I just got back from my mediation orientation. This is the next step in the process to try and get approval to move. *le sigh* So, I haven’t gotten any work done although I probably should now while my son is being occupied by the neighborhood kids.
I decided to do some rank checking on my xfactor sites and I am still not seeing much progress. It still astonishes me how I continuously see scraper sites ranking on first page for my keywords with no original content at all. They are scraping the amazon product details and BAM…front page results. its driving me batty!
So far the LSI changes I made on 2 xfactor sites have not helped. They are still in the exact same positions.
I also had added amazon contextual links to another site about 4 days ago and no movement for that site as well.
MatthewDC made a comment about how my Alexa ranking for this blog has gone up, so for kicks I decided to see what the blog is worth and according to one site, this is the estimated value.
My site is worth $$110,134.
How much is yours worth?
or this one
And then there is this one….
My site is worth $95.
How much is yours worth?
I think this one looks more accurate.
All I have to say is that these estimated value websites suck! Although; I will accept any bids for 110k!
I finished setting up my amazon review site and finished the last post that ended up being just a bit over 1,000 words. I then submitted my ezine article (which got approved in less than 24 hours) and I social bookmarked the review page with bookmarking demon. So away we go!
I also added a post to one of my older niche blogs just to give google some “fresh content”.
Yesterday I came across this site:
http://www.savvyskin.com/
And I noticed that originally it started off as a skin blog but then she just continued to post about all sorts of products and things and now she ranks inner pages on the first page results for things that aren’t even related to skin care. Just because its an authority site? It amazes me and inspires me to head in this sort of direction.
RSS Feeds
on 
on 
on 
on 
I am amused by those disparate values. I happened across some values for my blog a few days ago as well. They estimated my traffic values and revenue. Needless to say, the numbers were way off. I would certainly like them to be there but alas they aren’t.
As to your comment on authority sites. I wonder if authority is simply a synonym for being around for a long time? Don’t know, but just saying.
Kidgas recently posted..Thanks to My Blogging Friends!
I would say the 11,000+ links pointing to her domain probably has a little something to do with it
haha! yea could be! Still, it would be sooo much easier to only have to focus on one site.
yea, and when you think about it, 10,000 links is not really that hard to get if you focus on one site over a period of time.
I mean, if your content is actually “human” then I think other people interested in that niche will link to you, rather than just boring informational articles. I mean just look at this blog
You could do 3 articles per day, 20 blog comments, a UAW submission, forum posts, 20 profile backlinks, and a web 2.0 blog which would give you at least 50ish links per day / 1500 per month, so I think with 6 months of consistent work you could quite easily build a massive blog with loads of posts and backlinks, and rank new posts quite easily.
I totally agree! I is sooooo much easier to focus on one site at a time. I’ve been spreading myself way to thin and getting no where fast.
I’ve started building and growing one blog and wow! the energy is contagious and it has actually gotten me excited about IM again. There is so much you can do with a big site with lots of backlinks. And once you build a big site and you are earning some good money you can start another one and do it again.
Plus, I’ve changed my mindset to long term profits, quality over quantity, and adding value. I know that this route is going to pay off huge in the long run.
I think I would also be more excited if my focus was just one one site. the only part I hate about this is the fact that the niche for 1 site could be a total dud. I really don’t like putting all my effort into one site and having that risk.
But at the same time if you work hard on marketing just one blog, if should eventually rank well for long tails etc.
I know what you mean about scraper sites. I have been doing research for an authority site I will be making. On the first page there are tons of shitty scraper sites outranking honest to god legitimate sites. Not even shitty scraper sites but honest E-commerce businesses. Some of them are even SEOd pretty well.
Worst of all, I have seen Mahalo ranking #1 for several terms. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing a site google called out, by name, as a spam website still ranking even after their updates.
I also getting into a niche that is apparently full of black hatters. They are ecommerce websites based out of Asia selling fake products(openly) at 1/100 of the price. Half of them even use brand names in their domains. These sites have absolutely no content on them, just pictures and prices, but are ranking because they have millions of links from chinese spam networks. Again, they are often outranking many honest businesses that are SEOd pretty well and have decent amounts of natural links.
Google can talk out of their ass all they want about how they are so focused on “quality content” but their actions seem to show otherwise.
I guess all we can really do is keep working! They definitely haven’t made it easy for us to succeed.
Exactly – pretty frustrating!
I just wanted to share something here because it’s easier than posting it on my blog, will do that when I have more to report. This was an email I sent to a few of you, and i figured “why not share it on NWT?” It’s what I’ve been doing lately:
——–
…Here’s a really cool thing so far:
I have created a lens to my big money maker site (getting the $605 for May – sweet!). Then I A-bombed it:
Hit it w/pre-selling articles that lead up to the sale, sort of “problem” articles: what is the “problem” that your product will solve? Why should I care? Setting the stage that way, I’ve noticed the EZA I’ve put up for SEO (another product: trying to sell every tool I use but using lenses versus my Average Genius site) gets 20%+ CTR — unlike what XFactor teaches, my articles and the links make sense and lead to a product in a natural way.
So far, it’s working. The lens I put up was ranking at #150k or so when it first launched, about #8k in its niche. My first lens, I had no idea if that was good (I guess bottom rank is around 300k?). It’s SEOd and all that.
Not happy with that, I set up an A(rticle)-bomb using:
iSnare
Article Ranks
UAW (set to 50 submissions/day)
Magic Submitter (all these are still being reviewed) – this is going to about 28 high PR directories like EZA…
The Best Spinner (oh – yeah, they have their own directory!!)
