You’ll know me for often saying stuff like this with regards to gaining high rankings in Google:
“slow and steady wins the game in the end”
“the snail pace backlinking will gain you high rankings”
“if you go too fast with your backlinking in the early days, you will be penalized by Google”
And I would be willing to bet that 99% of people who visit this blog regularly would tend to agree. If you’ve been working in internet marketing for a while now, and you’ve tried your hand at ranking your pages in Google, you may well have been harshly penalized for going too fast with your backlinking.
Well, guess what?
I now think its utter BS!
Let me explain why.
Firstly, occasionally I go onto Flippa and assess what sort of website has sold for what sort of investment. More often these days I tend to look at the high end stuff – those sites that sell for over $10k, and more ideally – those sites that have sold for $40k and above. Of course, I also assess the lower end too – not that I buy up low priced websites, but rather – it provides an insight into what niches are selling well on the whole, and this fits nicely into the recent mini course concept I did here on the blog. Fast-ish rankings in a lower end niche, can bring a tidy little profit.
However, I came across a site in the dieting niche not long ago, and it was ranking top spot for a kwd that was competitive. Let’s say that on a scale of 1 to 10, very competitive was 10. If memory serves me well, this one would have been a 7. Nothing too fancy then…
Nevertheless, the domain was established in April of this year, and the site was selling in August of this year, again – if memory serves me well. So, that means, to achieve number 1 in Google (and it appeared that this particular site had been in the number one position for the main kwd term for the previous 6 weeks before it was up for auction), it had only taken a mere 3 months.
Now fine – for a webpage to rank for a kwd phrase which on the previous index of 1 to 10 was a 3 or a 4 (not overly difficult), this is very possible, particularly of course with an exact match domain name (EMD). But this website was a keyword rich domain name and not an EMD. Thus to achieve a top spot ranking in Google within 3 months without an EMD is some going where the compeition was a 7 in terms of the previous scale!
I made a mental note to go back and assess the linking patterns, but never got around to it.
Nevertheless, I’ve more recently come across a site which achieved a top spot ranking in an even tougher niche – let’s say an 8 on the scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the hardest, and the domain was purchased in July – this year, and was ranking top spot by the end of September for the main kwd phrase. Let me check on this again so I am getting my facts straight…
This site is in the weight loss niche once again, and the main kwd receives around 90,000 searches a month on an exact global basis. That is A LOT of searches!!
Thus, it goes without saying, that in the top echolons in Google rankings, we will be seeing sites with huge domain authority – huge branding in Google’s eyes. We will be seeing the likes of WebMD, MedicineNet, Wikipedia. Often when you see these sites at the top of search, it puts you off trying to rank against them, so you give up before you even try.
These days, this does not put me off, but I sure as heck know that its going to take months and months of backlinking work to get in amongst them. And that means not just time but money invested too – a lot of it.
But how then are we very, very occasionally seeing upstart sites like those two mentioned above, ranking very fast (in terms of weeks to a few months) right at the top and they’ve not been penalized by Google – either with a heavy deranking penalty (“sandboxing”) or a whole site de-indexing?
Remember, these are not EMD’s. You would not find an EMD these days with such a high Google search. And if you did, you’d have to pay tens of thousands, perhaps even more for it – very much a premium domain name.
Okay. Well one thing I just learned is this. Listen up cos this changes the whole concept of “slow backlinking wins the race in the end”.
There is no doubt that on-page SEO helps a lot. I’m not too hot when it comes to on-page SEO, I have to admit. And in recent times I’ve been thoroughly aware of this fact. Thus I just purchased a plugin which I can use on all my sites which I’ve been told (from sources that I very much trust I may add) that this plugin is a gem. Furthermore, its much cheaper than the likes of SEOPressor, which is $97. This one is currently $37.
I’ve not used it as of yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be installing it on all my sites – both my own and my joint venture sites – in the next couple of weeks. I sense that if I don’t, I’ll be leaving money on the table because I may never achieve the best rankings if I go without really good on-page SEO.
The plugin is here http://easywpseoplugin.com/ and that is not an affiliate link because there is no affiliate scheme. There is a 60 day money-back guarantee on it too, just to provide you with further re-assurance. Again, its $37 to purchase.
Other than on-page SEO, what else are we looking at here which is key to success?
Finding niches and kwds that have very high searches!
If you find niches and kwds with very high searches, and they are in very much a buyer’s arena – such as weight loss, credit cards, and many desperate markets, then there is no doubt that the sites at the top are either going to be almost all very heavily branded sites, which Google ranks au natural, or – they are going to be sites that large companies tend to own and thus they can afford to spend a small fortune each month on backlinking and getting top SEO folks to work for them.
Now, here is the thing. It seems to me that it would be a very wise move to avoid the latter niches. And instead, look for those niches that are utterly dominated by the big lads and lasses. Those sites that don’t need much in the way of backlinks to the page that is actually ranking for that particular kwd phrase.
Let me give you an example here by taking a screen shot from Market Samurai and I’ll explain this theory a bit further.
Branded Sites that are Ranking in the Weight Loss Niche
Click the image to see it clearer.
This is not the best example by a long way, but it will suffice.
The kwd I chose was “lose weight fast”. It receives 90.5k global search (exact) per month according to Google, and around 50k searches per month are local to the US.
You can see there is WebMD in there, along with a Wikihow, and another high ender in this niche, which is MomsWhoThink. If you look under the column labeled BLD (backlinks to domain), on the whole they are pretty massive numbers. If you look under the BLP column (backlinks to the actual page that is ranking for this kwd phrase) you will see the numbers are generally a lot smaller. There are quite a few here under the 5k mark, which is pretty good and that’s what we want to be seeing.
Now generally to rank in amongst these sites you’d have to start now and finish in 12 months time – taking time to build out your website and add in backlinks slowly and surely so as not to alarm Google. But no – that’s not right!
How about due to the fact that its not unusual for sites in this niche and who are ranking for this kwd phrase to build up backlinks real fast, or else it would indeed take years to rank for this term, and a number of other high end terms that no doubt they are ranking for also.
So why would it be any different for us? Why not just go in head-strong from the start and smack the new site with a ton of backlinks?
I can see you shaking your head in disagreement. This will inevitably lead to a Google penalty, and you’ll be lucky to ever see your site ranking in Google again.
Well, I’m going to try it. This is my next “challenge” if you will. I’m going to pick out a domain in a hot niche that offers great gains to those who rank highly in Google, and I’m going to pick out some hi-end kwd phrases to try to rank for, and we’ll see how the heck it goes.
In recent times I’ve done quite the opposite. I’ve been very slow and very sure simply due to the number of sites that I’ve had heavily penalized by Google for being over-zealous with my backlinking. Thus, this is something fairly new to me. In actual fact, there have been a few sites in the previous years where I simply whacked new domains with tons of backlinks and they’ve done really well in terms of gaining high rankings. But more recently, and certainly since this thing called Google Panda, I’ve been too scared to even contemplate doing the same (and even then, a couple of my sites and jv sites have come something of a cropper with a Google penalty).
But recent findings – although not proven totally conclusive as of yet – have shed something of a new light on this whole backlinking game. If you are trying to rank in a niche that is very sought-after simply because the pickings are very rich, then it means that its “normal” to go in fighting right from the very beginning. Thus your chances of standing out amongst the crowd of other sites trying to achieve rankings are much dimished. In a sense – you are going in under the Google radar.
As mentioned, this is fairly new to me, so I’ll have to formulate a strategy. Whether its a workable strategy, this has yet to be seen. But its worth a go, I’m sure you agree.
Thus in the coming weeks to months, I’ll be updating on progress (if there is any) and letting you know what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and will give you an insiders “inkling” as to my ball game.
I may also say that I will be adding further insights for those who have opted in to my list, so if you have not already done so, it would be a wise move to go ahead and pop your name in the box over in the right hand side (the one with the big flashy red arrow 
).
Follow along with my progress while I slaughter the competition (or get slaughtered by Google, one or the other )!
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{ 176 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes it can be happen but for this is possible only by the help of perfect SEO because for this SEO knows very well which all tactics will help to achieve good PR for site in search engine just in a week.
sam @ goa carnival recently posted..Goa Carnival 2012
Hey Sam, I’m certainly not looking to rank in the top echolons within a week
But let me see if I can rank for something that’s real high end within a reasonable time frame and without getting dumped in the pit by Google. Regardless of success or otherwise, hopefully it will be a good learning experience.
Really interesting. For sure we can all learn a lot from your challenge.
I’m not an expert in backlinking but something I’ve always heard is the importance of on-page SEO.
I’ve just read a post in a blog called adsenseflippers.com about linkbuilding. It says this: “we have a keyword research strategy and an on-page seo strategy that doesn’t require a ton of backlinking at all to be effective”.
Sounds interesting.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
I think for the lower end competitive stuff Cristina, you don’t have to do much backlinking – the so called “long tails”, but for the higher end stuff I’m afraid it still very much comes down to backlinking. But most probably with good on-page seo, you can gain a few ranking places if you have your on-site seo up to scratch. Its really tricky to tell though, because Goog are changing their algorithm all the time. So you change one thing on your site while they are changing something else and who’s to tell what change led to what end result. Nevertheless, if you make a point of enhancing your on-site seo each and every time, you’ll no doubt gain brownie points for doing so, so its good practice to do it – dot the t’s and cross all the i’s, if you get what I mean
Yeah, I know what you mean. Your strategy depends on the kind of site you are trying to build. There’s no one single blueprint that works for all kinds of sites (especially with Google’s rules changing constantly).
But my point was that on-page SEO has some weight in those guys strategy, so it is definitely something that can help you too.
Anyway, this challenge is another brilliant idea of yours, Mr. Magician.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
No doubt that on-page seo should be a part of all seo strategies Cristina – quite right about that, ma’am!
Regards the challenge being a great idea – LOL – it may flop terribly and Goog may dump the site even before I really get going. But I’m all one for giving it a shot and making it public too. Thanks a lot for the tweet!
Hi Joseph, this is very interesting and I will be one of the many who will follow very closely to your every step here. I will definitely learn quite a few tips from this little challenge here. I will be rooting for you. Thanks for taking the efforts to make my IM journey an interesting one.
Thanks for your feedback Terence – I’ll try to make it interesting, but the end result depends on the alien they call Google. Wonder who came up with that name anyhow?
Its a risky business if you’re not relatively experienced in these fast backlinking methods I would think. Let’s see how things go…
Just on the plane ready to take off and reading this lol but anyway sounds like a great challenge just to see if you will get smacked! I’m curious to see the results!
Btw google is a number, 1 followed by one hundred zeroes is a googol but often misspelled, as in this case, as google.
Good luck Joseph!
Hey Joe,
Are you going Kamikaze on us!!lol!
