Is this a black-hat strategy? If so, what category does this fall under?
-
I am working with a major beauty client who owns an exact-match domain name related to their product that brings in a ton of traffic. They offer great content on this website that is inherently valuable. The catch is that the call-to-action brings users back to the main company site (a different URL). So if they want to "buy the product" or "learn more," they are taken to a different domain (the main company domain). There are 47 links to the main site on the EMD site.
There are some slight mentions of the main brand on the EMD site, but it's hardly noticeable. It mostly appears to be a standalone site not affiliated with a major brand.
My gut tells me this is black-hat but I can't find a fitting description of this strategy online, and why they shouldn't be doing this. Is this considered a doorway page / doorway site? Is this considered a link scheme? What would you call this strategy? Or is this actually not even black hat?
-
spot on Eric!
-
This is typically called a "microsite" and is not a black-hat strategy at all. It is more of a marketing tactic--to build a good, quality site with lots of content on a keyword rich domain name. Typically, many companies will purchase keyword rich domain names and not use them, they will just redirect them to their main site: like the way Books.com redirects to Barnes and Noble.
If the microsite only has thin content and doesn't have quality content, it could be considered a doorway page or doorway domain--but if it does have enough quality content on it then it would be considered a microsite. It still needs to have a good amount of quality links pointing to it, as well, in order to help the other site it points to. But, if the microsite is working, then the main brand site doesn't necessarily need to rank well. It gets its traffic from the microsite.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Buying domains for the backlink profile: Still a white hat strategy?
There's a DR 51 domain we'd like to buy, with a quality backlink profile. We'd like to 301 redirect this domain to our DR 46 domain, and possibly setup something to make the user experience smooth for people expecting the old domain. Is this still a white hat strategy? How would you calculate the value/what kind of offer to make?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | catbur0 -
Disappearing Links Black Hat ?
I have seen reports of Black hat spamming with dodgy links but we have another issue with a clients site. The site had a small number of solid following links about 60 which had been in place for years and in the past few weeks all but those directly under their control have ceased to link. At the same time a very aggressive competitor has entered their market which is owned by the officers of an SEO company. Could it be that they have somehow disavowed the links to the site to damage it how do we find out? there are now just 10 following links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eff-Commerce0 -
I have a recipe food blog and use wordpress, but my recipes are usually in more than one category...?
The recipes are in most cases in more than one category (usually two) each. Do and (and if so how) need to set each post to one canicol url? E.g A recipe on Peas is in healthy foods (which is the default wordpress cat.) and also Vegetarian Dishes. I use YOAST for wordpress
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kelly33300 -
Strategies to recover from a Google Penalty?
2 years ago we took over a client who had a hacked site and also had signed up with a black hat SEO team that set up 50 spammy directory links back to the site. Since then we have cleaned up the hacks, had the site reviewed by Google and readded to the Search Index, and disavowed all the directory links through GWT. Over the last 2 years, we've encouraged the client to create new content and have developed a small but engaged social following. The website is www.fishtalesoutfitting.com/. The site's domain authority is 30, but it struggles to rank higher than 20 for even uncompetitive long tail keywords. Other sites with much lower domain authorities outrank the site for our primary keywords. We are now overhauling the site design and content. We are considering creating an entirely new URL for the primary domain. We would then use 301 redirects from the old url to the new. We'd welcome insight into why the current site may still be getting penalized, as well as thoughts on our strategy or other recommendations to recover from the events of 2 years ago. Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mlwilmore0 -
Black Seo --> Attack
Hello there, Happy new year for everyone, and good luck this year. I have a real problem here, I saw in MOZ link history that somehow the "Total Linking Root Domains" is growing from a medium of 30 - 40 to 240 - 340 links and keep it growing. I guess somebody make me good joke, cause i did not buy any link :)) even cn, brasil, jp links, my store is from Romania. How I can block these links I think google will make me bad instead. What should i do? Thank you so much. With respect,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shanaki
Andrei 0tYg1wB.png0 -
Two plus two equals four! Grey hat alive and well
Rand is unquestionably much smarter than I however his pronouncements concerning the link building don't seem to hold true for some sectors of the online marketplace. We sell upholstery leather and one of our main competitor runs the table with the most important search terms and has a total garbage backlink profile. I don't know if there is some onsite magic they are working but they don't use brand name anchor text, links are not relevant to their products and most of their links are from high DA blogs, craps posts to .edu forums and no follow. The point is, maybe black hat is out but a lot of what I see being rewarded out there suggests grey hat is alive and well.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | leatherhidestore0 -
What happens if a company only uses black hat techniques for an extended period of time?
Let's say I were to start a company. Of course, I want to be indexed, crawled, and pulled up in the search engines. So I start using black hat seo techniques. I comment spam, keyword stuff, spin articles, hide text, etc. I publish hundreds of articles per day on well know sites with excellent page rank. If I am doing all of these unethical techniques, what is going to happen to my website?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Understanding competitors link building tactics (possibly black hat stuff that seems to work)
So checking out the backlinks on a competitor’s page for a term I’m looking to work on, a page they rank pretty well for, I can’t but happen to note the kinds of sites that grant this company – who are well known in their field – its successes. Many of the links to this page I’m interested in appear within short articles on blogs, really bad Wordpress blogs that are certainly just for SEO use. My questions are: Where do people usually source these blogs which typically contain material on a range of different topics? Are these probably paid links? How do they get so much content out there, albeit similar content, to so many of the hastily cobbled efforts? Would that be an agency with connections or a blogging community site? How can any search engine lend credibility to my competitor’s links when the article below has nonsense for penis enlargement stuff. Seriously?!? How are they not being penalised? It’s frustrating because these aren’t the tactics I want to employ but they seems to offer success, but also, if your link is in an article that followed by another on penis pills, how I can take Google seriously in its stated aim of making things this prone to manipulation.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Martin_S0