Are White Label sites still any good?

[tomj]

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Ok, so you dont have to worry about content and design etc etc, just getting enough links in.....but, if you run a white label site, have your SERPS been hit of late by the google dupe filter which has killed quite a few sites in the last month!

Because being white label, I assume the content is the same on all the sites?? therefore its duplicate??

Anyone?

Cheers, T.

[matbennett]

We encourage people to add as much individual content / minor changes as possible and give them the tools to do this.

Bit early to be certains, but on the two white-label systems that I am involved in, it appears to be the ones who spend a couple of hours making them their own who are getting the positioning so far.

[NaturalInstinct]

do people only create white label sites and put a few links up to get PR and google SERPS ?

I thought the idea was that you signed up for the site, customized it and then promoted it by getting high profile links/PPC/SERPS/offline advertising etc etc.

I guess what i'm asking is, are white label sites just seen as the easy time saving option or do people put a lot of effort into promoting them in different ways ?

[tomj]

Originally posted by NaturalInstinct
do people only create white label sites and put a few links up to get PR and google SERPS ?

I thought the idea was that you signed up for the site, customized it and then promoted it by getting high profile links/PPC/SERPS/offline advertising etc etc.

I guess what i'm asking is, are white label sites just seen as the easy time saving option or do people put a lot of effort into promoting them in different ways ?

well the way i'm looking at it is this:

1 - time i'm not spending faffing around designing, making pages and goofing off on forums for help etc etc I can spend on link building and other promotion stuff

2 - a kick ass white label will enhance my own brand no end

3 - in much better position to negotiate commissions with just 1 supplier to deal with


what do other people think?

[NaturalInstinct]

I'm interested because we are in the process of building a white label system.

I'd be interested to know what people think makes a good white label system and what makes a bad one.

[tomj]

and of course if we could also try and find out whether white label sites are getting stuffed in the SERPS for duplication, that would be good!

[madstock]

Originally posted by NaturalInstinct
I'd be interested to know what people think makes a good white label system and what makes a bad one.

Ooh.. sign me up

In my 'umble opinion the best bits to include in a white label system are (in no particular order..)

1. Fully customisable colouration/branding, including the ability to use custom headers and footers, and external style sheets...

2. Fully customisable layout - e.g. 2 columns / 1 central column with piccies etc (technical terms, there...)

3. Subdomain registration e.g. http://yoursite.naturalinstinct.co.uk

4. Full control over Meta tags (very useful recently with smartengine, as we could simply run a meta refresh to a site that doesn't extract the urine)

5. A logical site search, with mod rewrites to make linking from search results dead easy...

These would be the minimum requirements - other nice touches would be...

1. Customisable logos - if, for example someone doesn't have the tech. ability to code their own header, maybe a simple logo, showing the URL that changes for each affiliate

2. Turn On / Off products and offers, to make some sites "tamer" than others (wot, no rabbits??)

3. "Join Our Affiliate Program" links that have the referrer code enabled, allowing 2nd tier earnings - amazingly a few that we use don't have this as standard

4. As you are on POR, excellent click tracking as standard, so you can see "what's what"

..and probably more, but Korma is calling...

Duncan

[tomj]

hasn't jackpotjoy launched a white label??

[NaturalInstinct]

Originally posted by tomj
and of course if we could also try and find out whether white label sites are getting stuffed in the SERPS for duplication, that would be good!

oops, didn't mean to derail your thread tomj

[tomj]

phah....np....i'm sure I do it all the time!

[morleymouse]

tom JPJ have a whitelabel, but only for special people at mo.

not for everyone untill its all automated, at mo I think chris has to set it all up for you - you'd have to check with him though.

I still think whitelabels are worth it, but not on their own. Especailly if you can get your own logo on, brand building and all that

[tomj]

I think someone above gave the best answer:

its got to be those who customise the sites the most who are gonna stand the best chance of not getting nailed by duplication filters.....

just managed to make a kick ass site design in frontpage tonight for the first time ever!....so might not look at white label just yet

[stevo]

Originally posted by NaturalInstinct
I'm interested because we are in the process of building a white label system.

Did you ever get the White Label thing up and running?

[chrisuk]

You gotta supplement your white labels with other content. Even sites that use dynamic text and meta are getting tagged right now. Need to be better than that.

Irony that the more unique content you add to your white label, the less of a white label it actually becomes. Adding stuff like news feeds and articles is a good way of making your third party content look far more unique, original and content rich.

But also diversify and have something else besides your organic serps to provide traffic.

But I wouldn't say creating a good white label that does well these days is easy. Yes you can still get lucky and get incredibily well indexed but it takes work to stay there and part of that I think involves adding good unique content supplements.

But the new MSN search will launch out of beta soon and eat all your sites up just like Google used to, that would make for a good new year

Chris

[MobilesCoUk]

We allow our White Label Affiliates to pretty much customise their sites as much as they want within reason including headers, titles, meta tags etc.

This doesn't always work entirely to plan as quite often we find our pages on the White Label sites are higher up in the search engines than we are!

Mind you, with our top Affiliates earning over £15k a month I don't think either us or them are complaining.

The only thing that does bother me is there never seems to be any consistency. Some of our WL sites are higher than us on some search terms and lower on other keywords, yet the basic content remains the same. If I could work this one out I'd be a millionaire.