I’ve been wanting to try and get into a competive niche and just go haywire throwing massive amounts of links, scrapebox, Xrumer, the works and see what happens. I’ve always been put off as I’m a bit apprehensive of losing adsense account. But what hell, I mean, if you take a look at all those top sites and 1,000′s of links and their link profiles, they can’t all be legit on the up and up. So if they could get away with it, why can’t we?
Long tail or highly Competive keywords, what’s the difference, there’s money at both ends of spectrum.
Interesting Challenge, let’s see old Pat Flynn try this one….hehehe
Best regards,
David from the former USSR (home of Xrumer and all other bad boy outlaw automated mass linkbuilders)
Hi Joseph, another great challenge idea. Do you like the punishment of being put through Google hell or what my friend? LOL
Seriously, it is going to be very interesting to find out the results here.
As for on-page SEO, this is a technique I use. I believe this is what helped a Playstation site I have go from launch to making Amazon sales in about three weeks. I can’t say that I ranked anything in Google. Actually, I still think my pagerank is zero or n/a. But I get a consistent flow of traffic in the numbers of 300 to 500 uniques per day. And I’ve done NO outside/external SEO what-so-ever. No backlink building, no articles, no Web 2.0 seo techniques.
I guess you can say that site was my challenge. I wanted to see how a heavily branded site in a hot niche would do with minimal work. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not doing GREAT! It’s doing OKAY. But it’s not showing up on the search engines like I thought it might. I believe the traffic may be coming from a combination of the work I did with the Wordpress SEO plugin and Ppinger (Power Pinger). I’m not really sure.
On-page SEO techniques I use are through plugins in addition to h1, h2, and h3 tags. Strategic keyword placement as well as keyword tagging on all images and even graphics when applicable.
Plugins I use for this are: Wordpress SEO by Yoast, Digg Digg, Easy Privacy Policy, Google XML sitemaps, Ppinger, and WP policies. I also use wp-insert, but that’s for convenience, not seo.
I’ve always wanted SEOPressor, but never considered due to the price tag. I’ll be adding Easy WP SEO to my list of plugins. It seems to do everything as SEOPressor but at half of the price. Thanks for the tip on that one!
Although the Playstation site continues to get traffic, I’m considering selling on Flippa. I may go ahead and do some backlinking to get some ranking first, that may increase it’s popularity for the sale.
Okay then, I just wanted to share what plugins work for me so you might be able to implement them into your sites if desired. Good luck and I’ll be anticipating your progress with this challenge. As always, another GREAT post!!!
Very interesting. From the reading I have done my idea of how this will work goes something like this (just a hypothesis and could be invalid tommorrow the way goog changes things.) I dont think you get penalized for throwing too many links at something …. if a major corporation started a website or if a website started with a large financial backer getting a huge amount of links early on might be very natural for some sites. (think something like twitter in the early days) I think where the penalties come in has to do when the linking stops … say you throw 500 links per day at site x . If you do this for 9 days and all the sudden you show up at position 3 or 4 in google or maybe even you get to #1 … now you have no incentive or less of an incentive to keep building the links and chances are you are going to stop or slow way down. I think that if Goog sees this massive link building campaign that goes from 500 links a day (this is just a number used as a rough example, I believe this could be true for more or less links per day) to zero links a day it will flag it for a penalty. I would love feedback on this as this is just my guess based on what I have read mostly. Thanks for this great challenge Joseph and thanks for sharing the results with us all … very helpful as always ! I am loving the roller coaster ride I am having with Goog. It is fun to learn how it works just in time for them to change the algorithm again
Very interesting post I must say Joseph! I would like to follow this reading, and see if your hypothesis’s are correct!
Right on and Good Luck!
Rick,
your comment is very interesting. You’re seeing some sales without backlink building, first time I hear that.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Joseph,
That definitely makes sense to me as a more competitive niche will have a different type of people fighting in it than let’s say “bird houses”.
We’ll see how it goes but with the update that happened a few days ago… I don’t trust any of the top 10 results at the moment as I’ve seen some crazy things happening.
Good luck to you,
Tom
Hey Tom,
what kind of things have you seen happening after the last update?
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
So where are you jet-setting off to this time Jim? Thanks for letting me know about Googol – sounds “unworldly”. But I guess that was the original idea – a totally different concept. Yeah, should be interesting to see if I’m gonna be sunk or allowed to keep swimming. If I can keep swimming, this will shed a new light on things for a whole lot of people, so its important that I follow through on my original plan.
Is Xrumer origingally from the USSR David? There’s a new one for me. What part are you from?
I bet old Pat Flynn would be quaking in his old boots if he were contemplating doing this. Don’t tell him I said so tho, will ya
If you were apprehensive of losing your adsense account, why not try to monetize with something else? And I agree – many of the top ranking sites use somewhat questionable methods to firstly – get to the top, and secondly – to remain at the top. A lot of the folks who own top ranked sites in very competitive niches simply hand over wads of cash to an SEO company and let them get on with “whatever it is they do”. I doubt very much its always white hat stuff either.
Anyways, I intend to use the blackest of the blackest hat methods here, as I always do, LOL!
Jo
Oh and David, let’s face facts – gaming the system to get the rankings is black hat regardless what backlinking methods you tend to use
David, I dunno really – I have already far too much to be getting on with, but I keep coming up with more things to do. Kinda dumb, but it keeps things exciting, and I’m all one for excitement on a regular basis, even if it is whilst sitting in my armchair like an old geek
Talking about page rank (Google PR that is), I forgot to mention, but that site I was talking about in this post – the latter site where the domain was purchased in July of this year – it gained a whopping PageRank of 6 on the homepage!!! A Google PR of 6 within 3 months? The highest Goog PR any of my (own personal) web pages had was 4 and it took over a year to get there. But then I don’t really care about Goog PR. Its kinda stupid in my opinion.
300 – 500 unique visitors a day to your site and you’ve done no backlinking work? I’ve never heard that happen before (unless thru paid advertising or via the likes of Utube or what have you). I think you are up to something Rick – care to whisper it to me? I take it Power Pinger simply throws out info as RSS feeds about new content you pop onto your site?
Yeah, although I’ve steered clear of using the Yoast SEO plugin that you’ve mentioned, I know its good stuff – one of the best out there and its a freebie too. I cranked up the one I mentioned in the post yesterday and its a bit fiddly to be honest. But if its going to gain some ranking brownie points through using it, then its time well invested all the same. I hear that using WordPress SEO by Yeast/Toast (LOL!) in tandem with the one I mention is a good way to go. Apparently they compliment each other rather well.
Rather than me implementing all those plugins, I’ll give you access to the site (when its up and running) and you can implement them. Howz that? I’ll buy you a pint of gnats pee when I’m in your neck of the woods in return for time invested
Good luck if you do decide to sell your site. With this amount of traffic, even if its not making a great return in terms of moolah, I’m sure you could get a goodly return on your initial investment.
Yeah Blake – a very good point you make. If a site suddenly goes from receiving 500 backlinks a day on average, to zero backlinks a day, then that’s fishy for sure and will throw up a red herring with big blue spots. I’m sure Googol will be onto that case scenario pretty fast, as you rightly said. So, its keeping up the momentum that is key here. If you run out of either money or energy half way through a backlinking campaign, and you’ve been shooting off tons of backlinks to a site on a daily basis, chances are you could be sunk – just like a dead fish. I’ll have to make sure I can fund this thing from start to end – there goes the Gucci handbag I promised my girlfriend for her birthday next month (guess where I was gonna buy that from, Blake
).
We’ll soon see Shakil! I know this works, but whether I can get it to work is something of a different matter – its somewhat new territory for me, since more recently I’ve been very much pro snail pacing it, so this turns the snail pacing very much on its head. I’m no longer a snail, I’m a cheetah!!
Cristina, I mentioned previously that Rick used to work for one of the largest companies in the world – can you have a guess at which one? LOL! He’s in cohorts with Googol no doubting it
Tom, I agree with you – many of the top ten in Googol are rubbish sites offering little value to the searcher. A couple of my sites which I like to think were offering real value, have sunk down to second page for many of their previously hi rankings, and in their place, you get some real crappy rubbish. Obviously Goggle has to invest in some new goggles cos their sight has been thoroughly skewed. The more this debacle goes on, the less end users they will have, and I know a lot of folks will not be shedding any tears should that be the case.
Yes! Just what I’ve been waiting for Jo. This is why i love your blog and what you accomplish, rather you succeed or not it is all about analyzing, testing, trying things out and learning. I have been noticing a lot of what you have pointed out in this post and it amazes me. I’m so new at all this SEO stuff that its easy to believe what you read or hear online about SEO and ranking a site but then i do a lot of analyzing sites most of the time and digging deep into there back linking structure and studying there on page SEO and i have seen these same kind of sites that rank in these highly competitive niches in as little as 3 months or so with a new site. They have tons of back links that were obviously built aggressively and i start to think about what i have learned so far about building at a slow steady pace. This is why SEO (mostly when it comes to ranking in Google) is just strange. I don’t understand a lot of it and prolly never will. It’s like you do you homework and if you think you have a shot you jump and go for it and only time will tell. lol It’s all fun though and i enjoy it and i enjoy learning and so far what i have learned from reading through your post i have learned so much more then what i have from any other site online. Thanks man!
Casey from killfruitflies.org recently posted..How To Get Rid Of Fruit Flies – The Secret Sauce For A Homemade Fruit Fly Trap
I’ll let Tom answer to you personally Cristina, but what I’m seeing is that my good sites are being dumped and my crappy sites are being re-ranked. Unfortunately most of my crappy sites don’t make much money, where my good sites were half decent at seeing the greenbacks. I think many folks in SEO are having to come up with new ideas as to how to make a decent living online, but even AdWords has gone through the mill time and time again, so that’s no longer a viable investment for many folks either.
Casey, many thanks for the feedback and I’m happy you appreciate what I’m trying to achieve!
I think this method makes good sense, with one exception. Why would a site with say – five pages of content at the start – be on the receiving end of tons of backlinks? But yet, I’ve seen a few sites that do really really well in very competitive niches by doing just this – as you youself have mentioned here. I guess its a case of keeping under the Google radar, and in which case, I may want to add the domain to a totally different account to the ones I normally use, since no doubt Google could figure things out even with this little snippet of info. I surely will not be using Goog Analytics and instead will opt for StatCounter.com which is a handy “bit of kit”.
Still to determine the niche I’ll go into, but I’ll do that today most probably and may even get a domain name too. I think what I’ll do is create short follow up posts to this one and then link them all together in a numbered way so that folks can easily follow along with my methodolgy. I’ll be using a whole lot of Fiverr.com outsourcing too and I think that will be very useful to see for many folks since its a very affordable option to achieving tons of backlinks on a fast basis.
Let the games begin!!
I’m just as surprised as anyone that the Playstation site did what it did… honestly! Ex-corporate juggernaut company employee or not!
