So I was totally off on my post yesterday about changing my layout to improve my rankings. Here is what really happened, or speculated to have happened. For the past several days my back links were still showing 34 back links on the site. This morning I check and see the site is still sitting at #4 but it now has 58 back links. The 24 new back links are all coming from my 1 article submission to The Link Racer which I submitted nearly 2 1/2 months ago. Why it took this long to start having those back links show up, I’ll never know but they have and they are there. So did my site move up due to a layout change/wordpress conversion? Probably not likely. Although it could be a mixture of the two since the site did move up before the new back links had time to reflect according to YSE.
Now the real test is to see how long those back links stick!
And now my formal apology for bad mouthing The Link Racer. I am sorry for saying The Link Racer sucks or from discouraging any of my followers from using the system. Clearly it works but you need a ton of patience. You will need to give it at least 2-3 months time to benefit from your article submissions. For those of you now interested in the Link Racer, it is found here. You can submit 12 articles per month for $17.00.
RSS Feeds
on
I’m now trying SEOLinkVine by B. Callen. This is nothing new – blog network, so definitely in order to get some results from it, we need to constatnly supply articles to the system.
As for Thesis – I think this theme is very SEO-friendly, since my empty blog on thesis rank in top 10-5 within 2 weeks, and the blog on thesis got PR 2 for domain and PR 1 across ALL inner pages while other blogs on other themes only got PR 1 on domain.
Good theme, liing it also
.-= Anton´s last blog ..SEO Case Study – 4 Sites: Site #4 Rocks! =-.
There has been a lot of buzz about SEOLinkvine and I would love to hear about your results with it.
Very interesting findings about Thesis and your sites PRs.
Although I would find this to e a crazy algorithim for Google to employ, I just looked at my competitor’s site that has the .org (who is now back at #5 while mine dropped off to page 3 doing some dancing again) and the guy only has 5 back links and his website has a PR2! He has 1 back link from Ezines, 1 article dashboard and a few tag back links from mysitevote.com. Its pretty crazy to think that a theme could possible help out PR. he is linking out to Youtube and a few other related sites though so I wonder if maybe that has something more to do with it.
So I checked my sites that I submitted to LR and I’m still only seeing 1 or 2 BLs in YSE. I guess I will give it a little longer. Thanks for sharing!
.-= Carrie´s last blog ..Serious Motivational Issues =-.
I’m starting to see more LR backlinks show up in YSE as well, although not as many as I would like. I did get quite a few pingbacks, but they were always from the same blogs it seems. However, I do think there has been some boost in several sites SERPS from my LR submissions. I have to say I was a bit turned off by some of the posts made by the owner, and also by the recurrent site and payment problems LR seems to have. I decided to let my membership expire for now, but I may return at a later date once I see how stable the links are that show up in YSE. Thanks for sharing your results.
.-= Michelle´s last blog ..March Earnings Report =-.
Yea, that’s understandable. The thread was very confusing and just when I thought I understood what he was saying about a package, the next comment in which he clarified confused me once again. lol I think he was just getting frustrated and although he did not handle his responses very professionally I think he means well. BTW, I just checked his thread and it seems he is banned. lol I think it is unrelated to his thread though. He more than likely got banned for overpromotion. Every thread I ever read on there about back linking, he would come in talking about his system and it really became a turn-off, as though he was force feeding all readers to try his system. I’d rather try it because someone’s opinion I trust said its good not based on the owner saying so. lol
How competitive was the term you were trying to get back to the first page?
Its not very competitive at all. In fact, there are currently about 4 sites right now that are either PR- or PR0 on the first page.
I am really tempted by either this, seo link vine, or UAW. Need to find a better way of backlinking than just articles, now that i have 30 sites, it is too time consuming, I can only imagine what it is like having 100!! I was curious – are you ever tempted to just focus on backlinking say 3 sites, which are on pages 2+ to see if you can get them earning? I sometimes feel like spending a week just hitting them hard with backlinks to see what the effect will be.
