WordPress Blogs as micro-sites linked to a standard website

[MktgRob]

One of my clients has asked me to set up two blogs, using WordPress, to discuss two vertical markets that the company has expertise in. As WordPress allows you to add pages to the blog that are more like standard webpages, he is planning on using the two blog sites as micro-sites that would also be linked to the corporate website. Can the two micro-sites Blogs, through links to the corporate website, help to raise the page rank of the corporate site in the same way a blog in the corporate website could?

[goodroi]

"microsites" pass link juice and page rank the same way that regular sites do. if you build these sites, dont do any link development and link them to the corporate site you will get no benefit. for link juice/pagerank to pass into a website, the linking site needs to have link juice. you cant got blood or link juice from a stone. a website only gets link juice by gaining inbound links from other sites that have link juice to give.

i regularly launch niche sites and then have them link into my main site. when i launch these niche sites i submit them to directories, do link swaps with other websites, get blogs to add them to their blogrolls, submit articles that allow embedded links etc. by doing this link development i am creating link juice for the niche site. if i do zero link development there would be no link juice to pass from the niche site into the main site.

why am i doing link development for these niche sites instead of focusing 100% of link development to the main site? sometimes people wont link to my main site because it is too vague or maybe they think i am competition. having multiple sites i can have different aliases and target different demographics. it is not easy to do this and it is definitely not a shortcut for link juice.

if you are creating multiple sites with wordpress you should be familiar with wordpress. they require frequent security updates. if you get lazy or forget to upgrade the wordpress it increases the chance that the wordpress will get hacked and kicked out of search engines.

[MktgRob]

"microsites" pass link juice and page rank the same way that regular sites do. if you build these sites, dont do any link development and link them to the corporate site you will get no benefit. for link juice/pagerank to pass into a website, the linking site needs to have link juice. you cant got blood or link juice from a stone. a website only gets link juice by gaining inbound links from other sites that have link juice to give.

i regularly launch niche sites and then have them link into my main site. when i launch these niche sites i submit them to directories, do link swaps with other websites, get blogs to add them to their blogrolls, submit articles that allow embedded links etc. by doing this link development i am creating link juice for the niche site. if i do zero link development there would be no link juice to pass from the niche site into the main site.

why am i doing link development for these niche sites instead of focusing 100% of link development to the main site? sometimes people wont link to my main site because it is too vague or maybe they think i am competition. having multiple sites i can have different aliases and target different demographics. it is not easy to do this and it is definitely not a shortcut for link juice.

if you are creating multiple sites with wordpress you should be familiar with wordpress. they require frequent security updates. if you get lazy or forget to upgrade the wordpress it increases the chance that the wordpress will get hacked and kicked out of search engines.

Thanks for the advice about the linking and about wordpress. One question following up on the wordpress info. I am hosting the blogs through GoDaddy who have a really good wordpress hosting package. I am assuming that they will take all of the precautions necessary to ensure that the sites are not hacked as they are providing the wordpress set up. Do you think my assumption is valid? I will confirm either way but I am just curious to know if you know of the securtiy issue existing in the GoDaddy hosting environment. thanks.