Less Reading; More Doing

TheDriz

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Apr 14, 2009
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I think it’s safe to say that I’ve read enough about most of this stuff; I’m not going to get any better without putting something into motion. In the spirit of the whole No Excuses contest, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bore you guys with another journal, so to speak.
So, what am I putting into motion? It really doesn’t have anything to do with the No Excuses contest other than me actually starting something to make some money online. It’s not PPC; I guess it might be a little bit of domaining and quite a bit of SEO.

Basically, I stumbled upon a little local niche keyword that I don’t think will be very hard to rank for. My end game is to hopefully get the domain ranked in the top of Google and then sell it off to a company that could benefit from it. If I can work things out for this domain, I’ll most likely replicate it. I’ve noticed that people are somewhat secretive about what information they post so let me know if I am being too vague.

The domain is word for word the keywords that I am going for, city-name-business-type.com (no hyphens, of course). I’m hoping that this will give me a little bit of a head start, since I’m competing with some pretty old domains. Other than a few directory-style sites on the first page, none of them have more than 250 backlinks. The AdWords keyword tool tells me that there are around 400 monthly searches for the exact keyword and around 200 for the singular version, however accurate that tool is.

On with the plan (merged with questions):

  1. I’ll start off by putting up a few pages of content on the main page. This is kind of where I’m stuck at the moment. Should I just write up 5-10 500 word articles relating to the type of business? I still need to buy some generic hosting to throw all of this on, probably some crummy shared hosting.
  2. I’ve started registering accounts on Blogger, Squidoo, Wordpress and some bookmarking sites. Do you think it would be alright to spin the articles that I’ll have on the main domain, put them on these accounts (parasite hosting, kind of?) and then scatter in the keywords as anchor text in the articles.
  3. I’m not sure if this is overkill or not, but would it be a good idea to register more Blogger/Wordpress accounts and just throw in some content with links to the sites mentioned in step 2? I guess it would basically be the standard spammy pages -> key word related pages -> money page formula. Would this make sense to do for just one domain? Would it make more sense just to spin the articles a bunch of times and have them all point directly to the money page?

That’s pretty much it. I can see myself experimenting with some of Eli’s techniques and see how they go. I wouldn’t mind trying to get some link laundering going or submitting an RSS feed for scrapers to copy my links with. I’m trying to stay away from having to host the other blogs that link to the money site myself, since I’d feel obligated to keep them up after I sell the domain. I figure that if they are all hosted on free blog hosts, they’ll always be there without me worrying about keeping them up.

I plan on keeping this thread updated with progress and questions, pseudo-journal style. This is a side project of mine, so I’m trying to squeeze in an hour or two a day to get things up and running.

Well, this post sure got out of hand. Thanks to anyone who actually reads through it all and thanks ahead of time for any help. Let’s hope that this first one will go well enough to not be my last.
 


Sorry dude, I took your thread title to heart and stopped reading after three sentences. Given the volume text maybe you need to shift your train of though, "less typing, more doing". j/k, good luck man.
 
Sorry dude, I took your thread title to heart and stopped reading after three sentences. Given the volume text maybe you need to shift your train of though, "less typing, more doing".
Well played. Maybe my next project will involve a bit less typing.

I wanted to get it all out of my head and on here, mostly so you guys could let me know parts that sound useless or could be done better. I'd rather blow off the 15 or so minutes of typing all that stuff out if it saves me more than that in wasted time.

Quick question I forgot to add to the first post, am I being paranoid by turning Tor on while registering the other accounts? It's frustratingly slow, so if there is no reason to do it, I'd rather turn it off and go ahead with it.
 
so you've switched from 'reading' about what to do to 'typing' out what you're going to do in a public forum.

here's an idea. why don't you NOT post here anymore and go get some shit done?
 
Is this a high ticket local service or product you are targeting? (law firm, dentist, plumber etc) If not you likely won't get much for the site when it's time to sell if there are only 400 searches a month.
 