AND: Article Bot (love that thing, but MAS is better for speed, for stability as my other profile is MISSING??!, and the profile acceptance rate was not as good…darn. I forgot to write that down…anyway: MAS gave me about 280 directories that accepted my profile, not sure if the articles are all approved, AB had about 100 I want to say, still good!)
On top of AB, I used MAS — LOVE MAS. (Actually love ‘em both, but MAS was 8 minutes or so quicker).
So, get the picture: my squidoo is “second tier” to my top performer XFactor site…at this point, my lens is a much better landing page, however, after rewriting it.
Using MAS, you can stagger submissions. I bombed it, went all in, up front, it’s a Squidoo and no links go to my site.
I wanted to see how this all came out…and the lens went from #150,000+ overall, and #6,000+ to:
Overall LensRank: #35845
Topic LensRank: #2387
Hmmm…I’m thinking this could work.
Oh, I also used RSSBot on the RSS feed, and did 2 Squidoo “blasts” I think it’s called. Sorta mini press releases.
Dude. This works! ESPECIALLY seeing that the lens hasn’t even seen the iSnare, Article Ranks (sp?), UAW, TBS (still approving), and the Magic Submitter top-directory submissions.
So…”Look, ma! No hands!!”
I’m going to post this in more detail on my blog…though I don’t care if you all disseminate/copy this all – whatever. I just want you all to succeed in your endeavors. All I did was spend about 1 hour to write 3 versions of my original article, SEO’d and all, then spun them heavily using TBS, spinning KW’s in the display URLs.
Taking all three, I submitted them immediately to UAW. Then I took 1 version for iSnare (they don’t spin, I don’t care: I want to get traffic as well as backlinks), 1 version for Article Ranks, 1 version both MAS and AB. God willing, this will result in more sales (the cookie is FOUR MONTHS long).
Price per sale, my cut, is about $150-$175 depending on upsells and model of this product. What’s crazy is that the thing is $1999 a pop…oh, give me something to sell…please…
You really need to get a good email address to use with MAS. I have gotten some of my articles out to 500 directories(though average about 300-400), I think it will make a big difference for you.
I have been bombing my Infobarrels with MAS links but I have yet to see any noticeable result because google refuses to even index my articles(some are now a month old). I will be able to tell you more about the effectiveness of MAS in the future.
I look forward to your blog post James!
@ Josh –
Mahalo gets special treatment though, don’t they? (Or is the algo still being tweaked?)
Anyhow – I think what we are seeing is a full-rebuild of the index going on, as it learns along the way! G and MCutts might talk about it until they are blue in the face, but the fact is… the serp’s seem to be changing by the day, and not always for the best! I find myself using Bing more than ever to get REAL answers.
On one visit – trashy results, the next visit… better! Rinse and repeat.
Talking about using BMD for backlinks – Aside from high bounce rates, the next common thread I found on my sites that dropped 80% of the traffic on June 2nd, was a high level of comment backlinks (I use BMD also) versus all other types of BL’s.
I use some pay-for-play link building programs (blog post networks) that are still doing wonderful after the 0602 BS.
Enjoying the content -
Mark
Mark – Niche Store Builder recently posted..One Less Algo to Deal With, Yahoo Starting the Transition to Bing SERP’s
You can read a lot about the Mahalo thing on other websites. Basically Cutts called them out by name for providing shitty results and told them to get their act together. I have absolutely no idea how he expects them to “get their act together” when all the site is millions of pages of ads and scraped content. Cutt’s should have nuked the website and I can’t understand why he didn’t.
I have never been more angry towards google than when I have seen their treatment of mahalo. They will absolutely destroy someones adsense account if they reach $100 a day on thin adsense sites, but if a guy with millions of dollars in angel money does it it’s a slap on the wrist!
Well, I would say that only about 40% of my sites used blog comments so i don’t think that personally was the reason why my sites dropped. I just hate trying to guess exactly what the issue is. I have noticed that my income is slowly climbing back up. And I do mean SLOWLY but at least its been over $15 everyday since Monday (4 days ago). I was seeing some really low numbers that was absolutely scaring the crap outta me. I am still thinking positively about my sites rising in the SERPs again and earning back to what they were previously.
In the meantime, I am still gonna work on my amazon review site while adding some more pages to my highest xfactor earners pre-mayday update.
In ref to the single site versus a network of sites – my wife proved the theory to me last year when she started a coupon / savings site. She is passionate about saving nickels around the house… so she blogged about grocery coupons.
Her site went from zero to 500,000 monthly pageviews in less than 3 months, and we sold it within 6 months when it hit the 1million pageview/month point.
She has since started a second coupon type site… in less than 3 months again, +300k pageviews.
Passion in the niche = special sauce!
Wow Mark! That’s awesome! Just curious, how much did she get for it?
It was a 5-figure sale… (before the decimal) which was well worth the effort, but it was a LOT HARDER to sell due to the emotional aspect.
We have been in the web design biz since the late 90′s… and the IM affiliate side since 06 with MANY wins and losses along the way (Many more losses than wins). For my wife, it was her first real winner site – so it was hard to part with!
Mark
Oh yea I could totally see that. Since I am gonna be in a really tight place cash flow wise for the next 2 months, I may have to break down and sell my most successful niche blog. It earns about $5-6 a day consistently with over 60 posts. I dunno how much it would be worth but I assume at least 2k+.