Newb Seeks SEO Clarifications

[Minderwinter]

Hello once again,

So, I have recently been turning my attention to SEO, since I'm quickly burning through my capital with PPC and Social Display, and nothing seems to be converting with PPV. With the money I have left (which is still significant) and the numerous hosting plans I have purchased over the last year (3 shared and one VPS), I have decided to spend my time and capital on SEO.

I have read through the stickied posts in the SEO Forum, and I have spent quite a bit of time reading Blue Hat SEO guide, including SEO Empire (fascinating). However, since some of these posts are quite old, I am looking for some clarifications concerning whether or not these strategies are still viable.

Specifically, I'm wondering about the section of SEO Empire about foundation sites. Should I still be aiming to throw up massive database sites? I know enough about code that I could give myself a PHP refresher and start throwing stuff up on my VPS within the week, but I'm worried about duplicate content. A lot of the databases I've seen (for sale or free) look as though they've been available for a long time. Won't they be difficult to get indexed? Will their links count for anything?

On the other hand, I could also start scraping myself. There's a lot of content out there that's in the public domain, and a lot that has fallen off the web over the years that can be retrieved from archive.org as suggested in Blue Hat.

So, any SEO gurus feel like giving a newb advice? Should I grab some databases and just start throwing up sites, or should I build a scraper and start gathering public domain content (and maybe spinning it)?

 

[Rooby]

I believe Eli uses WF so I'd love to see his answer too. I did just about everything in the SEO Empire guides, but the best results were just getting maybe 50,000 pages indexed for a few months before it dropped down to like 1000. I figured the last piece of the puzzle was his SQUIRT tool, but it really didn't do anything for me, and I never got a response when I tried to contact Eli twice :/

I'm kind of hoping I missed something simple or did something stupid, but that's my experience. If you figure anything out or have a better idea, let me know? Would love to turn that into a successful project after all the effort.

 

[Minderwinter]

I appreciate the response, Rooby. Good to know that you gave this a try and had less than stellar results.

I've been giving serious thought to doing some of this in combination with a bit of this using YAGC (if they ever get back to and approve me for their forum) and some of the open databases that are available. That way I can try building a base linking platform that is optimized for the longtail in my niche and link upward toward sites optimized for higher traffic, more general keywords. We'll see how all this goes. Worst case scenario, the effort will get my coding up to par again so I can really start doing some damage. I'll keep you posted.

 

[dchuk]

I did just about everything in the SEO Empire guides, but the best results were just getting maybe 50,000 pages indexed for a few months before it dropped down to like 1000.

Did you do something to make the content unique before launching your sites? Your story seems par for the course when it comes to getting dupe content smacked

 

[Bompa]

Hello once again,
So, any SEO gurus feel like giving a newb advice? Should I grab some databases and just start throwing up sites, or should I build a scraper and start gathering public domain content (and maybe spinning it)?

Massiveness does not work like it used to. Google has changed vastly in
the last few years. Pages which are seen by Google as unimportant are
shuffled off to a secondary index and will not show in the SERPs unless
there are no other results or very few. This means that in order to have
you pages in the SERPs, you need to get links for them. Imagine getting
links for 50,000 pages? Or enough links to your homepage that would
support all those pages?

It's not about carpet bombing, it's about being a sniper with a laser sight.

I would start with just a few pages on a site and get it ranking with
decent links and focusing on long tail phrases. Once you can do that,
go ahead and make a million of them.

Bompa

 

[Minderwinter]

Very helpful, Bompa. Thanks, and + rep.

 

[erect]

In 100% of all SEO situations, I'd defer to what Eli has to say as the truth so take this post with a grain of salt.

SEOempire was written years ago and the landscape has changed quite a bit. Many niches are 3-5x as saturated as they were then, partially due to SEOempire ... which is probably why he's never released Part II or III. Database sites wouldn't be considered the bottom tier of links anymore (nor do I think he said that) rather just a piece of the puzzle.

I've read SEOempire about 20 times, long term what I took from it has more to do with how to construct a network that allows you to dominate a niche. It's all about having layers and the specifics of how to do that varies from guru to guru.

The best advice I could give to someone in your position (4 servers/ips) is to buy 4 several domains (both aged & exact match) and start building layers of links to each. First, spend some time picking a non-competitive niche & some money on software (or services) that help you do layered linking (LFE, senuke, scrapebox, xrumer,...).