I had an interest in trying out Ppinger. It’s supposed to send out a ping each time something changes/updates on the site. Even if someone leaves a comment, it sends out a ping. Like a b-b in a tin can…. LOL
Not sure if that’s what did it, but I was constantly adding content; posts, videos, etc. in order to keep the site pinging. It was a test I was doing to see how my site did simply by using plugins and nothing else.
The results… Within a week I had about 300 visitors per day. By week three it was up to 600. I do have an update though. I haven’t paid much attention to the site lately due to other projects and I’m now down to about 200 visitors per day on average… and it appears to be declining. So I’m guessing Ppinger requires constant attention to work.
I started seeing Adsense clicks in about two weeks and by the third week I had sales through my Amazon links.
In the end, I believe my “Ppinger test” showed that it may work well if used in combination with backlinking. It can bring traffic, but it’s short lived if left unattended. I believe that if traffic is generated through outside sources, Ppinger would be maintained through that rather than constant admin attention.
I hope this info was helpful in combination with your thoughts about on-page SEO. These tools can work, but not alone. In combination with off-page SEO, I believe these can work very well.
Cristina,
This is something that I wrote up in another forum and should answer your question.
—-
Another large update was rolled out this morning and is supposed to continue until October 16th. Some are calling it Panda 2.6 and Matt Cutts tweeted about it a few days ago. A lot of people on different forums seem to be in panic mode as some sites are jumping around but its really nothing new and things will get back to normal eventually.
There doesn’t seem to be too much rhyme or reason to it but I am noticing a lot of spammy/thin sites up in the top 10 again for keywords with medium competition. Google is probably looking at the CTR and bounce rate on them so that they can target in on more similar sites and knock them down within the next few weeks… its something that they’ve done twice this year already.
From what I can understand right now is that only medium sized, white hat sites, with a constant influx of backlinks within medium competition keywords have been touched. Many moved 1-2 pages down while micro niche/ thin sites that haven’t been touched in years have jumped up in the rankings and so for anyone that’s been around the block this is nothing new.
For those affected, I wouldn’t switch up anything that you’re doing as that might raise a red flag. Google knows that only internet marketers are likely to panic and attempt switching the site themes/designs, backlinking strategies as the common joe wouldn’t even notice anything.
—-
Tom
TomL recently posted..My Site’s Sandboxed! Why Does Google Hate Me?
Hi Jo (and also to Cristiana)
I’ve done lots of testing of all these factors over the last few years. Panda has really messed things up though.
So I have always done great SEO on page work. There is no need for a plugin guys really. But now you have it Jo it will point out things you’ve missed. HOWEVER i believe they are dangerous.
So every site that runs them has an SEO footprint. You do a+b+c+d and it give you a great score. Miss step b) and it’s a red cross. Well b) was a requirement to have a keyword in italics!!! Since when do we naturally write with italics.. So i have my concerns about these tools and no longer use them.
I have a site I built 2 months ago that’s 4 pages and i hit it with a single Fiverr Xrummer run of 3000 to the home page and that’s it. It’s not an EMD infarct its 10 characters and only 5 are the keyword followed by store.net its siting at position 12 for that keyword a 6000 exact math $3.20 keyword. Panda has not effected it at all
I also have a site which is an EMD it ranks 45 for the EMD has no backlinks 5 articles and has made 3 sales with an income of $60 on amazon..
The whole niche thing is on its head now with Panda stomping around.
I do believe in blending backlinks for diversity and controlling the link velocity as I have a lot less failures this way. What’s not so good is building links a good rate of knots to then stop. I’ve lost a big site that I put 5 months into by doing that test
Hope that contributes.
Will you share your strategy and proposed blend of links and how quickly you plan to build them?
regards
Steve
Are the sales on that site coming along any better now Rick? We’re not so far off Christmas now, so things will surely pick up come late November.
I use Max Blog Ping Optimizer which is pretty cool. I don’t think it pings when there’s a comment but it only pings each 15 mins and no more than that. I’ll have to try out Pppppppppinger though and see if it ppppppppings enough to get me insane levels of traffic like it seems to have done for you.
Yeah, if you had a site that attracted lots of comments, then the Pppppppinger would really come into its own. I’ll give it a shot Rick, thanks for letting us know about it!
Hello Joseph,
I’ve read somewhere that Xrumer was developed in Russia, I could be wrong, but its like the wild west over there/here. Look at where many reported cyber attacks originate from, makes sense.
I like that you’re going for a few gigs from fiverr, I’ve been doing that lately and have found it cost effective. I had mentioned it on a post of yours not long ago after giving up my subscription to backlinksgenie(great service btw, but as you said you really need to be using it on a bunch of sites at once). Although I’ve just thrown up 15 new sites this month, that may be too many for one backlinks genie account to be effective and too expensive to go with 2 accounts to be cost efficient. You were also right about fiverr, its vital to choose your provider carefully and have an objective for each gig. Reading reviews and going with top rated providers seems to be the way to go. Some links can go to your site directly while others are great for backlinking your backlinks. Or you can just throw the whole kitchen sink at you site, like maybe what you’re planning to do:), great stuff!
Couple of questions:
Do you plan on registering it under your own name?
How do you plan on monetizing, through Adsense? Affiliate Products? Clickbank?
Different hosting, great idea:) No Google Analytics, great:)
All goo for covering your tracks:)
This has got to be one of the best experiments yet:) and the last one would be hard to top:)))
Looking forward to it OB1 Kanobi(Star Wars:)), or should I say Darth Vader(coming over to the darkside.). Instead of putting this up on Warriors may it should go up on BHW he,he,he:)
Great stuff, truly!
Best regards,
David from Kiev
Tom, I wish I was “the common joe” but alas, I keep my eyes firmly glued on my online business, day in day out and it freaks me when Goog start messing with my rankings in a downward fashion – even more so if my stuff is real good quality and they replace it with utter crap.
Thanks for leaving the same comment here that you left on XFactor – next thing you know and my blog will be penalized for its non-unique content, LOLz!!
Joseph, to answer your question of Amazon sales…. I haven’t had a single sale for three weeks and counting.
We’ll see what adding some backlinks to the mix will do at this point. I’ll keep you posted.
You got that right David – there’s a lot of hackers that are located in your part of the world – obviously very bright and intelligent individuals – its a pity they have to stoop so low.
With the fiverr gigs, I’ll be doing a bit of both David – some will be dumped on the money site, whilst many will be dumped on other sites that link to the money site – nice mix up to be had by doing this. I hear what you say with regards to Genie – its a costly affair and you have to be sure you are gaining good value or its money down the toilet. I’m also using it on some client’s sites and to good effect too, so its a neat deal for me even with the high end account. If my client’s are happy (not that I have many) then I’m less stressed. If my clients are not happy, best I get out of that side of the game cos its just not worth it.
Regards your questions – I was thinking about using a friends hosting account to cover my back, and I’ll get him to buy the domain and send him payment. Monetizing – not so sure yet since I’ve not decided on the niche. I’ll be sure to let you know when that decision has been made.
I’m very much a fan of Star Wars – I have big glossy pics all over the house, LOL! May the force be with me with this particular venture
Thanks for your feedback David – very much appreciated!
OH, almost forgot. I can add those plugins for you if you’d like. Not a problem.
Joseph,
For this particular challenge, will you be listing out your steps from keyword research to every single steps that you take to push your site up the serps and the reasons why you would choose certain action steps, a little similar to how you have listed out in your 40 days challenge? I am new to SEO and would appreciate all your efforts and guidance.
Thanks in advance.
If they are remotely fiddly Rick, then I surely could use some help when the time arises. Thanks in advance my man!
Rick, you surely would not make for a “good” IM blogger that;s for sure! What you should be saying (in preparation for your IM blogging days) is…
Joseph, I’ve had 556.35 sales in the past 21.23 days, and I’ve made $67,898.23 profit! Click here to buy my grossly glossy ebook and I’ll tell you only a third of what I did so you can then buy all my follow up ebooks at the knock down price of $150 each (was $250 but the next 10 ebooks are going cheap just to con you to buy them).
Now, to get some practice in, you need to repeat similar words in front of the mirror each day – just after rising out of bed, and just before going to bed at night. Then get the wife to witness you in action and see if there are any fault lines that need improving. Got me?
Joseph,
You got the forum wrong but are right about the duplicate content… let’s see how Google treats it. Could get you to #1 for your keyword with the way they’re doing things these days… lol
The craziest thing is that all of my EMD sites that have thin or almost no content and haven’t been backlinked in ages are now #1 for their positions. These provide no value what-so-ever other than getting people feeling sick and clicking on the ads to get out as soon as they can.
Tom
TomL recently posted..My Site’s Sandboxed! Why Does Google Hate Me?
Oh by ‘eck Steve, we’re gonna have a field day on this one – your keyboard has gone a bit wonky again it would appear.
– Lovin it!
So its no longer Cristina (no h, no squiggles), but Cristiana, as in C Ronaldo. They come from the same country so all is well and good!
Up till now I simply did all my own on-page seo Steve and always thought it to be more natural by doing so. I guess, as you say, there is no chance of any “footprint” being left for snoopy Googol. But quite right sir – since when do we use italics, bolding and underlining on anything in a website article? You would tend to use one or the other and maybe occasionally 2 together. I doubt I’ll rely on the plugin 100% but it will serve as a good reminder to what I could be doing is about all.
Very interesting to learn about your 3000 backlink experience! And I bet lots of folks are guilty of what you did with the big site where you stopped backlinking after 5 months – often you get worn out when you focus a lot on any one particular site. I get bored with doing that but I guess that’s one of the beauties of outsourcing.
Yes, I’ll be sharing the strategy Steve – what links I used, where I got them from (providing there’s an affiliate link, LOL!!!), and the velocity too – all the nitty gritty hard core you could be looking for. If there’s anything I miss out, feel free to ask away.
Terence… hmmm… I don’t think I want to be going into kwd research again since I’ve covered that at length on a couple of occasions on my blog – once in the $350 in 20 hours “mini course” just last week, and another time in a couple of videos I did a while back. Otherwise, I will be talking about what links I used, where I got them, how much of them I use and on which days I submitted them – kinda like a diary of events I guess. As mentioned, I intend to rely on Fiverr.com quite a bit, and I’ll catalogue that too. And for anyone who is about to say something like “this has been done before and you are merely copying”. Again, I am not copying and I could care less if its been done before – just to set the record straight about that.
If I were to divulge the actual domain (which I am very tempted to do) it would mean I could not use AdSense for fear of them banning my account. So that will have to be thought out. But I will happily monetize in a different way – after all, this is more about achieving high rankings with fast and furious (ish) backlinking, and not really about the amount of money that I make from gaining the rankings. Although it would be good to experiment with monetizing to see which is the best converter/most profitable.
