Hi folks. A little bit of everything in this post as I want to tie up a few loose ends and ramble a bit. The basic gist of this post will pertain to SEO - more specifically I want to show you exactly what it is I do in order to take some of the mystery out of SEO.
I want to start off by referring you to a comment left on a post I made in December.
The post was How I Find a Money Making Niche Dec 5, 2008
The comment was by Jez and you can read it below.
Hi Griz,
Problem I have with this post is that 95% of the backlinks to this sites are from blogs / social sites links.... many are from bloggers you know / are friends with.
What I would like to see is a post on link building for a "non bloggy" topic would be very useful... for example... say you had a niche site about "reactolite spectacles"... how would you approach link building on a site like that?
Jez
I have had a number of emails similar in nature. Since this keeps cropping up I think it needs to be discussed.
Yes - it's true. I get a lot of links simply because I am ranked highly in the serp's. I have lots of friends - they do link to me. What Jez and others don't realize is that I didn't develop all my friends until I was found on the search engines. I didn't (and still don't) use social networks to make friends. I had to get my site ranked well in the first place and I didn't have any help back then. The fact that this blog benefits from friends helping me now doesn't mean that this was always the case. If you think I don't really know how to build links and rank well without the help of my friends you are sorely mistaken and doing yourself a dis-service if you don't heed my advice.
Jez you wondered if I could rank well for a non-bloggy niche like "reactolite spectacles".
Here you go... Reactolite Spectacles
And you can find it ranked number 1 with double indexing in Google.
Click all images to enlarge
As for my link building approach - it only needed a handful of links. None of the links are from friends.
I'm not a one trick pony like John Chow. This blog is successful and makes a lot of money for me but it is not all I do. I created 20 new sites in December just like the reactolite blog - 16 of which are now ranked number 1 for their main keyword. Only 1 is showing any promise as far as having decent traffic. The rest will probably end up on the farm - just like the Blinkweb by Brad Callen blog. This doesn't mean I wasted my time - the farm is quite useful. One of the 4 links I needed to rank the Reactolite site came from the Blinkweb blog.
This is how I find niches - I simply throw up enough sites, get them ranked and see which ones get traffic. Those that don't become useful later on for linking to yet more sites. Over and over. Throw enough crap against the wall and sooner or later something is going to stick.
Folks you don't have to go after the big niches all the time. Learn to get non competitive sites on top of the serp's. If they pan out great - if they don't then use them for linking. Get a stable of a hundred of these simple blogs and you will find that you can chase down the more competitive niches.
Btw - as you can see it doesn't take long (a month) to get a number 1 ranked site and it doesn't take a lot of links if the niche (keyword) has no competition. In fact I have shown you how to rank number 1 in a day when targeting short term hot topics like Asia'h Epperson. Maybe some of you need to put away the "insurance" blog for a bit and hone your skills ranking for "ants scratching their asses".
Simplify things and find out what it takes to rank on top of the serp's for easy niches. Build your confidence and your network at the same time. Baby steps. I guarantee that in a year from now you will be able to get that "insurance" blog on page 1.
Speaking of "a year from now". If you are going to make real money online then get realistic. I started this blog in Dec 2006. I picked a very competitive niche. I didn't expect to earn a dime until I cracked the first page in G. I didn't think I would get there any time soon. I was patient and took my time knowing that a year or two down the road it would be worth it. It's been two years since I started this blog and yup - it was worth waiting for...
For your inspiration. My January income for this free ugly blogger blog...
Adsense income = $3999.36
Project Payday Commissions = $1922.80
Assorted Affiliate Commissions Paypal = $427.39
Assorted Affiliate Commissions Clickbank = $365.91
Advertising Revenue = $225.00
January Total Revenue = $6940.46
Expenses = $0.00
Net Income = $6940.46 usd
Yes - 7k using a blogger blog. Would you stick it out for a year or two for that kind of income?
Total January income for all sites/all networks = $37,213.76 (primarily Adsense and Leads)
Total Expenses all networks = $1029.00
The bulk of my income comes from Blogger sites and all of it is earned by using SEO to rank well in the serp's. The A-list and their readers have never heard of me but I have 37,000 reasons why I don't really care. My system makes money and all it takes is - yup - backlinks. I will beat that horse until everyone of you learn that backlinks and Google are all you need to make money online.
And where do you get those backlinks? Link networks, article marketing, your own farm, friends, social sites (I don't but you can) and our own free resource that keeps growing every week - the niche support page on my Make Money Online with Griz blog.