Have you taken on any sites that aren’t really micro niches? Whilst doing keyword research I came across a 90k exact search per month keyword with the.org available, and the same for another keyword with 60k exact per month. I regged them both as the page 1 was mainly PR2, 3, and 4 but not all that optimized. I figured that with some hard work, they wouldn’t be too hard to get ranked on page 1. Just wondered what your thoughts were on this, and whether you have started building any of the profitable sites out into larger sites.
Yes, back linking 100 sites is an absolute nightmare. lol Which is probably why I am not earning significantly more than I could be.
I have toyed with the idea of back linking sites that are on page 2+ but then my gut feeling convinces me to work on the sites that are already on page 1 and just need some boosts in positions.
For those sites you took on, do you mean that they are not EMD but rather just a general niche domain name?
for the 90k and 60k search i got the exact match .org, for example one of the search terms is something like “mens shoes” and i got mensshoes.org – however the front page is mainly amazon/overstock/nextag with a few other stores. They are all around PR 3/4 but what struck me was that the sites werent totally focused on that term, as they are all “mens clothes” type stores with a subpage devoted to “mens shoes”. None of these subpages had many backlinks either, i think the highest is about 250. The .com and .net is parked, and it seems like a great long term project. All the other long tails like mens leather shoes, mens sport shoes etc i could easily build about 500 pages of content i think. Anyway im just using mens shoes as an example.
Im just not sure i want hundreds of sites, now i have hit 30, im thinking about building up 5 – 10 large sites from the ones that prove successful. I also have these 2 big .org’s that if i can get ranked on page 1 would bring in a ton of traffic.
Was just wondering if you had been thinking about doing that – for example the ones that are doing well on page 1, you could continue backlinking them, and adding extra pages for longtail keywords that are related, and maybe only get 100-200 searches per month, but if you make hundreds of these pages, thats a nice bit of extra traffic, and your main domain PR should rise with all these extra backlinks.
Oh yea, if you have the EMD and make it an authority site, you could take on the bigger competition, as long as you aren’t seeing a bunch of PR4-5 in the top 5 spots. Even then, its possible to over take the competition if your site is SEO optimized.
By the way I just signed up for SEOLinkVine and so far i like what I see as far as the bells and whistles for the interface go and ease of use. I’ll do a proper review later and after I have some results to report back with.
Yes, I plan on building out my sites that are doing well so that i can profit even more!
I’ve been adding 1-2 pages a week of new content to those sites ranking and performing well already.
I am liking SEO Linkvine so far..
I am still waiting to see how it stacks up long term versus Article Blueprint though… they are very similar systems..
Ultimately I think it is going to depend on the PR and quality of the sites… Article Blueprint seems to be posting the articles to higher PR sites. Of course, I am having trouble tracking down all of articles from SEO Linkvine as they aren’t all indexed yet ..
SEO Linkvine definitely seems like a solid tool though..
.-= Matthew DC´s last blog ..Quick High PR, SEOLinkvine, & Etc.. update! =-.
Re: ranking for higher competition — have you used link wheels? I mean, have you ever done that sort of thing for a major money-maker?
Just curious, I have some ideas cooking, and like you — I want someone else’s opinion before moving forward.
((Can’t have Matthew DC doing all these experiments…lol))
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Introduction to “The Average Genius” – Who Am I? What’s This Blog About? =-.
Dan: re: “just hitting them hard (with backlinks) for about a week…” Not sure what you plan on doing that with, your links I mean, but I’d watch out for the detrimental effects of link velocity…Too much too soon = red flag, which is why an SEOLinkVine or UAW run that’s drip-fed is good.
Joseph Archibald here had an idea about a linkwheel, setting up articles or squidoo lenses, etc., and then bombarding those with the hard-and-fast links. Link velocity won’t matter if it’s an Ezine Article, and the link “vote” still gets passed to your site.
But directly attacking your site with hard-and-fast self promo’s creates a profile in the G-bot spider, and then it’s eyes on you. Risky.
Unless: someone else can verify that I’m full of bologna…which wouldn’t be hard.