You really need to work for about a month straight on this network and monitor results. If you've picked a decent niche, you should be at the break even point before (if) you get sandboxed. Get a VA to keep building links to this network while you establish a different one ... each cycle improve your system.

SEO doesn't take a lot of money, but it does take a ton of time ... make sure you've got that on your hands before you jump in.

 

[dchuk]

SEO doesn't take a lot of money, but it does take a ton of time ... make sure you've got that on your hands before you jump in.

This could be the most concise sentence about SEO ever written

 

[turbolapp]

This could be the most concise sentence about SEO ever written

I was thinking about it too, after he said it. I would have said: SEO either takes alot of money or alot of time, ladies choice.

 

[Minderwinter]

Thanks for weighing in, Erect.

I've read SEOempire about 20 times, long term what I took from it has more to do with how to construct a network that allows you to dominate a niche. It's all about having layers and the specifics of how to do that varies from guru to guru.

That makes complete sense. I also think that the Advanced Whitehat post outlines a way to do large networks of "foundation sites" that are "laser targeted" (as Bompa suggests). Eli's blog has left me with a lot of ideas about advanced spinning. His directive to emulate white hats when building these networks is, I think, paramount. Varied content, layout, and color schemes among the sites is important for my niche, because if I want to monetize my foundation sites, I am going to have to fool a savvier demographic. I'm going to work that in to my first network. Even if I don't succeed, I'll be left with skills that will serve me well on another project I have coming up this summer.

The best advice I could give to someone in your position (4 servers/ips) is to buy 4 several domains (both aged & exact match) and start building layers of links to each. First, spend some time picking a non-competitive niche & some money on software (or services) that help you do layered linking (LFE, senuke, scrapebox, xrumer,...).

I already have Scrapebox, which, as I understand it, will give the ability to generate lots of nofollow links in blog comments and automate trackbacks. So far I haven't played with it much except to harvest links for PPV, although I bought it with the intention of using it for SEO (and because of the low price in comparison to similar tools). XRumer blasts seem to be offered relatively cheaply on the forum. I am also wondering about OnlyWire and Ping.fm. These seem especially attractive for linkbait. Would you suggest buying a couple of accounts and automating using the API?

One more question about this section: where do you suggest I look for aged domains?

You really need to work for about a month straight on this network and monitor results. If you've picked a decent niche, you should be at the break even point before (if) you get sandboxed. Get a VA to keep building links to this network while you establish a different one ... each cycle improve your system.

Hate to be a complete newb here, but what's a VA? I haven't encountered that before. Are you talking about automation?

SEO doesn't take a lot of money, but it does take a ton of time ... make sure you've got that on your hands before you jump in.

Final question: let's say that I dive in, but have to stop my efforts because of other concerns. Will I be able to return and continue building where I left off, or will an absence of attention be potentially catastrophic?

Once again, thanks for your reply. + rep

 

[Minderwinter]

Forget about my aged domains question above. A quick search on the forum revealed several sources. After looking at the Namedrop and Sedo, I realized that a lot of the longtails I'm looking at don't have aged domains available. I'm looking at a niche that I doubt many others are developing with these kinds of techniques. The flip side is that a lot of the long tails I'm looking at have exact .com matches that I can register fresh right now. I might have to build more slowly, but that's fine with me. I'll just stick with 15 links/day or so with each and randomize the interlinking whenever possible.

If I buy several right now, can I just park the ones I'm not using immediately with Adsense, or do they not age well enough to do the spammy shit unless I'm developing them hands-on?

 

[erect]

SEO either takes alot of money or alot of time

Even if you have money, you'll still have to devote time. Right out-of-the-box SEO works shitty, for the most part. Most of the time I spend is about game planning (with the occasional script upgrade), and I wouldn't have it any other way. The best "generals" end up winning the war so even after you've got outsourcers to do the grunt work, you have to love the game and therefore you spend a lot of time playing god with individual parts & strategies.

I already have Scrapebox, which, as I understand it, will give the ability to generate lots of nofollow links in blog comments and automate trackbacks.

I've used it for so much more, I'm not going to get into the specifics but we've got a thread lingering around somewhere that might fill in the blanks.

XRumer blasts seem to be offered relatively cheaply on the forum.

Yea, I'd suggest buying blasts at first until it's a good value because you use it all the time.

I am also wondering about OnlyWire and Ping.fm. These seem especially attractive for linkbait. Would you suggest buying a couple of accounts and automating using the API?

meh ... I wouldn't factor that into a big part of what you do.

One more question about this section: where do you suggest I look for aged domains?

