I'm wondering about using some web 2.0 sites for links for some of my smaller niche sites. My question is in regards to the blogging sites like Blogger, Wordpress, and the blog on Xanga. Would it be best to have one general blog with each and have it updated more often or have several blogs with each service and keep them in the niche topics of my sites? Any advice from experience would be great but speculating is also welcome. Also: If I get decent PR on a blogger or wordpress blog would posts on them be worth less than a hosted blog if I was going to offer paid posts?
Your question is really interesting. While you want to make a blog then I recommend you to make your blog niche based. Let if you are working for one site that relevant to online shopping then make blog on wordpress, blogger like web 2.0 platform on online shopping theme and update each blog frequently posting online shopping relevant post. You may submit one unique article to one platform and then submit the same article to other blog by spinning your article, never submit the same article to other directory. Just spin article to avoid duplicacy. This is the best strategy. Even I have seen the quality of relevancy. I made one blog on blogspot on online shopping and I have been maintaining my blog since a long time by posting unique article. I see the backlinks from google for each site for which I linked from the blogspot blog by posting article. So the best strategy is make niche based blog on each web2.0 platform as google much prefer on relevancy.
It will be more effective if you link them with each other to make a linkwheel network and the build links around that wheel.. as these are mostly very high PR Authority sites, you get good traffic and link juice from them.
SEO is changing, google is getting smarter about these low quality links from no authority, low quality sites. My suggestion is the same as the first reply. Don't bother with linkwheels, it may work for a short time but it will ultimately become worthless or worse, get you knocked from the keywords your targeting. Instead, setup 2-3 blogs on wordpress, tumblr, blogspot, ect. Purchase domains, Create unique content for them, build links slowly by article submissions, bookmarking, ect. Those blogs will then be so much more valuable over time then new registration web 20 blogs that only have one post with 2 outbound links, then abandoned.
If you can, focus on being niche specific. It's time consuming, but you can take advantage of scheduled posts, so write a bunch and make them post little by little. Have an RSS feed or two. Invite guest bloggers. Maybe draw up a chart of which ones are to point to which, so you don't mess up your linking pattern (linkwheel, link mininet, whatever)
I use a haphazard linking approach, which I reckon will appear more natural than any sort of structured linking.
I have a chart that show's what is linking where. I also have multiple versions so it will be irregular from post to post and site to site. I'm not shooting for a quick fix. I have no plans of making one post and then abandoning them. These will be regular blogs for me. I will build links to them (albeit slowly). Once I get some issues sorted out on some other sites I will take guest posts and all those goodies. Each blog will only link to the micro sites twice and each site is on a separate domain. I'm not setting up simple link wheels and calling it a day. Is this an Okay process? I'd like to have a domain of my own for each blog but I don't want to put that much time into it at this point. I work a very full-time job and have 2 kids. Is a PR2 tumblr blog that much less valuable than a PR2 blog on it's own domain?
That's GOLD, use a variety of sites though. You need to remember that it absolutely must be natural, to the site hosting the blog, to Google and to you. Not only will you have great sites that will stand the test of time, they will provide you with strong authority links later down the road when you need them for a new project.