Missy — we’re playing it safe because we’re dealing with real estate, an industry that is just filled with awful link trading and reciprocal linking patterns and schemes. Plus, these blogs don’t have much trust at the moment. I don’t know that there’s an exact answer to your question — it’s one of those “it depends” things.

As time goes along, we’ll be making some changes to the blogs. And once this series is out of the way, I’ll be able to write about the changes we make and the (hopefully good) impact they have.

What about the blog networks that interlink to each other. I interlink my network of blogs all the time, are you saying this is bad practice? Let me know.

As for the domain is it vital to have atleast one keyword in it. For all the reasons you stated. This is one good puzzle piece, and all local bloggers should heed to it. There are many variations one can use for a local domain, such as:

Inside (town name)
Visit (town name)
About (town name)

Plus as you have done, also is good to use ones keyword plus industry. (e.g. chicagorealtors.com)

You also make a valid point on the widgets. Most likely those who are coming to the local blog, probably have no idea what an Entrecard is.

My Chicago blog will be undergoing a major re-design soon, and i’ll be sure to ease up on the widgets.

Good article!

In Part One, we discussed the planning and strategy behind starting our hyperlocal blogs — primarily the decision to do four blogs instead of one. Though it would quadruple our workload, we believe it was the right road to take. With our decision mad…