Really, truly... is there any purpose for the "external blogs / micro sites" beyond SEO manipulation?

Really, truly...

Do you mean it is black hat method?

It depends. I built a few links from my old site to my new site... I actually didn't see any change in ranking at all even though the site has some authority. Google probably knows that they are both my sites, but i doubt they consider it spammy. If you are just plugging your site in when they have nothing to do with eachother then you might get into some trouble, but I don't think anything will happen if its just a few websites. Most times G will just go after large networks and obvious PBN's.

For me it really worked earlier and my keywords were ranked well. In my case both sites were on different IPs.

It's mostly white gray area. Can the individual sites stand on their own? Do they mean to serve different types of users?

My experience with the approach is mostly safe, but I want to disclose a little more about my general approach. I have quite a few of micro niche sites. Each micro niche site's users may overlap, but they usually do not think about another topic while on one. Which means they can and should stand on their own instead of being merged into one.

For example, my sites are like about a certain book or video, the site discuss everything about a book. The visitor may find another book relevant while browsing my niche site, but usually they are more focused at book on topic on their hand. They are on the site for information about that book.

I do however link together "books" of the same genre, like..horror book with horror book, and not horror book with comedy book, because I know those readers will most likely overlap and find the extra links helpful for when they need them. I do however have a "bookstore" site where it talks about all the minor small books that cannot have enough content to be their own site. And I do use that to link out to my individual micro niche from time to time where I need it to be discovered and crawled faster, but I do not abuse it to link out to every single book site that I own.

But if your micro niche is something like..
How to Eat
How to Eat Faster
How to Eat Smart
With links to a site about "eat".

Then I would think that's pure manipulation and probably is worthless.

You have to have them hosted on separate IP addresses, best on different hosting companies. Then you cannot put a link on the footer of each site. Plan those links wisely. Use those other sites as their own entity, their own purpose and as long as you don't register the domains under the same name (private, perhaps), you should be good. And don't have those domains under the same Google Analytics Account login ID. Keep everything separate.

If all that is worth it, then it should be fine. But with that much effort, a real link building and content strategy might be better.

Why I say this, it is because I know of a company (hint hint) that has over a million links from sites they own and they still get beat by a competitor with half the backlinks.

Link profile 101: (number of links / domains linked to them) <---- not including quality of those sites), still matters. So 1,000 links from 10 sites isn't as good as 600 links from 200 sites. Remember that too and then make your decision as you see fit.

It shouldn't hurt and might help ifthe links are legitimate and aren't overdone.

We have a couple of related blogs and a secondary site about one of our main topics (geared to a different audience) Those sites link back to our main site, and vice versa. The links make sense in the same way that, say, links from NBC.com to NBCnews.com and NBCsports.com make sense. The sites may have their own domains, but they're part of a larger entity, so it's reasonable for them to be presented as such.

If an external blog reaches a new audience, and that audience clicks from your blog to your site, then yes, it has value.

I suspect the SEO value from an external blog is lower these days because Google is putting more emphasis on quality content.

A 200-word article with no graphics on WordPress.com won't do much good. A blog with dozens if not hundreds of authoritative articles will have more SEO value, but the amount of work to develop such a blog is a big question mark because you are taking time away from your core site.

Just to echo Storiale, it has also been my experience that multiple sites with a backlink that are on the same IP are more or less irrelevant. I have 2 servers, and have 51 of my own sites on one and customer's hosted sites on the other. All of them link back to my main site in multiple ways, but as far as I can tell it's had no impact on my placement.

In fact, it may have had a negative impact! My placement is lower now than 2 years ago, and while there are a few potential variables (already discussed in another thread), this is one of them.

A blog with dozens if not hundreds of authoritative articles will have more SEO value, but the amount of work to develop such a blog is a big question mark because you are taking time away from your core site.

Is it good then to have posts on well established third party blogs like blogger etc. where we can have quality contents with one or two no follow backlinks?

If an external blog reaches a new audience, and that audience clicks from your blog to your site, then yes, it has value.

I had many mini-blogs way back in the past until I figured I could not have the quality while trying to keep up with the quantity. It did not make sense.
I only have one of them, dormant (thinking to start posting from time to time again), which from time to time brings a sale through one of my sites (affiliate based business).

Therefore, if people read your blog, and end up on your "main" site with either just visiting it it or buying something, that should be good for Google as well. I would just stay away from "backlink" thinking. Act as somebody who runs a blog and then links to your site from time to time. Link to other authoritative sites as well, not to cheat on Google but to have some sort of true value for a reader as well. Try acting as two separate people that do not know each other.