Then I will create an over-hyped ebook about the whole journey and sell it on Clickbank for $200 a pop and smile like a little devil each time some poor soul buys it, LOL! I’m just kidding of course
Oh dear Tom, my insider source is not up to scratch at all
LOL about getting to number 1!
Sounds like you have a nicely thought out plan of attack, and I quote – “These (your thin sites) provide no value what-so-ever other than getting people feeling sick and clicking on the ads to get out as soon as they can.”
I’ll be sure to note this down so I can use the method in future, LOL!!
lmao @ Jo! With the right sales copy that ebook would sale for $200 to those new to the IM game (unless they think for themselves). Why do they buy up every new product that comes out in hope that they will find a fast way to cuts some corners and end up at the top? We have all been there and I’m just lucky i didn’t spend over 100 bucks on that crap. I have spent more on domains then wso’s and offers that guarantee you to rank in the big bucks. I have maby bought one offer until i seen how many were on the market and i realized what an Internet marketer does for a living lol Since then i have been researching and testing what works in order to make the money everyone dreams of and its not about the money. It’s about my job that i slave at and the jobs i have slaved at in the passed. There’s always been something inside driving and pushing me and telling me that i can do it and therefor, i have never stopped trying at anything i do and won’t. I wake up and yea..there are times i wanna just say forget this, but the again, i look at what i got and how much i hate it and i look ahead at what i really want so at the end of the day i can look back what i have accomplished and feel good about it. It may just be something small, but that little bit counts a lot when the effort is put it. Lol What am i talking about? I jump from one thing to another when i get to typing and most of the time it only makes since to me.
Casey from killfruitflies.org recently posted..How To Get Rid Of Fruit Flies – The Secret Sauce For A Homemade Fruit Fly Trap
What you say here Casey makes entire sense to me also, and I’m sure it does to many other folks who will read your comment sir, so thanks for sharing your plight! I fully agree with your sentiments – there’s been times in the past that I too thought about dumping this whole make money online game cos it simply was not working for me. But then I thought about my past and about what else I could do and that left me no choice but to continue on (often in something of a drunken stupor, I am not shameful to admit).
But yeah, you are right – if a piece of information is worth its salt, folks will happily pay for it. Hopefully with what I’m about to do here, it will be well worthy of not only my time, but also of the time spent by folks who keep updated on the feedback.
However, the way I see it is this – instead of making a glossy ebook type product out of some good valuable info (such as the 350 in 20 mini course), I’m offering real good value on my blog, which in turn means that it becomes more popular. With more popularity and more trust gained, folks are willing to invest in what I suggest to them as being a good tool or a good product etc. Thus there is no need for me to write up glossies and get all messed up with creating optins and linking everything together in a sales funnel.
I like the idea of a “cutting edge blog” where folks enjoy the info and can really benefit from it – lots of new ideas and not the same old info simply being regurgitated over and over in an effort to keep folks coming back every day. But rather, when I open my mouth and say something, its gotta be fairly exciting – if I get excited by it, then I’m hoping others also get excited by it. Thus I’m providing real value and its free, which is even better.
There I go – jumping from one thing to another – you got me doing the same thing as you Casey
Joseph,
I don’t come from the same country as Cristiano Ronaldo. He’s Portuguese. I wouldn’t mind sharing country with him if I could also share his fortune
TomL,
thanks for the info about Google. So, for those who have seen their sites moved down, you recommend not to panic and just wait until the Beast notices they are ranking crap in the first places and do something to fix the mess, is that right?
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Oh well Cristiana, I was close – same area, in-it! Or is that like saying everyone in the UK is from England?
Err… no, it’s not nice to say that Portuguese are the same as Spaniards. It’s a silly thing, I guess, but it’s also cultural. We don’t like to be confused.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Thought not, and I fully understand that! Mind you, I’d happily have him on my football team regardless!
I don’t have anything against Portuguese people. Actually, they are usually very nice and easygoing people. But I was born and raised close to the border with Portugal and that leaves a footprint in your character
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Would that be a Googol footprint in your character Cirstina? LOL!
No doubt over the centuries there have been troubles between the two countries, and even though most folks could care less about such stuff these days, its still a part of our make-up after all and will never be truly forgotten by everyone. I heard the Basque Separatists are about to disband. True or not true?
Who knows… They always “disband” before the Elections. They offered peace before the Town Council Elections last May because that was the only way they could be legally recognised as a political party (their parties have been forbidden the last few years).
Now they’re celebrating a Peace Conference nobody believes in. In my opinion it’s because we have General Elections in November.
The only thing we know for sure is that ETA, as it was before, doesn’t exist any more. The new generations are not even close to the principles and ideas which inspired the former leaders. They don’t get international support either. They’re over. We are all waiting for them to say it outloud and publicly. That’s all.
You just called me Cirstina… is that another variation of my name? LOL. Thank God my name is easy. I can’t imagine what you would call me if I had one of those basque names like Eguzkine, Egokiñe, Fruitutsu, Hoztaizka, Jokiñe, etc.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Well now my dear Fruitutsu (;-)), this echos along similar lines to the troubles in Ireland with the IRA and the UDA. Most folks tired of it, the IRA sought to become a recognized political party, and after much too-ing and fro-ing, they finally achieved it, and for the better it has to be said! Since those days, the troubles have become almost non-existent, but there will always be a bitter hatred between the two “sides”. Even now if you go into some place like Belfast, you see huge murals on the walls throughout the city – even near the centre – with guys with balaclavas on their heads and a machine gun in hand. Its really rather frightening. At one time both terrorist groups received international support (and maybe they still do to a very limited extent) but it really does sound like similar scenario to ETA/Basque Separatists.
Hi Joseph.
I have a few friends who are doing the same thing without any issues. Just be careful to try and get similar links not just similar numbers.
Good luck,
Michael.
Hi Michael, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see what I can do.
Regards
Joseph
Cristina,
I don’t think there’s a reason to panic as this was only the first wave of this update with others to follow.
Watch this to see how they make these updates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q
They have people look over the top 10 results and then compare the new ones to the old… make another change… and sweep the index again adjusting things. This can take a few weeks so at this point its too early to tell what’s going to happen and making sudden changes to your site could actually hurt it more than anything.
Google already publicly admitted a few times that their changes have affected sites which shouldn’t have been in the past.
Regards,
Tom
TomL recently posted..My Site’s Sandboxed! Why Does Google Hate Me?
Thanks Tom for the info. I checked your blog in case you had posted about this but you haven’t.
Let’s wait and see what Googol (as Joseph likes to call it) does. Some people told me that there are Amazon links in the Top 10, which would make Amazon affiliate sites pretty much useless.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Hey Joseph, I have screen shots to show that I made 556.35 sales in the past 21.23 days, and I’ve made $67,898.23 profit! And the images aren’t doctored. Honest! Even though I’m an expert with Photoshop and could make a believable picture of you at an ocean-front resort on the moon… I wouldn’t doctor my screen shots in any way at all!!!
Now THAT was funny my friend! I get get an inbox full of emails that say pretty much the same thing each and every day. I guess I’m just too honest and transparent to say things like that. But you make a very good point.
Casey, I used to buy the newest thing on the market until I finally realized that they were ALL the same. Most of them were about 98% the same with one unique twist. I just stopped paying attention to them. There are really only two, maybe three ‘courses’ that are worth getting. Those are courses that teach how to actually do Affiliate Marketing. Like marketing products for just about anything that can be bought or sold. All of the other products are all about marketing ‘get rich quick’ products. I don’t bother with those.
Joseph, I was wondering… why would you get in trouble with Adsense if you were to share your link on your blog? I’m not familiar with that rule. If it’s your site, can you not include the link on your own blog to share with your readers? Just wondering.
They would not be entirely useless if you can out rank amazon for those products
But I see your point it would make things a lot more difficult than if they were not there to rank in the first place.
Blake
PPinger – Pings your blog to Pingomatic using your visitors’s IP’s but I don’t see how it would give you traffic, wouldn’t it just increase the amount your site is crawled?
Matthew, I’m not sure if that’s what boosted my traffic or not. I was speculating since that’s the only thing I added as a new element to any sites I previously had. I read where the more your site is crawled, the more potential you had to increase traffic. So I tried it.
As of yesterday, the site had 156 visitors. So it’s continuing to drop.
I’m like Joseph when it comes to things like this in a way. I’ll try things out and test them, but I’m not really sure if they’ll do the job or not. So above is what I experienced with the site I put up. I got a ton of traffic real quick, but then it’s tapered off and continues to drop slowly.
Yeah, me too Rick – I get a few inboxes filled with such “tripe” each and every day. Why do people bother making such an effort to try to steal money from the unfamiliar internet marketer – its so pitiful! I know making a good income online can be very far from easy, but there is simply no excuse to stoop to this level.
Oddly enough, I hear about all the crappy WSO’s there are. I’ve only purchased about 5 WSO’s in all, and each of them has been really good. However, as for the glossy ebook courses on “how to make money online whilst living in your pajamas and drinking champagne every day for breakfast. lunch and dinner – rather than gnats pee“… I’m afraid I fell for that one time and time again and spent a small fortune on that sort of rubbish
Yeah Rick – you can include the link to your site – as Pat Flynn did with his security guard training website which he based the backlinking strategy that works post on. But the risk you take by doing so if you have AdSense on the site, is that folks will click through from your blog on a regular basis and click the ads. Thus Goofle will be onto you in short shrift, and will claim that you are enticing people to click the ads, which breaks their t’s and c’s. I’m not sure how Pat got away with it – I think he had AdSense on his site, at least for a while. But I’d prefer not to take the risk.
Hey Blake, I think the problem will be that Goofle will tend to rank Amazon higher and even more often than they do now, where with Amazon affiliates, they will always be barking up the tree and in second place to the big boy. So, even if Goffle decided not to heavily penalize all Amazon affiliates in times to come, they are still gonna be second best to Amazon rankings – in other words, branding as Googol sees it, will take on even more emphasis than it has now, which is not good news for us as affiliates. This is speculation on my part, but it makes sense if you think it through.
As Matt says, Rick – it would be surprising if Ppppinger is fully responsible for your hi traffic volume, but something has to be responsible for it and it would be very interesting to get to the bottom of it. You did not per chance use any images from Google Images did you? In the past when I’ve sniped an (most probably coprighted) image from Goofie Images, occasionally I see my traffic go through the roof, but the conversion of that traffic to sales is utterly abysmal, plus the value of those visitors in terms of time spent on site and repeat visits and page views is about as good as gnats pee. In other words, they probably do more harm than good.
Merely a thought is all…
Joseph, I didn’t think of the Adsense that way. Makes sense. Thanks for that tip.
Most of the images of that site are linked to Amazon. I should have monitored the traffic to find out where they were coming from. Live and learn I guess. At this point, I’ve included Pppppppinger on two other sites and am having the ‘normal’ traffic growth. Nothing out of the ordinary. So that Playstation site was a fluke or something. I’m not complaining, I made a little money from it.
