First, I have to admit that I have only been building my website portfolio for about 2 years. Before 2006 I was running only a couple (larger) sites but only in recent year or two have I been pumping out many (smaller) sites. I also start more new sites before I finish one because I get excited about something. This is something I have been getting better at with research and due diligence.
So the other day when someone asked me “How do you manage all of those websites?” my first thought was “I have no idea.” But when I thought about it further for a minute, a few things came clear. Since I was asked the question, I have been thinking a lot about website management. I have been unconsciously using a rough system when creating websites but I realize I need to make this system more concrete.
Here is my basic for week system that I have been using to create and manage multiple websites. I will not get into everything, but I wanted to show you the gist of the system.
Week 1: I will set up 3 sites in about week until I am drained and exhausted or just bored with it. If I am creating multiple sites in the same week, they are usually niche related.
Week 2: When the initial sites are finished and indexed in Google, I then forward information to my SEO team (person) to continue with offsite SEO and link building. She will usually work on two of the sites while I leave one site at the control or will work on offsite SEO myself with a different system. This is key for us in testing which methods work best for gaining organic search engine rankings. But offsite linking is a whole other system I will post about in the future.
Week 3: When I start to see which of the new sites seem to be more promising, I start interlinking my sites together to help build upon the more promising sites. I usually do not link out from the best site to the others unless I really want to help build up a particular site. Either way, I rarely create reciprocal links between sites I own. I also take time to go back and touch up on some of the older sites a little bit making improvements with recently acquired knowledge.
Week 4: This is when I am really starting to feel burnt-out so I like to hit up the forums and blogs to see what people are talking about. This helps get my creative juices back and gives me great ideas for news sites.
