Link Building Strategies Going from the bottom up….
This post is about how to improve SEO visibility to your website by making the most out of your second tier websites and is focused for those of you who are interested in creating an authority website that will stand the test of time. It is a longterm internet marketing plan though so many of you who are niche marketers will likely not be interested in what I have to say. But for those who are, this post is a doozy…..
There are a couple things that I want to rant about today but there is one thing in particular that I feel that most people are confused about. It involves link building…..
There are four ways to build links:
- Build them yourself by creating a complex map of links linking to links linking to other sites and so on and so forth. The links usually but not always come from comment posts, forum posts, directory links, self made article links or axillary sites and pages coming from either parasitic hosts or other web sites created and made by you. Usually this results in a thin line of low profile sites with little to no trust rank for “ranking potential”. No biggie. That is how most long tail niche marketing techniques run. When I say thin, what I mean is that usually there are no links pointing to the pages where you are linking to your page unless you create them yourself because the content on these sites are thin and won’t garner natural backlinks from others. Follow me?
- Create content good enough and linkable enough to have them freely given. Obviously this is the best way but it requires a lot of things, most notably, you have to be an expert in the niche or in the very least a good faker and your unique selling point has to be different than others in the niche to set you apart….usually. The information has to be more than the typical bullshit you will find on ezine articles. It has to be informative enough for other webmasters in your niche to feel comfortable linking to you. A lot of times, getting links is easier said than done, even with good content. In a lot of cases, you will need to build a working relationship with the webmaster. Internet marketers don’t like doing this usually because not only is their content not good enough, building relationships is not worth the time it takes to build them. All this said, these kinds of links are the best kind, especially if you can convince them to anchor the link properly because you get IP variation and chances are pretty good that the site linking to you in this case isn’t using the common tactics used by link brokers.
- Buy links- This is a fuzzy spot and you don’t want to get busted flat out. Finding a good link broker is tough and I liken it to trying to find a good drug dealer- It is very shady and if you aren’t careful where you buy, you may find yourself in the wrong neighborhood (for the record, I don’t do drugs.) The best way to buying links is NOT to run to a forum and buying links from those folks. The BEST way to buy backlinks is to build relationships with fellow webmasters in your niche and make arrangements with them. The reason why I say you need to use caution is that most link brokers you will find on digital point forums selling links may place your link next to dozens of other links…some of which may not even be related to your keyword. Others who have forum profile accounts will place hundreds of links on the same page. There are other types of shenanigans that go on with link brokers as well.
- A combination of all three. Most of the best authority sites do all of the above because it simply makes for a better and more broad link profile. Plus, if you are in a really competitive niche climate, you will need to lean on others in similar verticals of your niche for the GOOD link juice.
I know I will catch some heat for pushing the “content is king” motive again but let’s face it….Getting the good links to your site is much harder if your content is something that can’t stand on its own. Think of it in terms of a webmaster- If you are in a niche and run across a website that is shit, can you honestly tell me that you would be willing to link up to them if your content is good and you have traffic? And EVEN if they are offering you a bit of money? Most of us may be about making money but the reality is that most of us won’t sacrifice our rep for a couple bucks…
Getting Links through Subscription Services…is it a good thing?
I forgot to mention subscription services like Linkvana, backlink solutions, connect content, ect.
I know that a lot of internet marketers advocate them, although their reasons for recommending aren’t altruistic. I will say that in light of it all and considering how expensive these private backlink subscriptions are, it is far more beneficial to actively seek out webmasters for links rather than spending the money on these services. I have tried them all and will say that none have been all that impressive for the price they charge.
By the time you invest in 3-4 of these subscription services, you will be spending anywhere from $200-500 per month. That could be several hundred low quality links from obvious link farms (not talking about connect content here) per month. Knowing this, what if you were to get two links a month from higher quality websites within your niche using the same budget? Which would benefit you more?….hundreds of low quality links or 12 high quality links with your anchor text on highly relevant websites with google trust…..?????
Sites like Linkvana will have you write a little 100+ word blurb and attach the anchor somewhere in the text. Does it work? Well, just like anything else, if you think that this will get you on the fast track of ranking competitively for something, you will be wrong. It does work but considering the fact that these types of networks can be discovered and disregarded by Google fairly quickly (all it takes is one unhappy subscriber), the $150 a month price tag could go to something more worthwhile. In all honestly, paying a site in your niche for a link and supporting the page would do far more for your link building efforts than mindlessly writing 100 word snippets and placing them on junk websites. Just my opinion though.
Connect content is the cheapest link exchange but the quality of links simply isn’t that good as most of the links will come from blogspot blogs and other “free” hosts that are built for no other reason than to give links. In other words, the webmasters behind the sites don’t actively try to rank them or get links for them for the most part. From my short time with the service, I discovered that most of these blogs provided no boost to ranking.
Grizzly has a new Niche Support site that looks interesting for those who are looking for links. Once again, the real deal to whether this will work or not will be based on the community it surrounds. In other words, if everyone is giving shit for backlinks (aka garbage websites meant exclusively for trading links), then it won’t be worth the time to negotiate.
There are two ways to get organic traffic to your site. The first way is to get lots of anchored links that vote for your site. The other way is to create volumes and volumes of content and rely on long tail traffic. Both take time and patience.
Building Links across your network from the bottom up
Like I said earlier, the majority of you will write crap content for your adsense site or just enough content to rank for a long tail and sell an ebook or two or three (god knows why when there are so many other things you can sell that folks would be more likely to buy). Because of this, you won’t be able to hope to become an authority in whatever niche you are focusing on and because you aren’t an authority (or a good faker), you will have to rely on your own abilities to build your own backlinks.