ARG!!! See, I’m not learning from you. I should have said, “I’m sitting here on a beach in Hawaii not doing a thing and making TONS of money because I added something to my sites. It’s a plugin that was stolen and given to me by a secret agent stripper from an IT department who used to live in her car and worked in the CIA. I paid her $30,000,000 for it but you can get it right here for only $7. But they only made 20 of them in the entire world so you’d better hurry and buy now!! Now I say, NOW!”
How’s that? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha…..
See, I’m learning.
I am looking forward to the next experiment I have always wondered about the danger of linking to fast and if it is a legit concern or not. I’d have to guess it is overblown or too much anti-competitive sabotage stuff against rivals could be done.
Best of luck
MK recently posted..How to manage your credit cards
One thing is fairly sure though Rick – even though Goofle are apparently intent on “downgrading” affiliate type websites, they would not want to do that with AdSense monetized sites, unless the sites were spammy of course (mind you, with the recent algorithm change debacle, there are arguably more spammy sites ranking at the top than there has been for a long time – so scratch that – make sure you add AdSense to your sites, but do make every effort to ensure they are spammy as hell!!).
Yeah, monitor your traffic and you’ll see the light. Either that, or go all holy on us and the light may shine upon you regardless of monitoring your traffic closely. Ooops – no offence intended to anyone, I’m just joking
The beach in Hawaii idea is really good. Just make sure your affiliate link is working and no doubt you will see your bank account filling up very nicely. Its amazing how gullible people can actually be
Good stuff, you are indeed learning, sir!
Hi MK, I think on the whole it does not work to hit a brand new site with tons of backlinks, but I also now believe that there are niches where to do this is fine. But even if I get it horribly wrong, that does not at all disprove this theory, it simply means I got it horribly wrong, lol! The theory has been proven, its just that the vast majority of us internet marketers are not aware of it, hence I thought I would try to shed a bit more light on the matter.
Regards
Joseph
That Ppppinger or whatever it is called is interesting. I’ve heard many times that if you ping too much Goog might seen you as a spammer. Hence, the convenience of installing a plugin to limit the number of times you ping.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Seems Cristina that Goofle “can” see you as a spammer no matter what you do these days – the Ppppppinger is merely another (if used slighly over-extensively) to add to the growing black list. But ya – installing a plugin that limits the ping count within a certain time frame is a good way to go.
nice info…., I’m from Universitas Islam Indonesia
True! For Goog we are all spammers until proven innocent, lol.
I do use that plugin because, you know me, I’m such a perfectionist I change dots and commas in my posts even after the article has been published, lol.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Thanks Joe.
Well Cristina, its kinda odd really – when you think about it there are white hat methods of SEO, gray hat methods of SEO, and downright black hat methods of SEO. Hummm… who came up with that one – they are all methods of gaming the system, so how can it be that one hat is any darker than the other?
So every time you cross an s and dot a t you get a ping back? Man – you must get hundreds of pings every day on your blogs, LOL!
LOL! Nope, because I have that pluging to avoid too much pinging
I agree with you. As a non-expert on SEO very often I wonder what is black hat and what is white hat SEO. Some things are clearly done to trick the system but isn’t white hat another way to do it?
Where’s the limit? Only the Beast knows :d
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Do you have a Plan B to monetize your site?
Just as well there is such a plugin then, my dear, or you’d be off the Google radar for good due to an over-zealous desire to keep on tweeking your content
Well Cristina, in answer to your question – what is white hat and what is black hat – that’s a gray area, LOLz!!
Lol. A white hat or black hat is a hat that covers my greying hair.
Thanks for the tickle Sir Joseph.
I thought the Singaporean Chinese were bereft of that problem – whereas us Western types seem to get it pretty bad generally speaking.
White hair or grey hair affects everyone and no one is spared. That said, hair coloring might be a good and hungry niche lol.
Joseph, I was wondering about something pertaining to your previous mini-course. When using articles for BMR, what length are those articles. Are you finding that one length of article is better than another? Say 150 word articles might work better than say 300 or 500 word articles? I’ve been wondering about this.
Great post Joseph. Can’t wait to see the results! I’ll be getting going with BMR here in the next week or so. Have you put together a resource on using it on a fledgling site? I’m not looking for any hand-holidng through this (ok, maybe a little ;o)), but would it be alright to e-mail you with a few questions? I’m just super wary of over-using the new resource and I’m not as kick-@$$ and bold as you are to try something like the post above.
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I use really cheap hair “toner” just to touch up the sides a bit and cover the ever-increasing white hair. I tried the much more expensive one, but the cheapest around is far better – apparently its made with onions or something like that.
Hi Rick, I find that by sticking to around 150 – 180 words for a BMR post it works perfectly fine. I surely would not wish to be writing 300+ words a go. If the anchor link is embedded in that 150 words of related text, its plenty enough for Goog to provide the credit.
Hey Brendan, I did make a resource a while back but that was purely for my outsourcing crew. Its pretty simple to use – fact is, if I can use it, then anyone can. By all means send over an email and I’ll help you along with it if you are having any little glitchy issues. Support are very responsive too – generally they reply within a few hours, except at the weekends.
Regards
Joseph
Ah the whiskey is free flowing tonight although I only had 6 shots left anyhow haha!! Cant wait to see progress on this new ranking strategy. Well maybe not new but different to what most of us believe is right! Oh one question are you still giving deals on one bmr site, I may want to try it on a new site and i need it ranked for xmas!
Your writing is very “together” considering the amount of whisky comsumed Matt – obviously you must be a hardened drinker, LOL!!
I’ve bought the domain for the new project and am almost ready to get it started. Just need to formulate something of a loose plan of action.
I decided to pause the offer on the $13 BMR account because its obviously breaking the terms and conditions very blatantly. I decided not to risk it more than I currently am.
Okay yes my writing looks okay thank you Firefox spell check! In that case I will probably take you up on the the other BMR deal in a few weeks for the full account. I really want to see if I can rank this site before xmas.. or as soon as possible! It is a new released product so it should not be so difficult, but its going to be very popular!
Maybe you write better after a few drams of the malt Matt – I know it tends to give me more of a flow to my writing style. I always used to write out my first drafts for essays at University when I was indulging in a few beers
If you are pretty confident you can make money from your rankings (and Christmas time is as good a time as any for that!), then BMR for sure will be a good investment to make. You know all about assessing the competition, so you’ll have a good feel for what can be done and what cannot. I wish you very well with that!
After drinking some malt we all write better… and speak languages too, LOL.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
I doubt I could actually drink much whisky Cristina, or else I’d be calling you Cristiana far more regularly than I do now
More often? I think that soon you won’t know what my name is!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
Well that’s about it Fruitutsu (is that really a name? I totally love it
). Okay, I’m out at the hotel, I’ve been working all day, its 4.45 in the afternoon, the sun is shining brightly and its time to prop up the bar with a point of fine cool Guiness in hand! I’ll be on again later though Cristina Fruitutsu, so watch out!
Enjoy your Guiness and the sun
OMG, I was just searching for a specific kind of gift on Google (as a buyer). It’s something that I check from time to time but today the Top 10 results are the weirdest sites I’ve ever seen. The first one is actually creepy, crappy and I bet it’s keyword stuffed.
I don’t know what pisses me off more, the fact that I couldn’t find what I was looking for because, seriously, after visiting a couple of those sites I lost interest. Or the fact that such lousy marketers are ranking #1 for a 60,500 monthly global exact match keyword!
And right before Christmas season!!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
Just by clicking BMR link on the right, I found everything I was looking for. Great advice in those past posts!!
Brendan recently posted..Dennis Asche (Connection Rio) Interview
Was a sex toy you were looking for Cristina? You’d tend to get kinda “odd” results in this type of niche, LOL
No doubt due to the word “sex” being mentioned on my blog, it will be Google – de-indexed, and I’ll be thrown to the lions.
Good stuff Brendan – happy you found exactly what you were looking for!
Jo
LOL, not it wasn’t that kind of gift. It’s a niche where usually you get “normal” and quality results.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
Update on progress of what this post is about in the first place.
I’ve posted a job on oDesk to get a writer since there is no way I’ll have the time. I’m also on the hunt for a hi end graphic designer, and have contacted one such person to find out if they are interested. Thank you in advance sir, but I will fully understand if you prefer not to.
I have, as you will already have worked out, figured my niche, and also figured the early bird kwds I will be aiming to rank in Google. Some of these are fairly low end – 1k – 5k global search volume – the idea being that I can rank these first and thus gain a bit of Google love (if I even get that far). That could help with ranking the high end stuff – and when I say high end, I mean high end!
The domain name has been purchased and has been hosted on a friend’s account. Not that this is totally necessary really, but I thought I would follow through on what I initially mentioned in the post.
I will also add an account on StatCounter.com and make the site visitor counter live on the home page of the site for all to see, much as I did with the Twilight Posterz site in the Warriors 40 Day Challenge. No doubt there will be quite a few visits to the website from the blog here, so do keep this in mind when checking out early stats.
My intention is to get the first 4 articles written and posted on the site within about 4 days from now, after which I will write up a post for the blog here with the reasoning for choice of niche and choice of kwd phrases too. Backlinking will begin once the first 4 posts are up on the website, and I will get the writer to drip feed articles to me over the coming weeks to keep Google happy.
The domain name is obviously not an exact match, but is kwd rich to my original bunch of kwd choices. Plus its a catchy name which I feel is fairly important as it allows people to remember the name of the site should they wish to make a return visit and have forgotten to bookmark it.
Now, the key here is to build up a list. Why? I want to get away from pure reliance on Google in future. For sure – in the early months, I’ll have to rely on Google graces in order to build the list, but I will also be using at least one other method other than SEO to achieve traffic. This method is a little “quirky” and again – although its most probably nothing entirely new, once I discuss what I am in the process of doing, no doubt for many of my blog readers it will be a HUGE aha! moment for them! I may only discuss this with the folks who are signed up on my list however – so again, here’s a good reason to sign up to my blog optin so I can spam the living daylights out of your email inbox in the months to come
I think that’s enough info for now or else I’ll have very little to discuss in my first blog post
Let’s just pray that Google see fit to provide some rankings and do not see fit to dump the site in the sand pit before I even really get going!
Oh, and one last thing – I’ve contacted AWeber to see if I can migrate my list over to them away from Get Response. Thus there should be no more hiccups in sending out updates to the list in future (he says………).
I’ll pretend I haven’t read the beginning of your comment.
About the rest, wow, you’ve almost written a post. Why don’t you just publish it as the first short update?
Many of your readers might miss it. Especially because there are 88 comments so far and for some reason (or plugin) your blog sorts them in different pages, which sometimes it’s confusing.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
Ah no worries about pretending and no worries about the long comment – I’ll post much of it again within the first “real” post so that no one misses anything. This is just to provide an initial insight into progress up till now and a very general outline as to the processes I’ll be following. At least if folks start asking about when the real deal will begin, I can direct them to this comment (although I may well take out the toys bit
).