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Introduction to “The Average Genius” – Who Am I? What’s This Blog About? =-.
In response to your above post (it was getting cramped with replies), I have looked at link wheels multiple times. I even had one of my VA’s give me a proposal who had done them before. The problem with link wheel’s is they are time consuming, require lots of articles to be written, and most importantly, create virtual properties you can’t control. So if squidoo or hubpages or wordpress or whoever you are using decides to change their TOS or just delete your pages for being too marketing oriented or whatever, you lose all of the work.
Of course, most of the links we build have a chance of being brought down as well (aside from most article directories), but it’s just too much of a gamble for me for the time it takes.
.-= Matthew DC´s last blog ..Quick High PR, SEOLinkvine, & Etc.. update! =-.
Totally agree re: time consumption. I have a site that has a solid CPA offer that fetched a fair penny last month, and I want to repeat that success and rise in rank…so I’m looking into adding more content, changing the theme from the XFactor style, etc., and backlinking the new pages with a linkwheel or two. The money’s too good on that site, I want more of it.
Crumbs. I need to get to my client…and I need to be blogging this response! ha
Thanks for the reply. And Sara, for hosting/putting up with it! lol
Oh, Sara: I wanted to ask you if you ever used the “DoFollow” WP plugins?
I’m installing them on my site as soon as I get caught up. Your thoughts? Or Matt? Kelly? (BTW, you’re all on my blogroll!)
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Introduction to “The Average Genius” – Who Am I? What’s This Blog About? =-.
@Matthew – Yea definitely one of the benefits of using SEOLinkVine is that you can view your stats to see if its really working.
I still need to look into Article Blueprint. I think on John’s forum someone mentioned when you register for BB you also receive membership to Article Blueprint but I do not recall seeing that.
It depends. I think there are 2 ways to sign up for BB. You can sign up for just BB, where you get link blueprint free. Or you can sign up for all 3 at once. If you are paying $67 a month, then you have the whole caboodle.
Goto articleblueprint.net and try your BB login. If it works then you are in. They use the same password.
.-= Matthew DC´s last blog ..Quick High PR, SEOLinkvine, & Etc.. update! =-.
Aww drat. I am paying $67 since I bought it through the WSO but the login doesn’t work for me. perhaps I will check my mail history again because I had missed the details about Link blueprint before.
Ok just found the email. Mine only includes BB and LB.
I bought it through Steven’s initial launch since I am on his list and the initial email it generated had logins for all 3 listed.
Here is the link I used to purchase it.. worst case, you might be able to email their support and get switched over.. or cancel and buy from this page so that it’s all 3 if yours isnt..
http://www.commissionblueprint.com/blueprints/
.-= matthewdc´s last blog ..Quick High PR, SEOLinkvine, & Etc.. update! =-.
Im not a believer in link velocity and all that lark – My opinion is that there is no such thing as unnatural link building – if anything, a rhytmic steady building of links is unnatural. But that is not based on any facts
My plan for a week was to focus on 3 sites and do the following for each one:
-400 profile backlinks (not convinced about this method, but willing to give it a try)
- 100 articles submitted to ezine and a few other directories
- a squidoo lens, do follow hubpages hub, and about ten other do follow web properties.
Thats it. I mean the competition on the first page of these micro niches is pretty light, so i was planning to do this and see what happens. This is for 3 of my sites that are stuck in the 8 – 15 position area and seem to keep floating around there.
My plan for the 2 higher competition .org sites i regged earlier is to stick with an affiliate type set up, maybe amazon. Im also planning to start adding more review type content to all my sites, with amazon links.
*edit to add – 400 profiles, each profile with 3 links on it. And 100 articles in total, so each site gets 30, but i will link to 2 sites in each article.
Dan -
Fair enough, lol! I’m guessing at the link velocity based on personal experience with some of my sites, two in particular, that are off the map as far as ranking goes. I’ve read from Blue Hat SEO or what not that link velocity can get you de-indexed, and from others who’ve been slapped off the map.
