A client who I do web work currently pays a seo company to build a lot or domains / mini sites and create a directory of these domains and have everything cross linking back to his site.

These mini sites are all identical apart from a bit of variation in the colours of each site and the keyword targeted domain name.

It would appear to me that these would be called throwaway domains, or thin affiliate sites at best. The directory is populated with these domains - all effectively pointing back at my client site.

My opinion is that, at best, this isn’t a very solid foundation to build on. Surely search engine optimisation in 2007 is all about articals, blogging, networking, linkbait etc - not creating a fake directory and populating it with fake mini - sites?

….any comments please?

Is it ethical or unethical?

PS - I’m sure Matt Cutts said somewhere that domains should be pointed to the main site if there was no original or unique content on the site, but I cant find it for the life of me.

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