BST in active forums are a great place to catch a good value (like 10 year old domains with XXX links for < $20). Big picture, custom automation it is much more efficient than doing it manually with help from seoquake, but starting off you can't have all the fancy toys.

Hate to be a complete newb here, but what's a VA? I haven't encountered that before. Are you talking about automation?

virtual assistant ... unless you like keeping up with all the outsourcing and spending your days doing the little things, someone here is vital to success with multiple networks. You can have one relatively cheap, or after you've had some success you can work out profit sharing.

Final question: let's say that I dive in, but have to stop my efforts because of other concerns. Will I be able to return and continue building where I left off, or will an absence of attention be potentially catastrophic?

I've got an entire network of sites that just died early last year because I stopped putting effort into them. If you've got to go away, I suggest keeping something in place to continue with minimal growth. Often it's easier to start over than to revive a dying project. Losing entire networks is one of the more painful things you'll experience ... shockergd shares my pain here, he had a thread a few months ago about his losses.

Also, aged domains don't have to be on target with the niche as long as you theme the content well. A link form an off-topic url, from an on-topic page with good link juice, is still a great link.

If you buy some exact match domains, use those to target specific (high profit) search terms and then make the aged domain more general as far as content and pick on some of the long tail phrases. You can hit the old domain a bit harder with links and it will handle it better than brand new domains.

If I buy several right now, can I just park the ones I'm not using immediately with Adsense, or do they not age well enough to do the spammy shit unless I'm developing them hands-on?

NEVER PARK A DOMAIN!

Put something up immediately and build at least a few links. Do this with exact matches and you will get some traffic before being sandboxed.

 

[dchuk]

Even if you have money, you'll still have to devote time. Right out-of-the-box SEO works shitty, for the most part. Most of the time I spend is about game planning (with the occasional script upgrade), and I wouldn't have it any other way. The best "generals" end up winning the war so even after you've got outsourcers to do the grunt work, you have to love the game and therefore you spend a lot of time playing god with individual parts & strategies.



I've used it for so much more, I'm not going to get into the specifics but we've got a thread lingering around somewhere that might fill in the blanks.



Yea, I'd suggest buying blasts at first until it's a good value because you use it all the time.



meh ... I wouldn't factor that into a big part of what you do.



BST in active forums are a great place to catch a good value (like 10 year old domains with XXX links for < $20). Big picture, custom automation it is much more efficient than doing it manually with help from seoquake, but starting off you can't have all the fancy toys.



virtual assistant ... unless you like keeping up with all the outsourcing and spending your days doing the little things, someone here is vital to success with multiple networks. You can have one relatively cheap, or after you've had some success you can work out profit sharing.



I've got an entire network of sites that just died early last year because I stopped putting effort into them. If you've got to go away, I suggest keeping something in place to continue with minimal growth. Often it's easier to start over than to revive a dying project. Losing entire networks is one of the more painful things you'll experience ... shockergd shares my pain here, he had a thread a few months ago about his losses.

Also, aged domains don't have to be on target with the niche as long as you theme the content well. A link form an off-topic url, from an on-topic page with good link juice, is still a great link.

If you buy some exact match domains, use those to target specific (high profit) search terms and then make the aged domain more general as far as content and pick on some of the long tail phrases. You can hit the old domain a bit harder with links and it will handle it better than brand new domains.



NEVER PARK A DOMAIN!

Put something up immediately and build at least a few links. Do this with exact matches and you will get some traffic before being sandboxed.

The definition of a quality post. Reppers, thanks erect

 

[Minderwinter]

Excellent post, Erect. Many thanks.

 

[Rooby]

Historic thread in the making. I never felt good about closing the book on this, so it's making me reconsider a comeback in some way or another.

Did you do something to make the content unique before launching your sites? Your story seems par for the course when it comes to getting dupe content smacked

At this point anything's possible, but I really put some effort into keeping the stuff unique. The site that lasted the longest was made from a list of a few years of referral keywords from a regular SEO'd site I had, so it's not like I used a free database from somewhere. The others were scraped by me or modified heavily, and I went in a slightly different direction for each one to isolate what might work, but I don't know, the results were all the same. As fascinating and irrepressible as it is, this is what I hate about SEO -- the mystery.

Oh, wait...nevermind guys, I just found the answer on a blog. We just need to create quality content that people will link to and we'll be rich!

 

[Minderwinter]

Comments on my Plan?

