Creating Directories to help promote my main site?

[SteveDaRake]

Hi,

Sorry I'm a bit of a novice with SEO but I have a question to put forward if I may;

I setup a directory using the PHPLD script and get somebody in to input 5000 sites as this will give me 5000 web pages. I then clone this site to say 20+ others on different domains and I.P.s so I now have 20 x 5000 pages = 100K pages.

I then advertise these sites on webmaster forums so anybody with a site can add their site for free and over a year I hope to get each site up to around 10K pages and to a degree each site will be different.

As soon as the sites have 5K pages I code into the footer the link and keywords for my site, will this work?

Will I get quality links for my main site and is there anything I need to look out for etc? Just need some advice really.

[metasynman]

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it just sounds like a fancy way to say "link farm" to me. Seems like a lot of work for something that could potentially get you blacklisted. Getting quality backlinks to your site are always infinitely better than simple quantity links from sites you have no control over and no relevancy to.

[SteveDaRake]

Thanx for the reply, the directories which I will own & control, will be of a relevant subject to my main site. If the directories are promoted well as stand alone directories, but I have a link to my main site in the footer of every page, will this be a bad practice?

[jimbeetle]

will this be a bad practice
20+ duplicate directories with a run-of-site link in the footer is just about the quickest way to get your site blown out of the search engine indexes. So, yes, a very bad practice.

[SteveDaRake]

The directories would be different content, but of the same template. But still not good? like I said I'm new to seo and just exploring ideas.

[jimbeetle]

Think about Steve, if it were this easy to game the search engines (And yes, sometimes it is.), there would be millions upon millions of such directories out there. There are already quite a few ;-) developed with the same thought in mind. Most are not successful.

In order to make this a successful strategy each of those 20+ directories would have to be able to stand completely on their own. That includes, beside "unique" content, unique backlink profiles. This is a huge undertaking, not for the novice.

Even if you could accomplish that the biggest giveaway would be that footer link. As soon as the SEs see that run-of-site link pop up on so many thousand pages across so many "directories" you can bet that somebody is going to reach for the red button.

Best bet is to do it the old-fashioned way: Develop a quality site with content that attracts links from other quality sites. It's a much better way to spend your time and effort at this stage in the game.

[dvduval]

I like to think that if someone from Google were to put all of the links to my site into a spreadsheet and start clicking through them one by one that they would find quality sites.

Your strategy seems to stray a little bit from the idea of making a quality site the focus. There are lots of quality sites running phpLD (<snip> is one I like), and you could certainly make some great sites this way, but try to think about a strategy that would lead to creating sites where the visitor comes first. If you ever find a formula for building sites people love, that will trump the seo 99.9% of the time.

[Marcia]

>input 5000 sites as this will give me 5000 web pages.

A whole web page for a link? Would there even be a link? Or would that be the content of the web page scraped and replicated on your pages?

[neroma]

Hi there,

my post above is similar, except im talking about one directory page with 100% relevant links, and some content, not just links.

Basically my client runs a hotel reservation software company. His idea is he has set up a directory for people to advertise there hotels online. They can add there own descriptions and there own pictures. To keep the content fresh im also thinking of adding rss feeds to hospitality news sites. Is this a better idea, and does a link back to out site at the bottom make a problem?

[dvduval]

Yes, if he already has a foot in the door in the hotel reservation industry it makes sense to create something like this. Maybe rather than having a lot of links on the homepage, you can make it cost a little more for a homepage listing, and then have general listings on deeper categorized pages.

[AussieWebmaster]

the directories will have little or no page rank or trust so would not be giving anything... may help with Microsoft but even that I doubt.

Better spending effort in actually creating content add a review site, a travel forum where people who go to specific places a lot can start communities with the people they have met etc.

[cryptblade]

Tip to the newbies - spend time learning about search engines and how they work. Those of us who've been here for years are still learning.

Don't think you can game the engines. When the veterans here say focus on your website, they mean it. Better to focus your energy on 1 website and build it up than to game the engines by creating multiple junk sites. All been done before you. If you are a newbie and you think you got some game, just remember that whatever you think up is 99% likely already done, tried, tested, used, and abused. Like a junkie's used up vein.

Also, what you think is "relevant" doesn't mean the engines agree with you.

On the other hand, if you learn better by first hand experience, you learn better with failure, you learn better the hard-knock life, then by all means - as long as you learn; then you can come back and share your experience with us.