seo Need to Know has a nice ring to it. This may
start a series of articles covering things that you
need to know as an SEO.
Greywolf did a post about domain spamming
but came up with the great euphemism search
engine reputation management
which is a much better term if you are talking to
clients.
So what is domain spamming and why do you
need to know it as an SEO?
Domain spamming is trying to own more than
one of the first page SERPs on different domains
for the same search term. These domains can
be domains that you own or on another
companies hosted service (like myspace, MSN
spaces, blogger, Yahoo 360, wikipedia, squidoo,
or expedia).
For a brand name, it will often be easy to create
a small network of spots on hosted services that
can occupy most of the top spots for brand
related queries. This is known as reputation
management as the likelihood of negative press
making it into those top search spots is greatly
reduced.
For competitive search queries, the modern SEO
Black Hat is not content with just one or 2 of the
top ten spots He wants All ten. This often means
a sophisticated mix of parasite hosting for the
aggressive spam portion plus 10-15 legitimate
looking sites for if and when the search engines
clamp down on aggressive spamming. Each of
the owned domains should pursue a slightly
different look / feel, be hosted on different
servers, and not have obvious footprints (like
sharing 70% of links or blatant interlinking). Why
have just number 1 when you can go for 1-10?
When selecting new domains for domain
spamming, look to purchase websites with a
long history and strong existing backlinks. It is
MUCH easier to obtain the top ten spots on
established domains than it would be to try to
get those same 10 spots with fresh domains.
Sometimes, you will find 1 or 2 other serious
competitors in a space. If you cant just outspam
them, its often a good idea to see if you can
work out some kind of mutually beneficial
relationship: be it lead trading, 4 way link
trades, or some type of cross promotion. The
specifics of the market will dictate what
opportunities exist.
A solid domain spamming strategy will also
protect you from the occasional Google hiccup
that takes a number 1 site and throws it to, say,
number 31. When you own number 2-10 as
well, loosing number 1 suddenly doesnt hurt as
much especially if your number 2 site then
moves up to number 1. If you have corporate
clients with money to spend, why not go after all
10? Its a sound strategy that should appeal to
risk averse as well as overly aggressive cliental.
It will increase your value as an SEO and allow
you to bill more (youll be building 10X or more
sites!).
Just remember to call it Search Engine
Reputation Management and not Domain
Spamming and both you and your client can
look forward to more money making it to the
bottom line.