The idea is simple:
- More posts
- More activity on the site
- Higher ranks in search engines
- More content
I did that on multiple blogs, on the main site + satellite sites + blogs not hosted on domain name.
The challenge is to measure results.
here is what I discovered so far:
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Satellite sites:
- getting-over-a-break-up.com - blog? YES - traffic to site 1482 visits in a year
- breakupforwomen.com - blog? YES - traffic to site 800 visits
- dealing-with-a-break-up.com - blog? YES - traffic to site 881 visits
- breakupformen.com - blog? YES - traffic to site 3607 visits
now, sites with no blogs:
- femalejealousy.com - 2180 visits
- getting over your ex - 740 visits
- how to deal with a breakup - 1056 visits
- how to get over breakup.org - 965 visits
- how to get over breakup.com - 566 visits
- how to get over your ex.com - 1544 visits
- jealousmen.com - 2420 visits
- malejealousy.com - 5565 visits
- vibreakup.com - 246 visits
- vitalbreakup.com - 1800 visits
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Conclusion 1
except in one case, there was so traffic increase on the site because of the existence of the blog
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Conclusion 2
there is no significant difference in traffic between the sites with blogs and those without it. Same types of domain names - same type of content (100+ SEO optimized pages) (Blogs around 1000 posts each)
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Final conclusion:
The blogs created don't actually generate a significant amount of traffic to the site.
They don't justify the amount of effort put in creating them.
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another essential question:
these blogs contain lots of links to vitalcoaching.com + product pages.
so, it is possible still that all these links generate not direct traffic but search engine juice and interest for these pages - In other terms, these blogs could still be justified as a link building strategy.
Let's check that one out:
Blogs started around JUNE 2008
what happened to the traffic on main vitalcoaching.com/breakupformen.htm?
This is the page that was strongly promoted on these satellite blogs.
June and July 2008 - traffic steady
August 2008 - Intead of a traffic increase (which could be expected as an after effect of the new blogs) there was a drop in traffic to that page by around 50%!
While it is not proven that this is correlated with the blogs activity there was certainly no visible increase during that period.
However, from February 2009, there was a steady increase of traffic to that page.
So... At this stage, nothing is proven either way.
No idea if these blogs sustain the traffic to this breakupformen page or not.
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Conclusion:
These satellite blogs don't seem to be a major source of success for either traffic to these pages or other pages.
It is difficult to guess though what would have happened if they had not been there at all.
Follow up on that strategy or drop it for now?
Another essential question I need and answer for