But it’s a guess — only Mat.t Cut.ts really knows.
From what it sounds like on your current post here — it sounds like way too much work unless you have a serious $ making CPA offer…for an AdSens3 site building perspective, much too much work.
Do you plan on outsourcing all of that? If so: to whom? If you don’t mind the incessant questions…
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Introduction to “The Average Genius” – Who Am I? What’s This Blog About? =-.
I was planning to do it all myself. All the niches I picked should make well over $5 per day per site if i can get them in the top 3. Im just finding that the traffic for positions 5+ sucks. My first ever website (built when i knew nothing about SEO) is ranked number 1 for several keywords, totalling about 6000 searches per months, and it gets about 150 – 200 uniques per day + gets a nice few clicks. If i can get my xfactor type sites ranked similarly, $10 – $20 per day is very doable for every site. My theory is that the top spots are all very beatable, its just a question of how much backlinking will it take. So my thinking is, get 20 of the most promising sites into the top 3 spots, and i should break the $100 per day barrier, particularly as i usually get about 60c per click or more.
The flip side of the coin is that nothing is guaranteed, and I could spend weeks backlinking sites, and never get higher than #5 and all that time would have been wasted when i could have just been making new sites :S
agreed with -
1) every site is beatable…but the question is what it will take to do so.
2) you could be wasting your time…
I think the better strategy would be to build more, promote less (less than you suggest: unless you have a high-ticket item you’re trying to sell, or other items that get you a higher ROI), then turn around and backlink what’s working.
Keep on trucking…but then again, I’ve been reading Mike’s blog forever. I do think your idea will work eventually – but how long will it take? And: if only 1/2 or so of your sites ever do penetrate that coveted position, then will you have met your earnings goals in due time, or would you have spent lots of time fortifying 10 sites that just won’t cut the mustard?
Something that you overlooked: 1) you have competitors…and they’re not all straight shooters (see Bluehat Seo’s blog — it’s fierce competition), 2) Goog’e might just penalize a site or two for whatever reasons they aren’t sharing…
Just my thoughts, but it will be interesting to see how well the system works out for you. I do think you should pare it down, or do this in stages.
1) Build like mad.
2) Do *one* backlinking campaign, or a much quicker version of what you’re suggesting, or *outsource* to someone you trust some of these things…
3) Build some more…
I wish you the best, truly — it’s your biz, of course. I’m just impatient, and think you could see more returns on your time and investment if you had performing sites, the more the better…
.-= JamestheJust on Elance´s last blog ..Introduction to “The Average Genius” – Who Am I? What’s This Blog About? =-.
I have never heard of them-the price is not that bad. I bookmarked their site, and I am gonna check them out more when I am awake!
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..Family Always Comes First – Even Before Business =-.
Hi Sara, I remember you also subscribed to Blog blueprint a couple of month ago. So what is your verdict on it? Did it help you in term of your sites ranking?
Regards
Tinman
I am very happy with my results from using BB. Thanks for reminding me. I’ll make a post later this morning with updates on the 3 sites I tested it on. I’ve been with BB for a little over a month and it seems to be essential in my back linking arsenal.
Hi! Love your blog. I found it through WF. I had a question for you. If you were starting over in blogging would you focus on the Xfactor approach? Or would you focus on larger sites with Clickbank or other affiliates (bigger payouts per sale) ? Or a combo of the two. I’m thinking of blogging to bring in some extra income and I’m on the fence. What i notice though is that the Xfactor sites seem to require the same link building efforts that larger sites require. Would really appreciate your opinion. thanks! Sandy
PS Over on WF there’s a WSO where the guy has a tool that builds Xfactor sites in 10minutes or so. The only problem (not sure if this is really a problem) is that it’s not a WP blog.
Hi Sandy,
This is a very interesting subject you bring up here. I personally have not had much luck with clickbank products. I had tried the google sniper method for a few months but never became really successful. However; I do have 1 google sniper site that I used with a real affiliate product (not digital) that earns me about $20 a month. Not bad for building the site in less than a day and spending 3 hours building some profile back links to it. I have not touched it since and it has held its ranking for almost a year now.
