Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks

[shauna7084]

I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites.  The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites.  I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it).  I also want a different landing page to rank for each term.  The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search.  Each one targets a different county.  However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page.  Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website).

Is this a good SEO back link strategy?  Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?

[shauna7084]

Say I was going to fully build out these pages with content, how much unique content should I have per page (minimum)?  Would several paragraphs do the trick?

[MoosaHemani]

That’s great that you can get a link from Gov website but the link will be in the footer and this means every page of the website will be linking back to you as normally websites share the same footer across the website.

Google like natural links and when you will use a key phrase to link back to your client’s website (especially in the footer) this will hurt you as Google can easily guess that the link has been created to manipulate SERP results.

My opinion, if you are linking from footer is to get link on brand name instead of a keyword this way you will get the link juice. I am not saying you will be able to achieve your goal but still you will increase the website authority which will help you in different ways.

You also said that you don’t have lot of unique content for each page. There is no shortcut or pass here you have to create unique content for pages in order to increase your chances to rank for different county related keyphrases.

Honestly, this strategy in my opinion is not good and Google can easily guess what you are doing and reward you accordingly.

I think the better idea is to get a link with a brand name to increase authority, create unique content for county pages. Get some quality links from different industry related websites and you will rank better in SERPs from the targeted key phrases.

Just a thought!