Hi Stevio, >From my personal experience, I have yet to see this Shadow site technique >work. I find if the same amount of time and resources that would be spent on a >bunch of "shadow sites" is spent instead on the core site, I am always going >to end up with a better result everytime.
I recently set up a site for a client, and they were antsy that they weren't on Google Page 1 Position 1 within the first month of launch, so they spent 3 times the amount of money (as theyd spent on my build) on approximately 25 "Shadow" sites (through a competitor of mine). The deal sounded great at first (25 sites for 200 dollars each... when my site cost about 2k to build), but the maintenance of these sites, the cost of hosting them.. and well their overall ineffectiveness got him into a sticky situation. It meant he all of sudden had a 25 sites he needed to manage if he changed his product, duplicate content scattered across the web... and turning these sites off was going to be as equally tricky... If he had of spent the same amount of money on SEM (in the early days), link building for the longterm (white hat ofc), and just general on site optimization, he would have definitely had a better result in the long run. Needless to say, those sites are not performing for him... but his "real site" has finally earned its place in the rankings. Fair enough those shadow sites *may* have helped his link juice, but I don't believe that same effect couldn't have been achieved naturally...(and more inexpensively.) I hope that's helpful. Jonny Dalgleish fighe...@me.com On 22/04/2011, at 10:44 PM, Stevio wrote: > Thanks for all the good advice, I appreciate that. Hopefully it is not going > too far off topic if I ask one more SEO related question. > > What do you think of shadow web sites? This is something that has been > offered to this customer by a major company. > > These shadow sites use a generic domain name, containing the customer's key > words, and when someone clicks on it, it brings up the shadow web site which > contains details of all the services the company offers. If they go to the > bottom of the page, there is a link to the company's main web site. > > To quote from what they say "now as you can see we just mirror your main site > so they look the same and people know it's the same company, this gives you > more exposure, more shop windows and helps with the SEO." > > I have already recommended against this as this is a practice specifically > mentioned in the Google Webmaster Guidelines as something that should be > avoided, and which could therefore harm your chances of being found in Google > searches. Other search engines have also in the past specified that this > practice is not recommended. > > You can see this in the following page from Google - > http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 > It says near the bottom under Quality guidelines - specific guidelines: > Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially > duplicate content. > > I'd still be interested in your thoughts on this practice. > > Regards, > Stephen > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Foulstone" > <stu...@bigeasyweb.co.uk> > To: <wsg@webstandardsgroup.org> > Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 1:37 PM > Subject: Re: [WSG] Title tags - site name then keywords? > >> Hi, >> >> Search engines are "blind" readers - design for accessibility. >> >> Each page on the Website should be on a specific topic (except, >> perhaps,for the Homepage). Put the topic first in the title tag, so that >> it is easily identifiable from the other pages. >> >> The top header in the page content should also relate to the topic. >> >> The "keywords" you wish to obtain search engine results for, for any >> particular page, are presumably the page topic. >> >> >> Stuart >> >> >> On Tue, April 19, 2011 8:30 pm, Stevio wrote: >>> When it comes to search engine optimisation, are you better to list the >>> site >>> name/business name first in the title tag, and then keywords, or the other >>> way round? >>> >>> e.g. ABC Engineering Ltd - Steel Fabrication, Pipework, Welding >>> or >>> Steel Fabrication, Pipework, Welding - ABC Engineering Ltd >>> >>> Are you likely to do better in search engines with the keywords first in >>> the >>> title tag? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Stephen > > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org > ******************************************************************* > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