Now, because I am not good with clickbank products if I were to choose between building xfactor sites with adsense versus larger sites with affiliate products, I would probably have to say xfactor sites with adsense.
Here’s my reasoning, I think now with the FTC enforcements selling affiliate products for physical products can be a bit more challenging because you have to either out right announce to your audience that you never have actually used the product (to avoid your blog from being a flog – fake blog) or you’re gonna have to fork out some money to buy the products to provide honest reviews. I do have a beauty niche blog where I do actually write honest reviews on products that I buy and try out myself so this makes it easy for me. The other thing is you could always go with creating a “hobby blog”. I highly recommend this approach. Write about things you absolutely love! Maybe you love following celebrity gossip and as you post about the latest outfit Lady Gaga was wearing last weekend, then you can sneak in an affiliate link to say something like “I loved Lady Gaga’s bracelet that looks exactly like this one from affiliate link”. I find that these types of blogs are easier to write about because if you have passion for a subject at hand, the sky is the limit on fresh content.
I think when you are first starting off, its almost best to start off with a niche blog. You really see how much blood, sweat and tears goes into that blog just to get it to rank for your keywords. The downside to focusing all your attention to one authority blog is that overnight google can just decide to sandbox it for a few months. This is what happened to my beauty niche blog. It was sandboxed for nearly 5 months and this was a big loss to my earnings. I went from doing $150-200 a month in affiliate sales to barely breaking $40 a month. So if you go this route, do not put all your effort and energy into just one site. I would maybe try to build 2 sites at a time If you outsource your writing you could even build more than that a month. Just add 1-2 new blog posts a week and spend the rest of your time back linking the sites and inner pages (new blog posts).
I still prefer xfactor sites because going after low competition keywords and getting the EMD helps you rank much faster than just getting a general niche domain and starting from the ground up.
However; if you do go the xfactor route I would recommend making sure your content is top notch and is helpful to your visitor. Please do not bother rewriting product descriptions and details. Instead, tell your visitor how they can use the product, tips for buying the product, tips for saving money on the product or why they simply must have the product. If you provide your visitors with helpful information then Google will be pleased. If you just throw junk content or spun PLR articles google’s gonna break out the hammer.
Sorry this comment ended up being so long.
Thanks for the great advice! I had forgotten about the FTC regulations. One thing I do like about the Xfactor niche approach is I could create 1 site quickly and go through the whole process of learning about building a site, building traffic, monetizing etc. Then I could repeat it a few time with different niches. Different niches would spread the risk of being sandboxed maybe. And I’d get more experience. I do have a couple of ideas for larger blogs but the more I think about it I think I’d rather start on a smaller level. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I really appreciate the advice. Thanks! Sandy
Sara,
With the xfactr style sites, are you taking kw density into consideration, or is it mainly just standard seo stuff: kw in title, desc, h tags, content.
Also, for a typical three word kw string niche with a mnf soc score of <10, how many backlinks does it usually take to move to pg. 1? (Yeah, I know that is difficult to answer given all the variables, so your basic ballpark guess is fine.)
I got John's ebook. Good stuff.
dave
I used to use my keyword at least 3 times for a 550 word post but now I do 4 times and I try to incorporate some additional LSI words too.
I don’t pay attention to the SOC at all. Instead I go straight to google to see for myself. I enter my keyword into google without quotes and if I see at least 3 listings that have either a PR- or PR0 then I will buy the domain and go for it. I find that gives me a decent chance of getting a spot on page 1 pretty easily.
I think things have changed quite a bit on back links. I sometimes outrank other sites that have 3x as many back links I have. I think content and LSI words really help the ranking. Of course the EMD is the real key to dominating sites with many back links too because google expects that if your domain is about
“red shoes” well then your site must be dedicated to red shoes information/products.
EMD?
