Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?

[simermeet]

My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?

[EGOL]

lol.....   I think that he has underestimated the difficulty. 

But, at least his communication has let you know that extreme and probably sneaky measures will be needed.

I am not saying that I would take his advice... I probably would not do that type of website building.  But, I agree with him that you must be willing to spend a worthy amount to compete.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

What he's trying to say is that you need to build links to be able to get your website to rank well.  However, EGOL is right in that this would not be sufficient.  You would be better off spending that time generating great content for your own site, reaching out to other bloggers to post your content on their site (unique content of course) and creating some sort of newsletter to try get contact info from people in a different way.

[simermeet]

Thanks Jerry & Egol,

Thats exactly what I am trying to figure out. It seems to me that instead of creating 10000 of articles for the 20 websites, it might be better to create 5000 good quality posts and put them on other blogs or sites, and link to my site that way. Your thoughts?

[EGOL]

Honestly.  Being really honest here.

I would find a different industry for my focus.

Your target is really really really really tough.  You have arrived late to this fight and your competitors are fierce, armed to the teeth, occupy ALL of the highest ground and have spent $x00,000 or more to acquire their positions.  Lots of them cheat too.

The only way that I would enter this niche is if I was Mr Mortgage, had a really big company with very deep resources behind me and I was able to service all of the clients myself.  This ground will be very expensive to attack if you expect to be even marginally competitive.

My money says that you will get your ass kicked.  I think this is a very safe bet.