SEO help for minisites

[mjreine]

Hello SEO gurus,

Ok... I've been building a few minisites and google says for instance this particular phrase is searched over 2,000 times a month.

So I build a site around it.. and get next to no traffic. I've submitted it to Bing and Google webmaster tools, optimized the meta tags and everything. Still hardly no traffic.

Any tips on what you would do to get traffic to a new minisite or any kind of site would REALLY be appreciated.

Thanks!
-Matt

[Big P]

You need to get back links to your site. Thats what will drive traffic, IMO.

[mjreine]

Yes but from where? I know in an ideal world getting backlinks from other higher PR sites in that minisites niche would be best but assuming you cant get that. Then what?

Where would you pursue getting backlinks from? Directories? Do you use any tools that are helpful with your SEO?

[HarveyJ]

How do you go about generating content for these sites? As in, are they static sites? Or do they get occasional or even regular content updates?

If they're simply static sites, you're going to have trouble ranking them without some major efforts. Social bookmarking will help a little in that respect, although you may want to consider purchasing the links (screw what Cutts says).

If they're getting regular content updates, then get some plugins that'll make them automatically link certain key-phrases, i.e. the ones you're trying to rank for, to your other sites. overtime they'll be passing PR between each other.
You might also want to do a little bit of blog commenting in related fields.

Lastly, there's always spamtastic nature of forum spamming.
Pain in the arse for most people, but most forums just ban you, without deleting the content. So your links tend to stay if they're not too obvious. They're low quality, and won't raise your PR too much, and you certainly won't get much in the way or organic traffic to your site from them... but you will get one more incoming link for your anchor text, which I assume is what you're attempting to rank for as opposed to trying to go on some PR growth binge.

[mjreine]

Hello Harvey & Big P,

Thanks for the responses... Mainly they are phrases with some type in traffic which if I build sites around them I'm hoping to push the traffic numbers up. I'm not looking for any shortcuts. I want them to be good content sites in Googles eyes so they will get more organic traffic naturally.

Right now I have added in a few articles manually and use RSS to keep the sites updated with fresh news at lease but I know I will need to hire on to get more articles written.

I mainly try and optimize them for the phrase of the domain name so it ranks high for that particular phrase at least. I havent tried much in the way of social bookmarking, mainly right now I just submit the sitemaps to Google & Bing and let them go.

So I am mainly looking for other ideas on how to get traffic other than just to submit the sitemaps and thats it. Hopefully other sites will find my minisites useful and give me a backlink or two.

Are there other things to get traffic that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks.

[dejanlesi]

If you do it like that then you can wait forever for any backlinks and traffic numbers.. Directory submission, blog commenting(i said commenting not spamming), social bookmarks, link exchanges and much more.. These are the ways to get backlinks..

[DomainMagnate]

Best thing is check out the cheap link building services around here and other forums.

[tristanperry]

Article marketing is one of the best ways to do this.

I assume, of course, that your keyword is low-competition enough to be worth going after. (Remembering that its competition is based on things like inurl, intitle, the competitor's page rank, etc)

[ezimedia]

HI

Write articles and submit them to article directories.. and do link directory submissions.... and yes do social bookmarks to..

Thx
Tom

[RustyK]

minisites should be the easiest to get seo'd into search engines but you've already submitted your sites and now must waite a few weeks before its indexed. Always let SE's find you first.

SE traffic takes time unless using social networks.

[grace5]

Well the term might get 2,000 searchs per month,but whats the competition like?

You want high search numbers and low comp (allintitle: ,inurl,ect )
It just really depends on the keyword.

As far as links, hit the blogs and do a few postings.

[firetown]

Matt PM me the link to one of your sites and I give you an idea as what options you have.

Mike

[loudbeats.com]

Best thing is check out the cheap link building services around here and other forums.

They dont provide quality link building.. and spammy links don't really help much!!

AVOID AVOID AVOID!

[DomainMagnate]

They dont provide quality link building.. and spammy links don't really help much!!

AVOID AVOID AVOID!

How is article submissions, social bookmarks and hosted pages on free sites spammy to you?

[firetown]

They dont provide quality link building.. and spammy links don't really help much!!

AVOID AVOID AVOID!

I would not generalize as many of the cheap ones are quality and many of the more expensive ones provide minimal results.

The best way to shop around is through references.

My personal recommendation is to hire both, a social marketing service and an SEO service and when either one does not live up to your expectations, fire them immediately.

Mike

[loudbeats.com]

How is article submissions, social bookmarks and hosted pages on free sites spammy to you?

MOST of them, and I mean it.. MOST of these services submit your links to those FREE DIRECTORIES and you cant categorize them as QUALITY.. Experience is what & why I'm saying this !!

[DomainMagnate]

MOST of them, and I mean it.. MOST of these services submit your links to those FREE DIRECTORIES and you cant categorize them as QUALITY.. Experience is what & why I'm saying this !!

I didn't mention any free directory submissions there.. there are plenty of other services that are more effective.

[loudbeats.com]

I didn't mention any free directory submissions there.. there are plenty of other services that are more effective.

Michael, you didnt even leave 'em out though.. point me to one such service around here that wont submit your links toany such directory...?

[DomainMagnate]

Never tried any seo services in this forum, but I had good success with services on DP and NB.

[dncsacnt]

You also need to promote it on other ways like social networking sites. This will help you increase traffic as well.