Sara,
thanks again for the reply. newbie question: is ezinearticles still a good way to backlink or has it lost a bit of weight lately in big G’s eyes?
dave
ezines is still the heavy weight champion in article marketing. At this time is it is still a favorable authority site in Google’s eyes and probably more so because of the very strict acceptance policies. I personally cannot stand article marketing so that is why I do not lean so much on ezines. but I do toss out new ezine articles to sites I want to boost rankings for.
EMD = exact match domain
So if my keyword phrase was “shop for shoes” then the EMD would be: shopforshoes.com, shopforshoes.org, shopforshoes.net
For Link Racer and Brian Prins, I cannot help but recall the Albert Einstein definition of insanity: “Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results”. LinkRacer has continued to fail at what they say they will do, and within the past few days have made a lengthy post all over the internet saying that while it is true that most of their sites have been de-indexed by Google, they are going to continue doing the same thing and provide different results. Can you see now why I remembered the Einstein insanity quote? For those of you who want more details, here is my personal experience summary. I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but the proverbial “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true” appears to be the perfect characterization of LinkRacer. I joined in early May and started posting articles right away. Nothing shows up in Google indexing after several weeks, which as most of you already know is a likely indicator that the sites have been de-indexed by Google. Finally on May 26 the apparent owner of the service (Brian Prins) admitted this in response to concerns expressed by myself and others. No matter what question I have raised, there has been a different excuse to explain the situation (and it turns out that the excuses were all manufactured lies to mask the real underlying problem, namely that over 2500 of their sites were in fact de-indexed by Google!) Being a flexible business owner who understands that things can go wrong, I informed the owner that a refund was in order because in fact no links were being published (other than on de-indexed sites) and that I would consider joining again after the problems were worked out, assuming that he provided a timely refund. No such luck! On their site , here is the promise: “Here at Link Racer, customer satisfaction is our number one priority. If you don’t get your links – you don’t pay.” But, and this is a big but, in reality the owner has attempted to make it impossible to qualify for a refund as follows: “There is a no refund policy in effect on the services provided by LinkRacer.com. This means there are absolutely no refunds given to customers who purchase services from LinkRacer.com. You are agreeing to the fact that what you are purchasing is a service and non tangible.” So, regardless of whether you get what is (supposedly) offered or not, you will not receive a refund. I believe the owner’s response might speak for itself in hopefully letting folks know that this is not an ethical and businesslike operation: “No refunds for services have been rendered. Please read the Terms of Service again. Your articles are still being drip feed and will be done on June 7th so, stop acting foolish and realize that is over a week away and things do not happen over night because you want them too… You will receive what you paid for and that is the last I am going to write about because, it seems your very hostile. Do as you threaten… You do not know what I am providing for free— It is not what you paid for and thus, your foot is in your mouth. Your tone is not friendly and services have been rendered and will continue to be. Thus, the terms of service since day one have been NO refunds as links are there and your articles are on my network. Have a great life and hope you do not think the threats worry me. I have not done ANY criminal or civil wrong doing. Learn the law after 8 years of schooling.…” —– Does this really sound like someone that any one of you would choose to do business with? In any case, if you are going to do business with Link Racer from this point forward, you will have what I hope are some helpful insights about how (1) they do not provide what they offer (how about nothing?) and (2) when you call them out for not doing what they are supposed to be doing, you will be accused of being “hostile and not friendly”. If ever there were a “buyer beware!” moment, this is it. By the way, I make my living advising business owners about a whole series of issues that frequently involve being candid and telling people things that they would probably rather not hear. The truth often hurts, especially if it involves substituting a more difficult and time-consuming activity for a relatively easy approach to something (even if the easy approach is not getting desired results). I can only hope that the time and effort that I took to share my LinkRacer experiences will have a positive impact for some of you by giving you sufficient reason to stop (or not even start) the easy but ineffective approach offered by Link Racer and Brian Prins.
Good list of your commentators! I think it is good commentary stuff!
This stuff is good because it gives you ideas, views, answers and it interaction among people on your site!
Post Articles recently posted..What is a Page Title Tag and How to Optimize It