Creating Mini Sites

[ThePokerBank]

Was thinking about something earlier... How much value is there in creating mini sites to help leverage one of your main sites?

For example, say I have one main site... would it be worth my while to create 4 or 5 small sites with around 10 pages of content on different IPs and link to the main site? Or would my efforts be best spent elsewhere?

These 'mini sites' would be a lot easier to create, as you could write the same sort of basic content that you already have on your main site, so it would be pretty easy to churn out a few articles a day. Just get a free template, add about 10 pages of content, link to the main site and let it be. Obviously making sure the site gets indexed first.

I know there are benefits in getting the extra on-topic links, but would Google be able to spot that these sites have been set up just to feed the rankings of the bigger site? There would also be slight benefits as you could catch more traffic and push them to the bigger site, but in the area of poker, would this traffic be few and far between with a small 10 page site with few incoming links?

This post has kinda just repeated the same thing here, but the general question is...

Is it worth creating mini sites to help feed your main site, or would it be better to continue to focus all your efforts in developing and expanding your main site?

[Jay]

It is definitely worth creating mini sites. They WILL strengthen your main site, but just don't neglect your main site.

[mjmurphy53711]

Don't neglect the mini site either?

Maybe add your lower value content there just to keep it fresh.

I'm def curious to other responses since I'm in the process of this right now.

[themike537]

I do this a lot with free blogs and it works. Just make a blog or two at blogger.com or wordpress.com, and then do free blogroll exchanges with other blogs.

Then, just link off to your main site in the posts on the blog.

[Kyle]

Not only that but why not create mini-mini sites to support your mini-network. And then how about social bookmarking sites to support those. And like Mike says above, free blogs work good in this mix. Definitely a grey area for seo and some would say blackhat!

[J S]

I think mini sites are good if you can narrowly define them down to a very specific niche, put relevant content to said niche, and utilize them to drive traffic and SERPS to your main site.

[smackinyaup]

How do you get new IPs but still use the same host? Is that just something I have to e-mail them about?

[ThePokerBank]

Originally Posted by smackinyaup

How do you get new IPs but still use the same host? Is that just something I have to e-mail them about?

Yeah, you can do this on the skynethosting.net $9.95 package. You email them and they will set you up with different IPs.

[TRIPAAA]

Different Ips are great but even further they need to be on a different C block and also geographically. So it better to pony up the $$$ and set up separate hosting packages to be for sure you dont get linked as the same owner.

This excerpt from search engine watch is a pretty good explination of c blocks

"To make a long story short:

192.168.006.001

is a standard, fully qualified IP address. The blocks in this case are:

AAA.BBB.CCC.001-254

That's not a Typo - Class D and E look totally different. The last 3 digits are actually called the Rest Field

So these are within the same class C:

192.168.222.111
192.168.222.230

And these are different Class C IP's:

192.167.111.233
192.168.222.233

Note: A class C is not the only thing Google looks at to detect relationships - telling someone to "get a different class C" is not necessarily a fix for anything.
"

So this is just another thing to look at when creating your mini network. Good Luck.

[NewPokerGirl]

Skynet is great...each site gets its own cpanel and you can use up to 10 different c-class IP's.