Practical Approaches to SEO Vertical Site Networks

I learned this from an article on Zhihu, though I can't remember exactly which one.

First, pick a vertical niche — don't build a general-purpose site.

For example, wedding, pets, gardening, fitness, or home renovation. A site should consistently produce content around one single topic over the long term. Google now places a lot of weight on topical consistency, and sticking to one niche for a long time makes it easier to build Topical Authority.

Once you've decided on the niche, then go look for an expired domain.

Generally, I use Expireddomains.net to filter expired domains, focusing on two key metrics:

DP (Referring Domains) and domain age.

DP can be understood as how many different websites have linked to it. Don't just look at the total number of backlinks — the number of unique referring domains matters more. I won't touch anything below 20.

For domain age, try to pick older ones, prioritizing domains registered before 2020. Older domains usually carry some historical trust in search engines.

But the metrics aren't the main point — the key is checking the history.

Before buying, always check historical snapshots on the Wayback Machine.

Confirm a few things:

• Was it a legitimate website before?
• Was the content consistently maintained over a long period?
• Is it related to the niche you're planning to enter?
• Has it ever been used for gambling, gray-hat schemes, content farms, or adult content?

Stay away from domains with a problematic history — they're very hard to clean up later.

After buying the domain, don't leave it idle.

Many people buy a domain and the homepage is still the default template half a month later — that's a huge waste. At minimum, set up the basic structure first:

• Homepage
• About
• Contact
• A few foundational articles

Let search engines start crawling it again.

Right now, the core of SEO is content.

The importance of backlinks has dropped significantly compared to a few years ago. Google now cares more about content quality, user dwell time, content completeness, and real value.

But don't just use GPT or DeepSeek to generate articles in one click.

That kind of content usually has several obvious problems:

• Template-like structure
• Lots of filler
• Low information density
• Heavy AI flavor
• No real experience behind it

The effective approach now isn't to have AI "ghostwrite" — it's to use AI for content enhancement.

The actual workflow is generally like this:

First, find trending topics.

You can use:

• Google Trends
• Weibo Index
• Reddit
• Ahrefs
• Semrush

Look at which keywords are seeing rising search volume.

Prioritize growing terms — don't start by fighting over the biggest, most competitive keywords.

Then go search the keyword on Google first.

Study the top-ranking pages carefully:

• Their article structure
• Which questions they cover
• What content has been repeated to death
• What users actually care about

Don't skip this step.

Because the SERP itself is what Google currently believes best matches user intent.

After researching, then let AI participate in generation.

But not by directly "writing an article."

Instead:

• Restructure the outline
• Fill in missing information
• Add case studies
• Expand the FAQ
• Increase information density
• Create differentiated expression

The core goal isn't to trick the search engine — it's to:

Make the content more complete, more specific, and more authentic than what's currently ranking.