Quickly Make Money Online Blog

by Dee Smith

There is a tactic used for generating extra traffic to your website that works very well, especially on Google, but must be used with caution. What is this tactic?

Creating Shadow Sites

Many online marketing gurus create other websites, called Shadow Sites, for the sole purpose of generating a vehicle to provide backlinks to their main website.

Imagine for a moment that you have a website that you want to promote. Now, create other websites using the keywords from your main website as the names of these shadow sites. Then create relevant content with links pointing back to your main website. Genius right? But….

First, What went Right

I have used this strategy very successfully for SEO, search engine optimization, but made a crucial error. I am telling you my story in the hopes you can avoid this costly error.

Initially I created a website using the free hosting from GoDaddy.com. My strategy was to use the free site to save money while I tested to see if my great idea was going to work. GoDaddy’s free hosting sites are limited to 5 pages which I used up very quickly.  And I was happy to see my idea was working. But I didn’t like the 5 page limitation and knew I wanted to expand the site.

So I decided to buy hosting for two additional shadow sites with two goals in mind. First, I wanted to see if these sites would help my main site. Second, I wanted to eventually swap out one of the paid sites for the free site.

I created these sites using major keywords in their names. Within a few weeks I did a Google search using those keywords automatically generated back links. Wow, to my excitement and amazement, both sites came up on the first page of Google.

So, What went Wrong

I took one of those sites and worked to create all the new content and expansion my original site would not allow. When I had everything finished, I thought “the site is on Googles first page for relevant keywords, it has everything I want, I’ll apply for Google adsense”. Google adsense is their program that places ads on your site. When a visitor clicks on those ads you make money. Great idea right? Wrong!

Google was not aware that my plan was to swap this site for the older one. All they saw was a shadow site. Evidently, Google frowns on shadow sites. I received an email from them saying they didn’t like the site and rejected it as an adsense prospect.

It Gets Worse

DUH! What was I thinking. In essence I alerted Google to a site that was getting first page placement that shouldn’t be and you guessed it – that site as well as the other shadow site has been banned to online Siberia, no where to be found during a search. All that work for nothing!

The moral of the story

Don’t try to get Google adsense on a shadow site.

You can find more information on how to make money.