinks to the domains as most what you find for registration fee is pretty weak in nature.
HTML sites are also a solid way to dodge bullets and don't require much content at all, there are 1000's of free themes available and it just requires some editing and replacing homepage text's, heck some of these HTML sites have only 80 words of content, though have to admit that these HTML sites haven't gone through any manual review as they are hosted on 40 brand new hosting plans. Downside is that I haven't seen much of a ranking boost (if at all) when I placed those URL anchored links there as each of them link out to 8-15 different topics and obvious there's zero relevancy.