Thanks
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
You’re welcome
Joseph, thank you for answering my question concerning the BMR article lengths…. appreciate that!
Cristina, you mentioned searching Google for something you are looking to buy and the poor results you received back. I’m glad you mentioned that because I’m finding myself using Yahoo more and more these days because I don’t get as much crap on the results.
Just last night I was helping my daughter with homework and was trying to research information on her subject. Google kept returning wikicrap while Yahoo actually gave me some sites with the information I was looking for. What’s up with this? I thought Google was supposed to be above the others. Lately, I’ve had to sift through the top and work my way down until I find something relevant. I thought it was just me.
I hope it’s only temporary. TomL mentioned in a previous comment how the latest changes in Google’s algorithm have pushed low quality sites to the top of the list and this morning I experienced it very badly.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast and not be penalized?
Link Baiting may be the way to go for a very tough keyword,otherwise it will be quite tough to outrank the established sites.
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Oh, so this explains why I have so many webpages in the top five now. Thanks for shedding some light on the matter ladies and gents!
Thanks for your feedback Bishwajeet. Fact is, this scenario is somewhat new to me – the vast majority of my previous rankings came about simply using “normal” methods and “normal” tools.
Very interesting …. I like relying on something other than goog (if It can deliver results) I am eagerly awaiting more info … You know how to bait us in for more info for sure !
Blake
That’s the thing Blake – more and more I want to get away from relying on Goog to do the business. They are totally unsound these days when it comes to ranking your webpages and keeping them ranked for ever more. So to be thinking about other strategies (not AdWords tho – cos that seems to be even worse than SEO in Goog) is a very sensible way to progress. If you keep all your eggs in the Google SEO basket, you are taking too much risk for the longer term. Thus its time to introduce other ideas here on the blog even though up till now I’ve been very much an SEO guy thru and thru. If you wanna survive in internet marketing, it makes real sense to embrace other ideas and either run with them or set them aside because they simply did not suit your over-all game plan.
The only problem I get with Yahoo and Bing is that even if I rank first i still barely see any traffic coming in from them. Its like you have to rank in Google if you want traffic.
Yeah, I get that too Matt – even though I have no idea where I rank for what in Yahoo and Bing. But I’ve also noticed that when I am ranking for some stuff, I’m not getting sales from Yahoo or Bing traffic oddly enough. Maybe its just the niches though…
That’s why people keep trying to rank in Google and don’t even think of Yahoo and Bing.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..Can you build up backlinks fast without being penalized?
I’ve heard before that Yahoo is supposed to be a better converter to sale than is Google. Not in my experience, that’s for sure! Anyhow, I wonder with this new “challenge” what sort of rankings I can get in Yahoo and Bing – seems to me they like fresh fast backlinking in those search engines to get high rankings. It will be interesting…
Your post have the information that is help full and very informative. I would like you to keep up the good work you know how to make your post understandable for most of the people.
Thumbs up and Thanks.
Joseph,
This sounds like a great experiment. I have always tried my backlinks on a “slow and steady” pace. I will be interested to see how this fares for those competitive niches.
My main niche is an “authority” site within a very heavily trafficed niche. I really do not do any backlinking to it out of fear of google penalties since it is ranking well enough. But I might have to give it a little more juice if this works for you.
Steve@Earn Money Online recently posted..7 Actions that Increase Blog Traffic by 25.3% [Traffic & Conversion #1]
I have also heard that Yahoo is suppose to have better buyers. This may be true in some niche’s but I have found it to be false. I usually ask how someone found us and I have never heard Yahoo or bing (even though I rank top 5). Every time I hear I found you on googol. I am sure if you are talking about a big niche though like what you are targeting in this challenge the traffic through yahoo and bing would be significant and even if you get hit by googol if you did not get penalized for anything by yahoo or bing than it could be worth your effort many times over I would imagine.
Blake
Even *if* yahoo converted better, imagine the insane rate it’d have to convert at to compare to the massive numbers of google.
Brendan recently posted..True Protein’s Best Selling Items
Thanks for the feedback Sandford.
Steve, I used to, and on occasion – whack some fresh domains with backlinks early on. But I was finding more and more that it was not working and I was gaining harsh Goog penalties. But in light of what I came across over the past couple of months or so – about the fact that it would appear to depend on the niche you are tackling as to whether or not smacking a fresh domain with lots of links from the get-go should appear abnormal or not – that could very well be the deciding factor when it comes to survival or landing in the Goog sand pit.
Thus, I’ve chosen a hi-end niche with very high search numbers and lots of heavy branding in the top flight rankings. But even if this part of the experiment should flop big time cos Goog sees right through what is happening, I’ve got another “asset” to test out which is something that does not rely on the good graces of Google at all. Nevertheless, the key point here is to see whether the SEO side of things work out – I intend to get going with that once the weekend is over and done with – got the new writer from oDesk and once the articles are up on the domain, off we go!
Thanks for taking the time to follow along!
Jo
Yeah, that’s a good point Blake – even if Googol decide to toss my little site aside whilst busting their big fat belly with laughter at my inadequate attempts, fact is – I’ve still got a half decent chance of gaining some top flight rankings in the likes of Bing and Yahoo, Ask.com and what have you. So, all will not be lost if Goofle do quash the plan in entirety!
I’ve not read the most recent ratios Brendan, but last I was hearing was that Bing and Yahoo Search had gained a 30% market share of all search volume on a monthly basis (up from 27% merely 6 months previously), whilst Googol had dropped to something around 66% if memory serves me (down from 69% six months previously). Its still very dominated by Goofle no doubt about it, but what with their recent showing of rubbishy results in the top ten in many niches, you have to wonder how many more folks are gonna dump them in favour of one of the other search engines.
Steve, thanks for the shout out on Twitter – thatz cool!!
Joseph, Nice to see how much effort and time you put into this post. I have been coming to your blog regularly since I saw your highly rated thread on 40-day challenge on one of the forums.
Great job.
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Hi Helen, thanks a lot for the feedback! Good to know you are still followiing progress (or sometimes – lack of) even after so long!
All the best to you Helen!
Joseph
I would love to see some more differentiation between them so the highest quality sites would dominate. But, with that said, I finally pulled the trigger on BMR and we’ll start to see if I can hang with all of your Vets ;o)
Brendan recently posted..True Protein Flavors
Have fun with BMR, Brendan! Its a right old slog so it is, but generally its very well worthy of the slog!
Joe, I’m sure this is answered in another post’s comments, but have you ever had a problem using spun content on BMR? or would you recommend not even trying it? Some of my articles have been spun to nearly 75-80% and I was wondering if I’d need to start from scratch.
Brendan recently posted..Soy Protein v Whey Protein Part 1
They seem to be able to find any spun content that you add Brendan – no matter how well you spin it. I’ve never spun and spun and spun my content then added it, but when I’ve tried 75% + unique, they’ve still sent me packing. No harm for you to try though – let me know how you get on. I’ve just sent you the $12 rebate for using my affiliate link, thank you!
Joseph
Got it Joe, thanks again!
Brendan recently posted..True Protein’s Best Selling Items
Also keep us updated on that new plugin Joe. I was drooling over seopressor so itd be nice to have an alternative that isn’t a hundred bucks
Brendan recently posted..True Protein’s Best Selling Items
Yeah, I kinda drooled over SEOPressor too about a year back Brendan. I’m not one for fiddling with plugins – once they are up and on the site, I tend to like to let them do their job. But some of my JV folks are really into messing around with this one and getting the numbers to go from the BIG RED to the BIG GREEN – which basically means that they are getting the on-page SEO stuff right.
Its not at all easy to figure out just how effective on-page SEO is, but on one JV site today – we went from being ranked no-where in Goog, to being ranked between 5th and 10th for a variety of kwds along the same theme – all very low search volume mind you, but fact is – if we’d mess up on the on-page SEO, we’d never get these rankings cos we’ve not gained any backlinks for these set of kwds as of yet.
If you already know on-page SEO reasonably well and don’t like to fiddle with your plugins (;-) ) then I would say don’t bother investing in this particular plugin. If you don’t know your on-page SEO too well, or you do enjoy fiddling around with plugins, or indeed – a bit of both – then this is a cool tool to possess!
Jo
About the only thing I know about on page SEO is from using the Thesis theme to make sure all of my meta stuff is correct. But I’m still learning about keyword density and putting them in my headers and all of that jazz. Might be worth it. I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with things. I just got BMR and I’m already contemplating getting the SEO stuff for yet another project. There’s so much to IM that I think it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and miss the basics.
Brendan recently posted..True Protein Discount Code BRD231 Save 10% Off TrueProtein.com
I agree with what you say Brendan – there is so much to do and to learn in internet marketing that it sure can become something of an utter nightmare scenario. At the same time that we are aware that we should not take on too much at any one time, we are also aware of the fact that by not trying to learn enough we are holding ourselves back, which simply adds an unecessary pressure.
As mentioned,, with this on-page SEO tool, once you learn the basics of using it, you don’t even need to use it every time since you will remember the fundamentals, and you can use it occasionally to ensure you are not getting away from the mark. Up till now I’ve managed to do without and still gained many a top spot ranking. And my on-page is not “perfect” (whatever perfect really is). I’ve never worried about kwd density in the article – I simply do what you do, and add in the meta on Thesis, almost all of the time – add in my kwd phrase to my article title, and add in my tags to Platinum SEO, post tags and Thesis meta tags. And basically that’s a job done! This on-page SEO tool is deinitely not a must-have – it merely serves to guide.
Well put Jo.
Thanks for spelling out what you use with Platinum SEO. I have noticed with a lot of SEO tools there are many “fluff” features or maybe just features I do not understand the use of. Either way thanks for clearing up what you use out of Platinum SEO
The Yoast SEO plugin looks good too Blake, but I had a quick look at it and I think I’d never get around to figuring it all out. So why add plugins to your sites that you’d rarely if ever use, even if the intention was there. Mind you, that’s a free one, and that may be enough to opt to utilize that over a paid-for one.
Love the fact you continue to bring us gold Joseph.
I still fondly remembering you emailing me a while back. Such a nice gent. And still my “go-to” guy.
How could anyone not see the brilliance of this plug in? me guesses it may take some minor effort to understand but should hit the ground running before too long.
Justin Bieber Song Fan recently posted..Justin Bieber “Mistletoe” Music Video Premiere!
Hello there Justin Bieber Fan – I surely remember you with a domain name such as that
Hope you are well these days and life online is treating you kindly!
This plugin is turning out to be very popular, since its very keenly priced and has proven by many to actually do a fine job – at least in terms of acting as a guide, even if not fully utilized. It may well not be the top of the list for everyone, but if you are intent on ranking for long tail kwds and don’t want to do too much in the way of backlinking, a tool like this can be a fantastic asset to utilize!