My Plan

Now I'm going to put up a schematic that I drew of a possible architecture for my network, including the phases in which I will implement each component. In case I haven't made this clear, I know that I'm a newb, and I'm really hoping for some criticism here. Its possible that I'm way off base, and in that event, your guidance would be appreciated. Once more, thanks for all the help so far. I hope I'm making it clear that I did my fucking homework. I've been thinking about this a lot. The text in the image is a bit blurry, but the phases are explained below.

Phase 1: Create a Medium Competition Domain Spam Mininet

I have already purchased 10 exact match .com's (new) and have bid on an aged domain related to my niche that I hope to be able to push a little harder than the others. First, I'm going to buy some linking packages on the forum to see how that affects things. I'm also going to manually submit to directories and employ trackback. Most of these domains will be newly registered, so I'll have to be conservative (10-15 links/day?). I do plan on keeping an eye out for aged domains, though. Some of my bids are currently pending.

Phase 2: Parasite Network

If I have any money coming in, I'll go for LFE. Otherwise, I'll manually register (or iMacro to do the worst of it) some blogspot, blogger, and squidoo pages. I'll want to try some XRumer blasts if I have some extra money. Otherwise, I'll buy mattseh's proxy tool and scrapebox the shit out of the parasites. They will, of course, link up to my first Mininet. I'll probably throw some noise in there, too, so I'm not totally implicating my sites.

Phase 3: Create a Medium-High Competition Domain Spam Mininet

Like Phase 1, except that now I'm targeting medium-high competition long-tail keywords. I'll link up from the first net, and from the parasites, and buy some link packages.

Phase 4: Create a High Competition Short Tail Mininet

Like Phases 1 & 3, but with shorter tail, more general keywords. More link building. More linking up from all other networks.

Phase 5: Web 2.0 Niche Aggregator (Money Site)

I'm not going to go into detail here. I have a kick-ass idea. It's the kind of thing the digerati will go nuts over. I'll be able to promote this shit with an FB Fan Page, Digg, Reddit, BoingBoing... all that shit. They'll eat it up, I'm sure of it. The beauty of this is that when it takes off, the shady underpinnings of my original rankings will be redundant. The linking will proceed organically thereafter. I also have some terrific ideas for monetization using my own product...

Timeline:

Phase 1 - 6 Months
Phase 2 - 6 Months
Phase 3 - 6 Months
Phase 4 - 6 Months
Phase 5 - 6 Months
__________________
Total - 2.5 years

Hopefully, I'm on the right track here. I wanted to elicit some constructive criticism from the community, and also try to give a little something back.

P.S. I realize that there are more ways to build legit links other than directory submissions. I'll use all the options I can.

 

[Minderwinter]

Also, a justification for the long time-line: I'll be in gradschool, I have three kids, and am an all-around busy guy. This is going to be my 10 pm - 3 am job.

 

[dchuk]

You're not gonna build a money site for 2 years???

You have an interesting plan, but you left the most important part until last. How do you know digerati will even be around/matter in 2.5 years? 2.5 years ago, you had to be in college to get a Facebook account.

I would reorganize that timeline of yours

 

[Minderwinter]

You're not gonna build a money site for 2 years???

You have an interesting plan, but you left the most important part until last. How do you know digerati will even be around/matter in 2.5 years? 2.5 years ago, you had to be in college to get a Facebook account.

I'm definitely going to monetize on the way up. The Mininets should pull their own weight and more. Also, the money site could definitely be up and running from the beginning, but all the firepower won't be in place for a couple of years. Perhaps I should promote it right from the beginning. That way its traffic growth will look more organic anyway.

You have a good point about the long-term timeline. What the fuck will the internet look like in 2.5 years? I'll just have to hustle more and maybe I can cut it in half.

 

[juntao65]

2.5 years for an internet start up to come to fruition. Gtfo - someone's either going to beat you to it or it's not going to be a necessity.

And I hope you did some REAL digging. like 50 pages into search. no matter how unique you think your idea is - chances are so high that it's already been done. That doesn't mean the market doesn't want it - could be cause the founders didn't execute properly. Learn from their mistakes and don't make the same ones.

And even if you cut the time in half, that's still too fucking long. Isn't there a faster way for you to test this shit? I bet you'll be better off working full time at Mcdonald's for a month and using that money to test if the demand is even there through paid traffic sources.

Fuck, now I think I"m sounding pessimistic. Just make sure you have a TESTING phase before you get so deep into your other phases. Otherwise props for planning shit out so thoroughly.