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?

not really

But it would be a waste of time and effort

a couple of reviews of the site ensuring they include links back to your site won't hurt - and won't take you forever to write.

Make sure any links aren't the generic 'click here' though - the anchor text for each link must include a relevant keyword that links back to matching keywords on your site

eg. if your site sells the 'latest dvds' makes sure the link back to your site includes the keyword phrase - eg for more information, click for the latest DVDs

search engines (especially google) work on relevancy and backlinks, if many links containing the phrase 'latest DVDs' point to your site, you'll gradually make your way up the listings for that particular phrase.

But there there are many other factors at play - most of which can be researched on this forum - Search Engine Optimisation is a whole world unto itself I'm afraid

Hope this helps

thanks i do appreciate it and your response was very informative, i just don't want the search engines to ban me cuz it is one domain pointing completely to another domain a few hundred times maybe even a few thousand times. do you think they would ban me even if the content was new?

And in that "informative" stuff you missed the whole point.

Writing anything such as "articles" or fake reviews which always look stupid and contrived to real visitors (remember those? They are the ones with credit cards who buy the products you are trying to promote), then sticking them on another site to push traffic and buyers to the first site, does rely on one thing....


... The site has to have enough value with visitors already to generate interest If it doesn't then you suddenly have TWO sites to promote. What do you do then??
Do the same thing in "promoting" the second site? then the third, and the fourth? Suddenly you have your own little network built up.
Oh and then you get banned.

The very very LAST thing you should be considering in your SEO are the search engines. Once you start down that route you are going wrong.

i dont so and its useless.

I echo chrishirst's point that fundamentally - content is king. Create a site that is truly relevant to your visitors - once that is done, SEO is an add-on that could give you an extra boost if done correctly but it is not the holy grail of web traffic.

Spend time creating informative pages around the products you sell rather than writing many, many fake reviews. Understand who your visitors are configure your site accordingly.

i enjoyed reading everyones replys. i am not saying that i plan on doing this i just wanted to see if anyone had experience doing this after they had met the same failures in trying all other aspects of SEO. Becuase after trying all the other aspects and nothing seems to work i.e. quality content which is actually astounding considering the sheer volume of products offered. That is why i was trying to take the search engine optimization to a different level by putting in a ton of time and effort to writing quality reviews for the products that we offer. And i agree that it might be considered black hat and not the correct way to approach the problem at hand. On the other hand everyone probably could have just said its shady try to keep at the original site and improve it as much as possible. So chrishirst i didn't miss the point i simply like to make sure that i am explaining myself well enough.

If you're doing what you say you're doing and it's not working, then something within your site is interfering and you're not doing it well enough.

Hirst is right: you have missed the point. The effort will appear contrived; how are you going to write quality reviews for 200-someodd products and not have it appear biased or misleading? People try that crap all the time; look at the large number of "affiliate marketing sites" with "reviews of quality products and services" that always seem to get a 5/5 or a 10/10 because they'll change your life for the better for just $49.95!

If you're desperate enough to ask this question, you're not smart enough to overcome the 1,000,000:1 odds and pull this silly little stunt off.

How is it shady to keep your original site and improve it as much as possible? Providing a better experience for your users is anything BUT blackhat. It's hard to tell without seeing the site but it sounds like you've got some issues that you're trying to gloss over with stupid pet tricks.

Post your site here and let's see it.

If there is one thing that will ensure i don't buy a product it's if i read a fake review of it.

thank you for all of the input here, although you seem to be a little high on your horses it was constructive input and i have obviously decided not to consider this as an option. It is just difficult to see SEO not working on a site you have put a ton of time and work into and have been patient enough that some results should have been seen. so thanks for all the replies.

the only other thing that i was thinking about is what makes a forum any different than what i was proposing? You have links in your signature typically all pointing to one domain and you could have it a couple thousand times by making a couple thousand posts. Isn't this the same thing in a way?

scuba the issue isn't really about the links. There's nothing wrong at all in what you were thinking of doing in the sense that a search engine would be unlikely to penalize of ban the product site. If you set up a network of sites one linking to another and back it would probably be obvious to a search engine you were trying to manipulate them and then sure it could get all the sites in trouble.