All the best Justin Bieber Fan!
Joseph
Totally Joseph. I’m so busy playing with BMR and considering buying a new plugin, i’ve stopped creating my content! What a huge mistake. Gotta get back to it. Content is still king for my sites =o)
Brendan recently posted..Soy Protein v Whey Protein Part 1
Tricky trying to juggle everything Brendan – BMR does take quite a lot of effort if you are doing it yourself, then you have to also be thinking about content for the site – gets kinda wearing after a while.
Yea..i got side tracked to after building links with bmr. I need to ad some more conten and rank for those long tales i have been picking up. Trying to not get to ahead of my self with these sites since i new at it but i finally figured out how to rank them lol it takes alot of work to do everything your self.
Casey recently posted..How To Get Rid Of Fruit Flies – The Secret Sauce For A Homemade Fruit Fly Trap
It does take a whole lot to do everything yourself Casey, and that is a large part of the reason that so many people give up. But for those who persevere and get through the early times when its all such an extreme up-hill battle, the pickings can be very rich indeed, as we all know full well!
Persevering when times are tough seems to be one of the keys.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..The loneliness of the online entrepreneur
We both know about that, don’t we Cristina
Yup – its about persevering through the tough times. Even if most of what you do fails, it merely can take that single winner and it turns the whole ball game around in entirety!
Hi Joseph,
Yet another interesting post from you about a topic which seems to cause an endless amount of headscratching!
I agree with you in as much that it usually pays to regard everything you read a pinch of salt until you have tested it for yourself.
Just to add to mix here are some of my findings this year for a couple of my sites.
I set up a two page site in May for a new MMO game, and did no promotion except 2 Social Bookmarks for indexing purposes.
Two months later that site was on page one, with 75 acquired backlinks.
This took me aback somewhat so I wrote and posted another dozen or so long articles and three to EZA.
Every article is now on page one and the site ranks No1 for the main keyword which is the site url.
Unfortunately it didn’t help much as interest in the game seems to be on the wain despite the multi-million investment by the company, and I only make the odd sale.
My conclusion here is that despite poor SEO and lack of promotion this site was successful because of the lack of competition at the time of its launch, giving it some uniqueness.
My acne site, has imo lots of long, good quality helpful articles and hardly any of the best pages rank anywhere to be seen.
After launch I hit this site hard with a mixture of backlinks, I had over a 1000 in about a month registering in SEOQ.
I then stopped to see if there were any effects.
Result: None that were obvious, I have kept on adding content and have a few posts on the front page including a number one which outranks all the big sites including the doyen of acne sites – acne.org which I believe is a PR6 , but none of these are any of my original 15 pages. Once again I put it down to good, original content.
I am now going to start link-building again in earnest and see if I can do better for the other pages as so far I have not learnt how to beat the big sites properly using my own knowledge, it seems to have happened by accident as I do not have enough experience to know if what I am doing is right or even what the right things are, hence my testing.
Sorry for the long waffling post I hope I haven’t detracted too far from the OP.
It would be interesting to get your thoughts on these Joseph.
All the best
Anna
Hey Anna, thoroughly interesting, thanks for sharing with us!
Regards the MMO game site – yeah, surely sounds like you gained real easy rankings due to the fact that the competition was slacking off on their efforts to rank. But whats more, you had the exact match domain so you’ve also gained the “branding” rights from Google. I thought that this was actually going to slowly disappear and that Google would disregard this idea of an emd being naturally strong in terms of ranking ability – but no, seems not to be the case – emd’s still gain branding au natural and they are easy to rank even when the competition is strong.
What’s more interesting however is that Goog seem to now also be conferring branding status on kwd rich domain names – more so than they did previously. I’ve recently been seeing kwd rich domains ranking very nicely in Goog even though they have far, far less backlinks than their competitors do. You could argue that their backlinks are higher quality, but I doubt that to be the case every time. Seems to me that Goog are now taking into account kwd richness of domain names to the kwds they want to rank for, and that is now a big bonus – I’m trying this out with my new project challenge actually – should be interesting to see what happens.
Watch out Anna – I too have a site in acne, LOL! In fact, its a jv site and its doing rather nicely. Best we swap which kwd phrases we are going after so we don’t tread on each other’s toes. It may be wise to link swap – one site to the other. I know most folks say that does not work any longer, but I think that’s not the case – I think link swapping is a very good way to help mix up a backlinking campaign and push your rankings forward. You have to wonder how much that domain name is worth – acne.org – must be worth a small fortune!
No worries about the “long waffling” comment and detracting from the original post. Again, this is something of a no-no on most blogs – you are told to stick to the main theme of the post in your comments – quite frankly, I much prefer to have lots of unrelated comments on my posts as I think it adds to my rank-ability in Google – to mix up the commenting, much as you would in a backlinking campaign
Great work Anna – I would really enjoy following along with your progress, particularly so because you are one of the “get out there and try it for yourself” type of gals – my kind of gal, really
Wishing you the best Anna!
Joseph
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for the reply, yes I believe you are right about the branding thing, despite of everything I keep reading to the contrary, it doesn’t seem likely to me either that G would be able to exclude emd’s from their algo, how would it be able to tell the difference I wonder? from what I can see it looks like they just picked up on the
spammers delight, the dot info extension, and nuked a lot of them, I guess this would not be viable with a dot com,net or org.
No problem if you would like to exchange links, I have never had any offers before, but then again I have not asked anyone else, I just never seem to get the time, it will be interesting so see any effect it may have.
so I can put it in the blogroll.
Last time I looked my homepage was a PR2 (another accident?)
Saying that it has just reminded me of something I would like to share with you and your readers, this was something I did that got me a permanent link from a blog by accident, but I guess if it worked once it is worth trying again.
I came across a helpful blog one day while surfing, the guy was Indonesian and although his English was quite good, his grammar was poor, so I rewrote the main post for him and a couple of weeks later I did the same thing again on another post. (I did not ask or want anything in return)
He could not believe I had done this for him for no reason and was very grateful so he gave me a link on his home page, when I checked that page is now a PR4 and although his site is unrelated site to mine he has a lot of visitors both English and native. Food for thought…?
Acne.org, yes… boy would I like to slap some monetization on that site, I expect you have already noticed that it ranks for just about everything to do with acne, G loves that site despite its thin content.
Its a good example of branding too as D. Kern the owner has his own range of products, I am not sure anyone would ever be able to outrank this site for the main acne terms.
Although personally, trying to do this against a site that genuinely tries to help people is not my cup of tea, and I expect this is the only site that Dan owns.
I would be happy to sit at the number two spot
Saying that prompted me to just do a quick check and I see my site is ranked 149th for the main keyword! this keyword is probably beyond me anyway and I know I do not have the skill or the resources for it, but will carry on adding content for less competitive terms.
I never really bother page watching I just let G do it’s stuff, with the knowledge that my content is reasonable and original, it is helpful to see whether what they say about this is true or whether it is there to make sure people keep on their toes, write good stuff, and deter spammers.
Because of their reluctance to set proper rules and their total lack of communication with people who’s businesses they damage, I am very suspicious of anything that G says, like the recent ‘leaked’ guidelines document, which was not apparently intended to be seen by webmasters hence the spate of ‘please remove it from your site’ notices to give the whole thing a bit of creedance.
Then again it does not really tell us anything we didn’t already know, and there was no mention of the things that should not be done which can give site owners some serious grief, deliberate or not.
Watch out for this though…
“If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam.”
“The thin affiliate offers no additional information and does not try to help users.”
That should clear a few hundred thousand pages from the G index
I have entered my private email address on this comment Joseph so we may communicate directly, my site email is not currently redirecting as I have turned it off (too many inodes)
Take care
Anna
Anna recently posted..Can your face break out from someone kissing it a lot?
Have Goog recently been dumping a lot of dot info domains Anna? I was not aware of it. Seems they’ve been dumping a whole lot of recent. Many of the emails I receive are from folks who have recently been on the receiving end, and quite often there appears to be no rhyme or reason.
Yeah if you wanna do a link exchange, why not email me at joseph@josepharchibald.com No harm done and I’m sure its actually fairly valuable. You’ve offered me your email – I’ll contact you then.
Now that is interesting – you offered to re-write a non-native English speaker’s webpage and in return you received a sweet backlink. Smart way of achieving a backlink Anna! There are so many people who struggle with English, not only those who are non-native English, but also those who are either dyslexic or simply cannot write very well. In fact, its a real shame that so many people are penalized for just that. I had a gent email me about using BMR. He’s Polish, so he said he needs to trial it on the freebie because the chances are almost all his posts would be rejected, simply because his English was not so great.
There’s an idea for an online service, if you are service orientated. Offer to check syntax and spelling on articles (etc) that are already written and charge a very small fee for each one. Probably best to outsource that sort of work, in which case you could sincerely build a huge database of folks who need this sort of service.
I’m not sure anyone can outrank that acne.org site either, but there is no harm in trying
If I have the time, I’m always up for a challenge like that, providing I see just a little bit of weakness somewhere. However, I agree – if the site does truly offer real good value to the visitors, well – there are very, very many sites that do not, so they are the ones we as internet marketers should be targeting to topple.
Is the main kwd you mention here “acne”? Its really broad, so I would never want to rank for it, unless it happened by accident, which it never would. I’d much prefer to go for the longer tails, more problem-focused stuff.
More recently, so many people have been penalized in the rankings even though their content is really good stuff. You start to wonder what is it that Google really wants.
Regards to the quote you popped into your reply…
“If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam.”
“The thin affiliate offers no additional information and does not try to help users.”
So I might be missing something…
What’s the main driving force behind Google these days? Hmmm… let me ponder that for a nano second. Make money? Make more money? Make even more money, even though they use – no doubt – countless “dodgy” tactics to fill their coffers.
Thanks Anna for taking the time to offer us so many of your own insights into the online world that we all are a part of!
Joseph
Thanks for the great tips! I have been building websites for fun for quite some time but just recently started trying to optimize search results for my latest masterpiece. I’ve learned several good ideas, thank for share.
Himel recently posted..How to Add A Contact form to Blogspot.com Blog
Hello Himel, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! I’m about to write up a follow-up on this, so hopefully that will be up on the blog shortly.
All the best with your latest masterpiece!
Joseph
Thanks . i am following you
Himel recently posted..How to Add A Contact form to Blogspot.com Blog
Anna,
You are so right about Google. First that “leaked” document which actually doesn’t say anything we didn’t know before.
And now they are going to block keywords. Meaning, if you navigate while logged in to your Gmail, Google Plus, or any other Google service and you search something on Google.com you’ll be automatically redirected to Google SSL by default.
Whenever that happens Google no longer pass the “referrer” data, so we will no longer know which keywords brought the visitor.
