Feeder Sites and Content Clusters?

[Sharron]

I was just listening to Ed and Guru Bob's audios regarding link building and they mentioned Feeder Sites and Content Clusters. I am not really sure what the difference is.

Are Feeder Sites and Content Clusters synonymous or are they a completely different kettle of fish?

My understanding from the audio is Feeder Sites are the Web 2.0 articles we wrote that point to our blog. Is this correct?

Or are the feeder sites a bunch of blogs based on our theme keywords and all pointing back to our money page?

For example: Theme Keyword is not a micro niche anymore in 30dc+ but more of a niche or market. SO say we want to market chocolate. Would we have our money page selling chocolate and then make say 4 blogs on say, chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate ice cream and chocolate lattes and all of these sites/blogs pointing to our money page and making separate web 2.0 pages for each of the 4 blogs pointing to the blogs themselves or back to our money page? I would think back to our blogs.

Or is it better to make 4 blogs more similar to the main keyword such as
mychocolate.com, chocolateblog.com, chocolateandyou.com,chocolatefavorites.com?

Should everything be about the main keyword Chocolate and all the web 2.0 sites be about the main keyword chocolate and keep the category keywords for the blog categories themselves?

I hope I'm not confusing you, I just want to know which is the best way to do it to get the most traffic from the links that would be built up by this.

[Sharron]

I'm extremely disappointed. I asked this question last Wednesday and here it is Monday and I am no where closer to knowing the difference between Feeder sites and content clusters.

I don't understand why I don't have an answer. I am in the 30DC+ forum and it is related to the building backlinks audios that is part of the 30dc+ so I don't think I am asking something that should not be asked.

If it is mentioned in the audio, then why isn't there an answer to the question?
I am disappointed because I am paying for this 30dc+ as a member and for some reason thought that if we had questions we could ask and get answers. We get answers for questions in the regular 30DC so how come we don't get answers when we have a paid membership? Is the membership for access to the content without any guidance?

Sharron

[Isha]

Answering forum questions was never something that was promised with either the Thirty Day Challenge or the Thirty Day Challenge Plus.

If I knew the answers to your questions I'd answer them, & I'm sure the same applies to other people who've read your post.

There's always 30DC Plus Support you could try.

[lisahartwell]

Feeder sites are anything that "feeds" into your main site - blogs, web2.0 etc.

Content clusters (at least to my understanding) happen within your main site. So if you have a site on Chocolate, you might have a content cluster related to chocolate biscuits, one for dark chocolate, one for milk chocolate etc. Each cluster would have a bunch of articles/pages related to those keywords (researched from MS) - such as dark chocolate buttons, belgian dark chocolate, dark chocolate benefits. They are then linked within the cluster.

Your smaller feeder blog sites should be based around the kind of keywords that your 30DC research will have found. Ones that have 80+ traffic but aren't too high in competition. Preferably on different IP addresses. Link each one to the main site - my preference is to link them into relevant pages not necessarily to the main url but I'm not sure these days what the feeling is about which way creates the most link juice.

Then create related web2.0 sites that link to these blogs.

All the link juice then passes up the chain.

Lisa

[Sharron]

how would you get different IP addresses if your IP address is static? Do I need to go and use other peoples computers?

The rest makes sense to me, but this part confuses me.

Thanks for responding. I truly appreciate it.
Sharron

[lisahartwell]

Sorry, should have explained that. Computers have IP addresses but so does your website's server. So, if you have one hosting account you will most likely have one IP address because the hosting company will usually serve your websites all from the same server.

Lisa

[Sharron]

Thanks Lisa

[Isha]

Thanks Lisa - I found it helpful too.

[elhy]

Originally Posted by lisahartwell

Feeder sites are anything that "feeds" into your main site - blogs, web2.0 etc.

Content clusters (at least to my understanding) happen within your main site. So if you have a site on Chocolate, you might have a content cluster related to chocolate biscuits, one for dark chocolate, one for milk chocolate etc. Each cluster would have a bunch of articles/pages related to those keywords (researched from MS) - such as dark chocolate buttons, belgian dark chocolate, dark chocolate benefits. They are then linked within the cluster.

Your smaller feeder blog sites should be based around the kind of keywords that your 30DC research will have found. Ones that have 80+ traffic but aren't too high in competition. Preferably on different IP addresses. Link each one to the main site - my preference is to link them into relevant pages not necessarily to the main url but I'm not sure these days what the feeling is about which way creates the most link juice.

Then create related web2.0 sites that link to these blogs.

All the link juice then passes up the chain.

Lisa

Hey Lisa. This seems interesting. I really don't know how I can have different IP addresses. Should I do this? Work on my content clusters on the same computer and internet connection, but use different hosting services as much as possible for those sites? I currently use Hostgator, but should I consider using other services such as Bluehost for related sites?

[lisahartwell]

It can be useful to have different web hosts to spread your sites out. Or get a reseller account on Hostgator and set up different accounts. I've noticed that my sites appear under different IPs when I do this.

Lisa