Setting up a separate site for link building

[LeeAbrahamson]

We are jump starting a link building campaign for a personal injury law firm.

We're planning on doing things right with earning links to content people will actually want to share, sponsoring local events, etc.

We're a little worried that some good opportunities could be missed due to the fact some people have assumptions about personal injury lawyers and would be hesitant to link to us simply because of our injury, regardless of what we're trying to share/promote.

One solution we're considering is creating a foundation associated with the firm that supports relevant causes and provides the public with educational resources. That might get over our branding hurdle a bit.

We've also discussed setting up a separate site for the foundation and actually building links to it rather than our main site, then linking the foundation site to our main site. The hope would be that we could get more links to the foundation site and it would in turn pass on link juice to our main site.

My concern is whether this strategy makes any sense. We'd be putting good content on this foundation site rather than our main site. How much link juice would actually be passed on to our main site in this case? Would so much be lost that it would negate the whole purpose?

[TheZenAgency]

This would be a no no for me.

Create the content within your domain and try to gain links to it, this will help improve your SEO efforts on the website.

Depending on your CMS you could create a section on your website entitled "Foundation" have the content in here and have it branded slightly differently from your main site, this may encourage others to link to you but you would still have the benefits of the links pointing to your domain.

Also have a search on Google for the terms "link building" and "boring" this will give you some great guides for building links within not so exciting industries!

[_Heiko_]

I would not go for the second domain solution with a foundation. Regardless if you generate many links to this site, you will just give a tiny part of link juice to your mainsite through some links. Just imagine the example that another big page is linking to you, you will not automatically get all its link juice, right? Moreover you can get trouble if both domains are registered on the same name or use same IP adresses etc, as google identifies this as your "personal" link farm.

If you really think you will benefit THAT much from a second foundation domain page I would more think about how you get a good amount of the traffic from the foundation site to your mainpage and convert it there. But then I would try to rank only with the foundation domain.

Cheers,

Heiko

[webmethod]

Hi Lee,

The foundation site idea sounds like a real roundabout way of achieving organic traffic and hence sales - which from a high level I'm assuming is what you're trying to achieve. It would perhaps make more sense if you were going to use the Foundation site to drive referrals, or to use for PR, rather than solely for link equity purposes.

It wouldn't take much for Google to work out that the foundation site is a bit of a cynical attempt to gain rankings.

If I was you I'd focus on improving the content and linkability of your client's existing site and address some of the branding issues head on rather than side-stepping them with a sister website. You can incorporate the "foundation" idea into the existing website (perhaps on a subdomain or directory), which if done properly - with valuable content - will earn natural links and therefore gain far more organic value than having a sister website.

George

[max.favilli]

Tough question.

I think the foundation idea is good, you definitely need to distance yourself from the bad name associated with that business sector if you want to rise the probability of gaining good backlinks.

But I would put it in a subfolder on the same domain. And I would design the site and the homepage to give prominent visibility to your foundation.

It would require a lot of effort, time and money to promote the foundation-domain, and the juice/authority/rank/trust you will gain won't be that easy to transfer to the firm-domain, you can't just wait for the foundation-domain to gain trust/authority/rank/juice and then “spam” it with links to the other domain, you won't transfer much juice that way.

On the other side if you build it as a subfolder you may gain less backlinks but each one will give juice to the firm-domain directly, immediately and 100% of that juice.

Also... What Matt Cutts or Rand Fishkin or many others would answer to you? Probably, that you should completely forget seo, juice, and so on... And just focus on what is better experience for your users, what is better for the image of that company, what is so completely “white” hat that could be confused with milk? And in your case, what is better than frankly and honestly promote that foundation directly from the firm-domain? It's going to improve confidence and trust for the firm-domain from day one, they would benefit no matter how much easier it's going to make your work trying to gain backlinks.

[David-Kley]

Use the main domain for your promotional items. If the site is not currently set up for that, I would invest your money and time into making the main site as good as it possibly can be. Install a blog, add in content, promote from within.

Your existing domain most likely has weight and authority, and will have more than a new domain registration. Depending upon how you structure the site, you may not even have to brand or constantly remind people it is about or being sponsored by a personal injury law firm. What you are wanting to accomplish is additional exposure whether it be through backlinks, additional visits, etc. When you are planning out your strategy, think of what type of content you are going to include, and where people search for that type of information. Then, go out and participate in those areas or forums/sites/blogs/discussions. This will save you a lot of time from wasted effort in places that have limited exposure or people that are not willing to share.

[LeeAbrahamson]

Thanks for responses, everybody. Very insightful, as usual.