For us, it means that when we check our Analytics we will see a visit to our site but we won’t know what keyword brought that visitor to the site. All we’ll be able to see is a “not provided”.
I love you Google… GRRR!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How to persevere when your business goes wrong
Good grief Cristina, this is all over my head… leaked documents, Google SSL by default, referrer data, Google Plus (what’s Google plus?
)… I’m clueless about it all!!!
I think it’s better not to know, Joseph. I know about these things only because I read a couple of blogs. One of them is Traffic Generation Cafe by Ana Hoffman. Great stuff. It’s SEO for non-SEO people. Easy to understand and very good advice.
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..How to write compelling content when you are a bad writer
No, I don’t believe I would want to know Cristina – there’s too much already going down in my little world to be also learning about such things as Google Plus (whatever that is). Nevertheless, I’m sure what you mentioned in that particular comment will be music to the ears/eyes of the true geeks that visit this blog
Hi Joseph,
Pheww! this blogging thing is wearing me out, stop writing such long replies
Re: the dot info’s, yes I have noticed many of these have disappeared from some of the results I look at,
probably because spammers use them by the dozen because they are cheap, I am of the opinion a dot info
will be ok as long as it gives good ‘info’, is not in any way spammy and is not plastered with ads, just a theory
though as I figure the majority of these domains would be worth a lot less if sold thus I never use them, and
always stick with the main three.
Believe me the backlink thing was a complete accident, I never expected anything in return, I was just in
blogging mode that day and thought I would do the guy a favour, I wish I could discover how to make money
as easily lol.
Sorry you mentioned about offering it as service, the cogs are now turning and my mind has just gone off on
another tangent, curses, something else to think about.
I agree with you acne.org would be very difficult to beat, not sure seo would be the problem, it would be trying
to match it’s colossal user interaction that has been built up over seven or eight years, this seems to be a big
plus for G.
No I haven’t targeted the keyword ‘acne’ as even I know that would be impossible to go after.
Re this quote: “If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam.”
I recently had a 48 page Amazon affiliate site that took me six months to build de-indexed, every word on that
site was original, 800 word posts and no black hat tactics anywhere, and it was always my intention to help
visitors, it was pulling in 2000 visitors per day, then bang… gone. Eeeek!
After ripping it apart three times (2 weeks work) and three re-submissions later I gave up.
This is why I am very annoyed that Yahoo lost the plot, and their share of internet search volume.
“What’s the main driving force behind Google these days? Make money? Make more money? Make even
more money”
Double standards – Guilty as charged.
Time Uncle Sam put them on a leash.
Thanks for the heads-up Christina, as they are so secretive and I no longer trust them and have removed all their products from my computer, and removed analytics from all sites.
I only log in on a separate browser when I want to check something or use the the Adwords tool and then log back out again.
I use Yahoo for searches, Statcounter for stats and keywords as well as the Search Terms Tagging 2 plug-in for the same.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of my business, as I want it to be as G*ogle-free as possible as relying solely on them is a big mistake in my view.
I must get some sleep now it’s 4.30 am, will come back another time to talk about G+ and the ‘leak’
All the best
Anna
Anna recently posted..How to get rid of acne?!?
Oh good grief Anna, what a tome of a comment you’ve made here!
I saw a dot info domain ranking top spot the other day in a VERY competitive niche – but as you say, chances are high that the site was very good all round.
You could make money off the back of helping to edit folks webpages not by charging any money but by gaining a good quality backlink. Get a good few of those to your site and you’ll soon be ranking real nicely. Imagine you come across a home-page of PR5 and its needs some tidying. You gain a single do-follow backlink from said webpage and your’s is the only outbound link on that page. Plus, its in the same niche as your own. WOW – that would be a mighty powerful link to have!! I think there is something in this method – its actually a super idea!! No need for any more long-winded guest posting efforts to obtain a quality backlink.
Oh gee – that’s a HORROR story alright – you built a 48 page Amazon affili site which took best part of six months to create. Then along comes Goog god and de-indexes it. That is an utter shocker!! That in some ways is worse than what I went thru at the beginning of this year where all my eBay affili sites were thumped – all 80 or so of them. So bang goes 75% of my income because eBay and AdSense combined on those sites was pretty decent.
Google – yeah well I received an email from a gent who lives in Thailand now, having uprooted from England, UK some years ago and he was living on his website income. Just over the past few weeks they’ve all been thumped too, so poor old Deano is up in arms about it wondering what in hell he’s gonna do to earn enough money to remain in Thailand. As you say Anna – double standards indeed, and I agree – its time Uncle Sam did start to take more of a keen interest in what goes on behind the closed doors at Goog. They are not playing a fair game in my opinion. Fact is – if it were not for the thousands and thousands of affiliates online, Amazon would not be what it is now, nor would eBay, nor would so many other very large companies with a large internet presence.
I’m with you on this point – “I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of my business, as I want it to be as Googol free as possible as relying on them solely is a big mistake in my view”. I could not agree more with this and I urge everyone to follow your lead! Keep an open mind at all times about how you could place at least some of your eggs in totally different baskets than the Googol basket cos that’s simply asking for trouble.
All the best Anna and thanks again for your lengthy comment!
Hi Joseph,
Sorry, my English teacher once told me I had verbal diarrhea
also looks like I messed up the formatting by pasting in from notepad too.
Yes, perhaps I have accidentally uncovered a secret ninja backlinking tactic here, not being one for long-winded guest posting, I go for long-winded commenting instead!
Take care.
Anna
LOL – Anna, good to see you have a similar sense of humour to most folks that comment regularly on the blog here
Like you – I’m not much good at creating lengthy guest posts – I managed one for Pat Flynn’s blog and that’s about it over the past year or more. Commenting is a whole lot more fun!
Have a fine weekend Anna!
Jo
Very interesting findings indeed, Joseph.
I was one of those people who always thought that slow and steady wins the race; however, not because I ever tested it myself.
Just goes to show that relying upon other opinions is all nice and dandy, but nothing can compare with research and testing.
Ana Hoffman recently posted..How to Pick the Best Affiliate Marketing Programs that Pay
Its good to rely on other’s findings to some extent Ana, in that if we always to have to re-create every different size of wheel, we’re merely repeating what others have already done. Which is nonsensical. However, a good mix of following folks online who like to test out different systems to the norm, and doing some of the testing yourself, is indeed a good way to progress in my opinion. I’ve got the next post in this series on its way, just after I’ve finished my replies on the blog here. Interesting finding all the more!
Yesterday, I installed the EasySEO plugin and tried to edit my posts to get higher marks.
This morning, I found that all my articles, suppose to rank between 1-8 disappeared from the top 5 ranking and many of them even rank around 100-300. This is a big shock for me. I never imagine that the ranking can dropped from 5 to 163 or more.
I suspect this happen because of the changes I have done. I remember I changed the content a little bit so that the keywords density is higher and also the meta description. I am not sure whether these are the factors that caused Google drops my rank.
Really sad about this…. Hopefully I can rank them back as long as I keep building backlinks to them.
That’s a bit tragic Harrison – but it sounds very retrievable. Let me just check the current ranking of my newbie added kwd phrase on the project site – you may recall that yesterday I re-did the whole post on there so chances are reasonable Goog would have ditched the ranking… Oddly enough, its still sitting where it was yesterday – at 17.
I’m sure this is just a temporary glitch for you Harrison – do keep us updated, thanks!
Jo
Harrison if that is all you have changed It might be worth taking out the extra keywords … if all you changed in the article was stuffing it up with keywords goog might have noticed … maybe if you undo it goog will forgive you … maybe not though … who knows .. its crazy goog
I would imagine that’s correct Blake – simply a matter of undoing some of what was done, or indeed just waiting it out for a bit and see if Goog do a re-rank, which they very often do in this sort of case.
Long island ice tea..ahh man Jo! I love em. When i was a roofer once, i would be out of town working in the sun all day, come back to to motel room, shower and walk across the street to this little pub and spend about $100 on them everynight-only to come staggering across an intersection with cars and then get up with a hang over and go back up on the roof and.work in that sun again lol of course i was only 20 then. There my drink of choice though..i cant handle spice rum or anything of that sort.
Well my site is ranking #23 with no contet yet and just the emd and a h1 tag lol
Casey – a very precarious job to have if you enjoyed the Long Island Teas so much – I can imagine you the day after the $100 splurge up on the roof in the hot sunshine – the thought of it makes me dizzy! The things you do when you are young!
Ranking 23 with an emd and an h1 post tag – shows clearly that Goog still have a long way to go with regards to how they value webpages in search. Nevertheless – keep up the good work, sir!
Yeah, I decided to keep going as I know I can’ t undo what I have done so far. Anyway, will try and see what will happen. Hopefully I can get back my old ranking as soon as possible…
Harrison – I’d be guessing your rankings will be back fairly shortly if you’d be a asking me. Hang on in there and you’ll soon see!
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Hi Joseph, just want to make a quick update on my case. After 1 week, my site returned to its original ranking position. I really cannot believe this. What I do was just keep backlinking and in fact, I didn’t do much as I was a little bit down at that time. But once I found that they all are back, I was really impressed and believed that what we are doing now is really working. Joseph, thank you for showing us the true method of getting a site rank. I am really happy and confidence now.
Can’t wait to try some more competitive niches….
Hi Harrison, that’s great news and I can imagine your elation! Wish I could say the same for my site – still got one top 20 ranking however, so all does not appear to be lost. Keep up with the fine work Harrison!
Joseph
Yes, I will and Good luck to Joseph
Thanks Harrison!
Hi Everyone who was following along with this thread of blog posts about ranking a very hi end kwd in Google in a fairly short space of time. As you probably all know (or most of you know) the website was thumped by the Big Goog. That was about 2 and a half months or so ago. But the rankings re-materialized after merely a few weeks so I picked up where I left off with the project, even though I’ve not been making post updates as to progress on here.
However, I’ve managed to get a top 10 ranking for the big term (450k global monthly search in Goog), a top ten ranking for my secondary kwd (18.1k global search in Goog), and a “newbie” kwd ranking in at 22nd in Goog US which gains 110k global search in Goog each month.
Although it took a little longer than I had hoped (only due to the Goog dumping of course) I surely cannot complain! Just less than 3 and a half months to rank in Goog’s top ten for a kwd phrase that gains 450k search volume a month – job done!
Or is it?
No its not – I want to hit the top spot, simple as that!
Thanks for following along with progress when progress was being made!
Congrats Joseph! Now keep pushing!
Cristina Ansbjerg recently posted..No more B.S. Nobody will give you the power
Yeah Cristina, this one is much more than merely gaining a top ten ranking – its proving a theory to be successful, albeit in a very round-about kind of way
I’m really satisfied with the way things are progressing with this site – the number of long tail top ten rankings is very encouraging indeed. Even though Goog not long ago did not take kindly to what I was doing, its all change now – they appear to love it!
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