Oh, right, I probably should have at least mentioned that before. I'm targeting car dealerships, there are around 15 or so in the city.
 
Well played. Maybe my next project will involve a bit less typing.

I wanted to get it all out of my head and on here, mostly so you guys could let me know parts that sound useless or could be done better. I'd rather blow off the 15 or so minutes of typing all that stuff out if it saves me more than that in wasted time.

Quick question I forgot to add to the first post, am I being paranoid by turning Tor on while registering the other accounts? It's frustratingly slow, so if there is no reason to do it, I'd rather turn it off and go ahead with it.

you seem to be very frustrating.hey i think you should keep going.you are good in typing.
 
I think that wf might start ranking for "finally getting off my ass" with all these posts =).

I will be watching this thread and give you any feed back that I can think of. I'm interested in this mostly as it is an SEO based "get off my ass" post instead of PPC.

Mostly get out there and just do this! =).
 
I'm going to be unoriginal and steal a certain someone's progress template (kind of).

Day 1

What I have done:
-Bought some cheap hosting.
-Set up 8 or so accounts on Wordpress/Blogspot/Social Bookmarking sites.
-Wrote up 5 mini articles to put up when my hosting plan gets approved (fraud prevention or something like that).
-Got all my info organized. I'm sure I'll be glad I did this later on.
-Realized that it would be a good idea to change the way I'm setting up my main page. Instead of straight content, I found a pretty nice photoblog template that I'll touch up a little bit and use.

What's holding me back:
-Getting the information for my hosting account. I figured it would be easier to just drop 6 bucks on the Namecheap hosting, so I went with it. I didn't expect having to wait to get approved.
-I think that content would have been my biggest problem. Hopefully my previously mentioned photo-content idea will take some of the pressure off.

Stuff I'm wondering about:
-Will the standard spammy pages -> key word related pages -> money page link formula be effective for this mini-project or would I get more out of each page by having them all link directly to the money page?
-Should I be registering all these accounts through a proxy? I'm probably being paranoid, but it can't hurt to ask.

Next up:
Whenever I get my hosting straightened out, I'll start chunking up my content and putting it online. Hopefully I can get it indexed quickly and we can get this show on the road.

Money:
I'm down $24.57. I bought the singular and plural domain, plus the month of cheapo hosting.

Yellow, maybe getting the newbie form to rank for "finally getting off my ass" can be the goal for someone else, haha. And yea, it seems like everyone is posting about their PPC progress so I figured I might spice it up a bit.
 
Day 2

What I have done:
-Got the money page all set up and good to go.
-Put up 4 pages onto the money page.
-Scheduled one more page to be published every other day until the end of July so I don't have to worry about it.

Stuff I'm wondering about:
-Will the standard spammy pages -> key word related pages -> money page link formula be effective for this mini-project or would I get more out of each page by having them all link directly to the money page?
-Should I be registering all these accounts through a proxy? I'm probably being paranoid, but it can't hurt to ask.

Next up:
Setting up a bunch of pages with relevant content that link to the money page. I'm just going to spin a few articles for all they're worth and see how it goes.

Money:
Still down $24.57.
 
Day 3

What I have done:
-Scheduled a few more pages on the money site. I'm just going to leave it as is and not worry about it anymore.
-Spun the 4 articles I wrote into 200.
-Created a feedburner feed and submitted the money site to a few places to try and get it indexed faster.

Stuff I'm (still) wondering about:
-Will the standard spammy pages -> key word related pages -> money page link formula be effective for this mini-project or would I get more out of each page by having them all link directly to the money page?
-Should I be registering all these accounts through a proxy? I'm probably being paranoid, but it can't hurt to ask.

Next up:
Setting up the blog network with all the content that I spun up. I'm probably going to register 20 blogs with 10 pages of content with links back to the money page.

Money:
Surprise, surprise - still down $24.57. It's safe to assume that this will pretty much stay the same for a while.
 
