Is this considered black hat

[scuba5794]

I have a site that is difficult to get listed in the search engines, they have an extensive product line. Would it be frowned upon by the search engines if you write product reviews for say a couple hundred of their products on a completely different site then link back to the appropriate page on the other site?

[BuckfastMonk]

why not just write the reviews on your clients site

[beu]

Originally Posted by BuckfastMonk

why not just write the reviews on your clients site

Totally the best idea! Make these review pages static pages in html.

[scuba5794]

yea after thinking about it some more i dont' think it is a great idea to make another website only pointing to another website. But thanks for your ideas i like the one about creating static pages with reviews from customers.

[beu]

Originally Posted by scuba5794

yea after thinking about it some more i dont' think it is a great idea to make another website only pointing to another website. But thanks for your ideas i like the one about creating static pages with reviews from customers.

Just so we are clear, I was saying to make the reviews static content at the current site. I would not build a new site to link to the current site because that is a bad idea!

[scuba5794]

oh yea i agree it would just be static pages on the existing site that is already made. It has been frustrating because i have been patient and have not seen results really. And on top of it the domain is an old domain going on 8 or 9 years now. but gonna have to keep pluggin away

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

hehe I think I had lots of such ideas in the beginning, too, but now that I know a bit about the whole SEO thing, I understand that most such attempts are really unnecessary (or bad).

Why do you think having another site with reviews linking to your main site would be a better idea than having those reviews and possible links on your main site?

Having the link authority from the reviews on your main site would probably be more effective than having it on a different site and getting a link from that site.

In other words, which option would you prefer: 1 backlink (if you get multiple ones it wont help that much more either as they would be discounted) from a site with 10,000 quality inbound links. Or those 10,000 those quality links poitning to your site?.

That being said, there's no guarantee, that your site would get as many new links through the product reviews on it as a new site especially for those product reviews would get, but unless the difference is out of this world putting them on your main site should be your best bet.

Or did you plan on having that product review website rank high in the SERPs and send direct traffic from there? Sort of an indirect way to the top of the search results by using a new site, as you're a bit frustrated about your other site as it doesn't seem to get the job done?

[ronburgundy]

It might also be worth sampling some of the product reviews on your home page, perhaps the 3 most popular products. It's always good to have more real and relevant text on the index page.

[Marcia]

Some product sites would rather put news or reviews of new products on another site to have external IBLs from another C-Class or IP, rather than from within their own site. That would be their reasoning.

[ronburgundy]

Yea I used to do the same a few years back, I set up a blog which was like a news feed about the site (new products, updates, price changes) and it worked quite well with the blog often ranking higher than the site. What everyone else is wary of though is having one site that solely links to one other site - therefore it starts to look like black hat.

[JPRuss]

I am always looking to link to good product reviews on my site. So once you have your static review pages setup, feel free to PM me and I will be happy to link to these reviews.

[dedmond29]

Just curious, but is there an opportunity to get reviews from other site owners/bloggers published - in addition to the reviews you will put directly on your product pages?

Having reviews on your site will help add additional content and security, but what if you could get 100 or more people talking about your products on other websites? (positively of course ;-)) Sorry if I am steering the conversation in a different direction.

[carly]

I also have a site but donot have any review page, my site's traffic is constant from last 6 months.can you all also give me suggestions also--3mobileshop.co.uk

[egain]

I personally can't see too much of a black hat implication there depending on how the review site were setup - if it was impartial in terms of client feedback - then surely there is a service there and from an ethical perspective surely cant be critisised. On the other hand, if it is there purely (and obviously) as a vehicle for traffic and search engine visibility generation then we get into more murky territory.


Lets call that grey hat then ....

[dedmond29]

Originally Posted by egain

I personally can't see too much of a black hat implication there depending on how the review site were setup - if it was impartial in terms of client feedback - then surely there is a service there and from an ethical perspective surely cant be critisised.

I would agree with you on that, however one question would be to ask if it is worth it to create a review site or just intermix the reviews directly on the product site.

If you are going through all the work to create a bunch of good reviews (content people will link to), it makes sense to create that value on the same domain, versus starting a completely new site. That's my opinion.