SEO Software
My last post touched off a discussion regarding SEO Elite. (see the comments - set aside an hour to get through them all. lol) Paul mentioned that he preferred Aaron Wall's Free SEO Toolbar over SEO Elite. (I am not including links as this is not a sales pitch) I mentioned that if there were free tools that could provide the same data as SEO Elite then I would recommend people use them instead. I have yet to check out the SEO Toolbar but Paul assures me it does the same thing as SEO Elite and Fiar was kind enough to send me a sample of the SEO Toolbar rank checker this morning. (Thanks Fiar) I use SEO Elite for a number of things but it is the rank checker that is central to my success online. From what Fiar showed me it appears that SEO Toolbar does provide a useful rank checker and therefor I will suggest you all take advantage of the toolbar sight unseen on my part.
I will continue using SEO Elite as it is paid for and I am accustomed to using it. I bought SEO Elite ages ago when there was nothing comparable. Since then a multitude of free SEO software tools have made their way onto the scene and from the sounds of things SEO Elite has become redundant. If you can find free tools that produce the info you need then there is no need to buy any program just because it has a few bells and whistles that the free tools don't. (I'm leaving SEO Elite in the sidebar just because it makes me a few bucks a month off of search visitors who don't read my posts - anyone who doesn't read my blog is fair game in my books.) If you are a reader of mine - ask me in the comments before you buy anything you see on this site - I'll tell you whether I really endorse it.
The Rank Checker
My comments in the last post brought a flood of emails from readers wanting to know what the big deal was regarding the rank checker. The big deal is that it's what I use to mount a backlink campaign. It tells me where my keywords rank, how fast they rise in the serp's, which keywords need more backlinks and when to add them, how my competition is doing, what keywords they are competing for and which ones they aren't and a whole host of other things relevant to ranking well in the serp's. In short the rank checker is my NASA control center for my linking.
The screenshot below is just a section of the hundreds of keywords and sites I have loaded into SEO Elite's Rank Checker.
You will see instantly how well a site ranks for the keywords and what direction it is moving in (higher or lower in the serp's). It allows me to see if the competition really does know SEO. Below you will see Gary Conn's name. A few months ago he didn't rank worth crap in the serp's (meaning he was all BS before). He has been reading Vic's site and mine (not that he will admit it but I see him lurking) and now he is ranking for the MMO keywords. He is competition. Problogger on the other hand doesn't appear to have a clue about SEO and is really just a social blogger (a really good one) and isn't competition. Jonathan Ledger has a 3 way link program that he sells. Does it work? Nope. How do I know? I've tracked all his keywords and he doesn't rank for anything. His 3 way links program can't be very good if the owner of the program isn't ranked for squat. The rank checker is a great tool for checking out just how well different affiliate products work. If someone claims they are an expert at something and don't rank for their area of expertise they are full of crap. In short I use this tool for spying, for planning my strategies and then for implementing my links. It gives me the feedback I need to dominate the serp's. If you don't think it's important then go back and review my income again. Dominating the serp's IS my income.
Most of you know by now that I don't post often. There are many reasons for this. One is that I make more money not posting - notice the Adsense revenue dropped off over the last two weeks of January? Go through my posts in January and see when I posted. I explained why in one of those January posts. Another reason is simply because I don't have to. The reactolite blog only required 2 posts to rank number 1. What I'm trying to say is this - content is necessary only to the extent that you need something relevant on your sites (targeted keywords). This takes 10% of my time. I spend the other 90% of my time getting links. Posting is a waste of my time unless I need to add keywords to a site or trigger different Adsense ads. Otherwise leave it alone and work on the links. The links are what make you money - not the content. This is true for what I do at least.
I don't think I can simplify my system any more than this. Yes there is lots to learn when it comes to tweaking sites to optimize your income but that is something you can all learn once you have the traffic. Put all that aside and get the traffic first. Create keyword optimized sites - get keyword optimized backlinks. This will bring you traffic. If the traffic doesn't pan out - stick it in the farm and create more. And more. And more. Build your own network and as you grow you will start to dominate the niches that do have traffic. Too many of you are starting out looking for the 1 great niche or doing the MMO thing. This is fine for the long term and you can keep plugging away but maybe you should work on some reactolite type sites just to see some immediate results.
Okay - this is long enough. I want to talk about Google and its move towards social metrics in the next post. Fiar and Gary have both questioned me on this issue and I want to explore it further.
Until then here are a couple of blog posts that made me chuckle this week.
see Splork's Crap is Still King
and VicW's Make Money Blogging
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