I think the point everyone is trying to make is that while it won't get the site you want to promote banned it's really not an effective way to seo the site. A better approach would probably be to have the reviews on the same page as the product.

If you're selling a red widget why not offer descriptions, and reviews right there.

By putting everything on another site you've essentially given yourself the task of trying to promote two sites instead of one. While the links from the review sites won't hurt they won't help either until that review site is ranking well.

If the links from the review site carried a lot of weight by default then seo would be easy. We'd all just build thousands upon thousands of sites and link them to each other.

As far as forum signatures go it is basically the same kind of things as you said. There's nothing wrong with all those links. None of our sites will be banned because we post on forums. But at the same time all those links aren't really doing a lot to help our sites rank either.

Think of it as a law of diminishing returns. I can't tell you how much weight each link in my forum sig has, but I feel very confident in saying the value of the links falls off dramatically after the first one. And that first one may not have had much value to begin with.

Sig links can help directly though. People do click on them if you post with the attitude of becoming part of the community and making helpful, interesting, and/or entertaining posts.

Their seo value is probably limited at best. As a general rule if a link is easy to get it's probably not worth a lot. Sig links are obviously very easy to get.

If you want to link to the site you're trying to promote feel free to post the link. I'm sure everyone would be happy to help and try to spot potential problems or just offer suggestions to help the pages rank better.

You have links in your signature typically all pointing to one domain and you could have it a couple thousand times by making a couple thousand posts. Isn't this the same thing in a way?

You should look at sig links as a marketing tool rather than a SEO ploy (Unlike some [pointed remark made to they know who])

As Steve says;
The SEO value is very limited, but the interested click-throughs could be very valuable indeed.

(Unlike some [pointed remark made to they know who])

Whatever do you mean by that, Chris? I'm sure there are some TV addicts who will have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

scuba5794: it's not a question of being "high on our horses", either. The problem is that there are millions upon millions of different ways in which people try to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top of the search engines. Yours is certainly far from the most egregious example of such (it's more silly than it is sneaky, IMHO), but it's still a gaming attempt.

You'll find on this board that any such attempt will be frowned upon by the members who have earned the most respect on it and who are the most independent thinkers (ironically, we all think the same way).

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

You'll find on this board that any such attempt will be frowned upon by the members who have earned the most respect on it and who are the most independent thinkers (ironically, we all think the same way).

And that's what separates this site from plenty of other SEO forums. Honestly, there's a sense among low-rent SEOs that promoting a web site is all about an anatomy-size contest. There are 10 or 15 popular methods of link building, millions of sites that want to be #1 for the same keyword, and it's a reality show about who can devote the most time to finding and submitting to directories.

Through this web site, I found a real SEO tip: Anatomy of a Well-Written Article. This is right up my alley. I don't have all the time in the world to build low-quality links ( when lunch is finished cooking, I'm heading out on a bike ride ), but what I do have is great content, and useful knowledge to share. One bit of advice on how to write for the web is as useful as 500 directory submissions.

I don't think all the independent thinkers think alike, though. One of the highly respected posters here wrote an article about the silly concept that Google's webmaster guidelines are tied to ethics somehow. He stresses the point that as webmasters, we don't owe Google a thing, whether that means buying links, or hiding them. He also points out that Google doesn't owe us a thing, either, be it a link, or #1 spot. Most of us choose to play by Google's rules, but it's a choice, and a business one rather than an ethical one. Steve makes some great points. And forces people to take a step back and evaluate the whole SEO approach.

hmmm very interesting posts here sorry i haven't got back to it for a while been busy graduating. Thanks for all the useful information Forrest thanks for the link to that article i enjoyed reading it. I appreciate all the input on this topic as stated before i will focus more on the content of the original site than building a new one that links to it.