What Are Satellite Sites?
Satellite sites are standalone websites on their own domain which have relevant, niche targetted content and contain multiple links to your main site. Each of your satellite sites should have unique, useful and interesting content which end users will find useful and which is targetted specifically to a single keyword. Once built, we can then conduct link building to your satellite sites in order to get them indexed by the search engines. As the satellite sites themselves only then link onwards to your main website, the cumulative link juice is concentrated and the positive effect on the individual keyword ranking for your main site is very quick and recognisable.
Why do satellite sites have a bad name?
As with many SEO techniques, there are those in the industry who have misused this tactic and built “junk” sites which have no original content and whose sole purpose is to trick the search engines. With our approach of “humans first” we build satellite sites which are designed to be people friendly. Whether focussed as a review site of specific products, an article site with in depth coverage of the subject matter or a help/advice forum on a specific topic, each and every one of our satellite sites would pass muster with a human who found themselves landing there. The added advantage of this is that when that human clicks from the satellite sites through to your main website, they are now “pre-qualified” – i.e. they are definitely interested in what you have to offer. They also now have a higher regard for your business as the information given has been of use. Both of these lead to higher conversions. This is why we are certain that our satellite sites are a “good thing” and a positive aspect of any customers SEO.
Market domination with satellite sites
Because each and every satellite site targets a very specific (often longtail) keyword, we can build clusters which all focus on similar phrases, and because all of these sites within the cluster will link to your main website, this often results in complete domination of medium tail keyphrases. For example, if your website was selling banana fritters, and we built a cluster of satllite sites, each targeting:
- making banana fritters
- history of banana fritters
- banana fritter reviews
- where to buy banana fritters
- etc etc
The result of this would be that any customer searching any of these exact phrases would find the main website ranked very highly, with the satellite site(s) very closely behind, and in time this can lead to complete and utter domination of keywords with your sites ranking 1st through to 7th or 8th, effectively excluding all competitors from getting any traffic on those search terms. As the satellite site cluster grows, the main sites relevance and link weighting for the main phrase “banana fritters” would increase, resulting in high rankings on the shorter search term. In our process we identify markets relating to your industry where we can do this, and grow your clusters of satellite sites. For extremely competetive keywords we can add a second ring to this method, and possibly a third. The principle is the same but the effectiveness is amplified.