Just a thought...as you build up and start getting traffic, might as well do something with it.

One thing could be to get leads submitted for car buyers in the city and sell these to the local dealerships. This would also be a great proof to the dealerships when you try to sell the site later and establish relationships for those negotiations.

Or similarly, you could build a list for email marketing, like "deals, sales, and news" from the local dealerships. You could be in touch with the dealerships to get the content for the newsletter, and this would also be a natural lead-in to selling the site later. Also, you could sell the list separately, push insurance offers to it, or use it as a sweetener/throw in for negotiating when you sell the site.

Nice journal, thats what popped in my head when i read it. Keep up the action! Good luck.

One more thing: another way i've seen mentioned on here to get a more accurate idea of the search volume- set up a dummy campaign for the KW on adwords (one that wont get clicked on, something unrelated etc.) and look at how many impressions you're getting. I've never tried it, but seems like it would be more accurate to see what your KW traffic really is.
 
One more thing: another way i've seen mentioned on here to get a more accurate idea of the search volume- set up a dummy campaign for the KW on adwords (one that wont get clicked on, something unrelated etc.) and look at how many impressions you're getting. I've never tried it, but seems like it would be more accurate to see what your KW traffic really is.

Isn't that pretty dangerous because your CTR will be like shit and you're building a very bad history for your keywords - so that when you actually want to do a proper campaign, Google might screw you?
 
Yeah that can be done in a separate adwords account, but I was assuming that he's just focusing on SEO and is not looking to do PPC campaigns on this site.
 
That's a good idea, Lambo, I can't believe something like that hasn't crossed my mind. I've been trying to think of ways to 'promote' the site to the car dealerships and I've only thought about the number of people that search for the keyword. I can't imagine them turning down something that has been proven to generate leads for them.

I'll focus on getting the page on the 1st or 2nd page and then work on the leads part.

Thanks.
 
Since you are just starting out and don't know much about SEO, why don't you try content writing while you work on seoing your domain name?

You seem to like writing a lot, and so far none of your posts have had much fluff if any. I'm sure you could make at least $50-$179/day writing content for others.
 
This domain is just my side project. I'd rather spend some of my free time on this instead of writing stuff up for other people. Kind of funny that you get the impression that I like writing a lot (even though I see what you're saying with my OP, haha) - I'm not a fan of writing. Anyway...

Day 4

What I have done:
-Set up a few Blogger accounts and put 8 of the 200 spun articles on 1 of the accounts. About half the links back are my main keyword and the other half are other keywords I'd like to rank for. I'm throwing in 2-3 (of the 8) deeplinks each time. I'm limiting myself to around 10 a day.

Stuff I'm (Still) wondering about:
-Will the standard spammy pages -> key word related pages -> money page link formula be effective for this mini-project or would I get more out of each page by having them all link directly to the money page?
-Should I be registering all these accounts through a proxy? I'm probably being paranoid, but it can't hurt to ask.

Next up:
Setting up more pages with links. Lots more.

Money:
Still down $24.57.

Eli's QUIT would be pretty handy right now.
 
You can do 2 things. You can make monies or excuses but not both!
yoda4.jpg
 
Day 4

What I have done:
-Set up a few more Blogger and Weebly accounts and put up 8 more links. Same story as last time, a variety of keywords, a few deeplinks and all that fun stuff.

SERP Status
Finally, we get to the fun part. Late last night a few of my pages got indexed. This morning I checked the SERP and it was on the 8th page, oddly enough it was the privacy policy.

I just checked a few minutes ago and I'm already in the top 10 for my main keyword. So far I'm number 8, which I'm kind of surprised about (well, not really - since the keyword is my domain). I checked under a proxy and a virtual machine and I'm still 8th in both of those, so I think it's pretty solid.

Next up:
Keep on setting up the rest of my pages. With less than 20 of my 200 potential links used, I have plenty of room for growth. I'll start setting more links for the less popular keywords.

Money:
Still down $24.57.