People will build entire networks of new sites and perform ungodly amounts of research and effort to keep them hidden, each person thinking THEY will somehow outsmart google where nobody else has(at least not for long). It blows my mind the amount of effort put into this! If only they'd have used those resources to actually, you know, make their site better instead.

I won't complain, it's not hard to beat a site who's webmaster is off building other stuff.

Sam222, I haven't seen any indication that having one or two dofollow links on an external blog will result in a penalty. So it stands to reason that dofollow links may provide some SEO benefit.

That being said, SmallCompany and I are pretty much on the same page. The amount of time you put into external blogs simply might not be worth the clicks and SEO value compared to putting that same time and effort into your main site.

If you decide to try it, I would suggest testing the idea on WordPress.com because it has a better reach into its large audience than Blogger. Tumblr is better than Blogger too.

You will probably get more clicks with less effort if you focus more on Facebook than a blog. But some people do succeed at it.

JS Harris makes a good point. I have read that people who build entire networks of blogging sites to create backlinks (using cheap labor from Third World countries) will get a penalty if they are caught because their backlinks are not "natural".

I don't comment much anymore about such things because, if you're big enough to rack up substantial questionable practice penalties, you'll get what you ask for. If you're small and doing things the "natural" way, you'll likely get ignored in the SERPS. Whatever you do, you're going to have to be real good at it to get your traffic from Google in the future. Watching Google traffic for me has become like watching a yo yo. I don't play around with any SEO stuff on my sites anymore so, other than adding new content, I'm not doing anything to change G's opinion of my sites. Still, one day up, the next, nothing. What I know is that it's not what I'm doing that impacts the results. It's the constant change at Google. They don't care about me and I don't care about them. I'll take what I get but there are no games being played here. Diversification is the only game I know at this point. BTW, when G traffic goes down, Yahoo, Bing and AOL seem to be picking up. I'm back to the grindstone and will leave all this speculation to the speculators. Cheers!

I would just stay away from "backlink" thinking

I would say backlink still plays vital role, Only good contents on site doesn’t work well. Contents leave high ranked keywords till 4th / 5th page of SERP no matter how good contents you have. To beat your competitors and to position these on first / second pages of SERPs it require some quality backlinks so i believe backlinks still work if you are getting from good resources as it shows the page popularity no matter these are from your own PBNs or other sources so far as these are not spam.

"People will build entire networks of new sites and perform ungodly amounts of research and effort to keep them hidden, each person thinking THEY will somehow outsmart google where nobody else has(at least not for long). It blows my mind the amount of effort put into this! If only they'd have used those resources to actually, you know, make their site better instead."

You are naive if you think this does not work. The number of PBNs out there is astronomical. Keep drinking Google's Fear flavored Kool aid. Google doesnt catch 1% of whats out there, and even 1% may be high by a magnitude of 100.

You are naive if you think this does not work.

I didn't give an opinion on if it works or not besides suggesting the end result is likely the same, eventually. In my experience you stand a much smaller chance of having everything burn to the ground if you avoid things that intentionally attempt to manipulate rank.

RankBrain is now Google's #3 most important ranking factor according to employees on Twitter and it was turned on for all searches earlier this year. As the AI gets 'smarter' things like personal blog networks used for ranking purposes are likely to backfire more and more. That's just my own personal opinion, it's not for me, but I do know how passionate some people are about their networks. To each his own.

More about RankBrain is available from this Bloomberg article, Bloomberg broke the news about RankBrain: [bloomberg.com...]

Keep drinking Google's Fear flavored Kool aid.

That was uncalled for so I will share an opinion of where search might be heading: RankBrain is machine learning that will, eventually, lead to a mobile device answering your questions via voice, bypassing search to website completely. Everything Google is doing aligns to that end right now including buying the mobile hardware, setting up the software and getting rid of pieces that wouldn't fit like Google compare. How do you get traffic to a website when websites are obsolete? Hmm. My guess is that as soon as they figure out how to monetize voice queries we're going to find out.

Fun fact: If you ask RankBrain what it thinks is the #1 problem with a lot of websites in the not too distant future it might just say "webmasters". It wouldn't be wrong. Don't worry too much though, people are nostalgic and there will be a place for websites somewhere online for a long time to come.

I believe it's perfectly natural to google if it is useful to the user. But the value being minimal.

How do you get traffic to a website when websites are obsolete?

Web sites won't become obsolete. (Did print become obsolete when film, radio, and TV were invented?)

The online audience may become more fragmented, but it's larger than it used to be, and users are spending a lot more time online than they did a few years ago.

Web sites won't become obsolete. (Did print become obsolete when film, radio, and TV were invented?)

Print, if not immediately becoming obsolete, certainly took a significant hit to the groin with the advent of the internet.

Scrapers/mashers are probably the most significant issue threatening original content producers on the internet. IMO.