Usually this involves article directories, lowly site directories, comment marketing, building crap sites on parasitic blogs and sites, ect….ect… These will all point to the site you are hoping to rank for.
I should say for the record that I do have lots and lots of pages that are built this way and they do rank for long tails and get a smattering of traffic here and there). They aren’t informative, at least from my opinion on what informative means, and are primarily built to “move” the searcher to another site or place that I am directing them towards. This could be contextual ads…it could be a sales page…it could be an opt-in form…it could be to another information site. These pages are built primarily for long tail traffic and to test a market to see what is viable without spending money. They are what I would consider to be third tier sites.
There are link schemes such as link wheels, link finding services such as Angela’s backlinks (which is a train wreck waiting to happen) and it seems that if you visit someplace like the warrior forum there is always someone else who wants to sell you some new “secret” that will supposedly propel you to the top of google.
The inherent problem with building links on your own is that, barring you simply building and ranking other sites in your niche market or vertical to eventually link up with, your options are regulated to what everyone else can do.
What I mean by this is that you are doing what everyone else is doing…..hubpages and infobarrels are good is you are trying to make a little jack on the side but link juice wise, you can only get so much link juice from them. (the same goes for EZA, squidoo, and free blogs along with everything else that everyone uses).
Back in the day when I used to play music for a living, we called this the law of diminishing returns.(at first you really suck…then after a few practices you get notably better…hundreds of practices and shows later, you won’t get as much “oomph” for your practice)…your first link from EZA will mean something…every link after that from EZA won’t mean quite as much as the first one.
The good news is that there is a way around this but unfortunately it costs money and time….2 things that all internet marketers hate to give up.
It is what I call attacking a market from the top down and it is probably the best marketing strategy that I know of in terms of cost effectiveness and time wise……
First Tier = Main Market…..Second Tier = Niche within the market….Third Tier = Long Tail Funnel
Let me explain- When most of us build a website, we usually think only in terms of our main website without much strategy other than we will do a little keyword research, find a few terms, and then add links to support the keyword.
We go out there and build hundreds of links that all point to our pages in the hopes of having enough “votes” to impress Google and have them rank us. The problem is that our second tier of our linking structure is usually very thin, meaning we aren’t linking to our links.
The end result will be a ton of links with no trust rank and little to no PR (though this doesn’t necessarily matter in the grand scheme of things) which means a long and arduous road to ranking your website if it is in even a remotely competitive niche.
Strategy #1- Attack Markets…not niches- Most of us are dabblers. What I mean by this is that we will focus on several niches at once rather than focus on one market. Focusing on one market will not only help you build stronger content in the long run and become an authority, but it will also help you understand the suttle thematic changes between segments of the market. Ex. Make money online is a market….make money with adsense is a niche…..Fishing is a market….Kayak fishing is a niche.
Using myself as an example, one of my main markets online is the alternative health market. If you have an ailment, chances are good I can tell you how to treat it at home using either diet, herbs, or some other alternative treatment. I have been in this market for a very long time and as a result, the majority of my money comes from this market.
I didn’t actually start making ripples in the market until I started to segment it and create real second tier websites with good content that pointed to my main hub. The main hub was good enough to stand on its own and was able to pass certain directory “gatekeepers” such as yahoo directory, DMOZ and others.
The main hub has hundreds of articles all siloed out according to ailment. I didn’t immediately chase links when I first built it (other than directory links).
My main focus was the second tier links. I have roughly 15 websites that range from everything from gout to diabetes and focus on alternative remedies. I actively grab links for these sites where ever I can….sometimes it is from other webmasters, sometimes it is from links that anyone can get and control.
The result is that these 15 websites all have PR’s (not that this matters much) ranging from PR3-PR5’s. And yes…they point to various places within my main hub. I am not going to lie to you….this took me the better part of a year to create.
All in all, the hosting costs me roughly $1,600 a year. I make the lionshare of my income from it though….I am set to break the 50k mark with these sites within this particular niche cumulatively.
Too cheap to spend money on hosting and domains? Think it doesn’t matter? Well, in all honesty, think about this…if you can’t make $8 a month from a site to cover hosting, then internet marketing is not something you should be involved with. Give it up right now. I am not trying to be a dick….I am just being honest.
So, you tell me who is going to benefit more?…you have a website on wart removal at home. I do too. In fact, I have two…one being my second tier hub which is fairly popular in pagerank (once again, doesn’t matter as much as you think but I need a point of reference) thanks to my link campaining that points to a section of my main hub that is about wart removal.
You have hundreds of links from web 2.0 properties with the anchor text “wart removal” that are all PR NA or PR 0.
I have the same pointing to my second tier website but also have a very relevant thematically on target link pointing to my main hub on a page that is a PR4. Who wins this battle?
Now I know that that is all speculation and conjecture but I can tell you that for many of you the missing ingredient from making money online part time to being able to quit your J-O-B is creating a network of worthy websites that can elevate your main website rather than simply focusing on crappy backlinks that anyone can get for your main site.
The bottom up strategy works better because you are doing a few things.
- First, you are leaving your main site alone for awhile. There is really no reason to immediately start to grab backlinks for it other than to get it indexed anyway to tell you the truth. What winds up happening is all of those friggin’ questions like “how many backlinks should I get a day without risking getting sandboxed?” It is speculative and changes from market to market so why worry about it? Instead focus on building great content that could be recognized on second tier sites and build them up for an eventual link up with your main hub?
- Secondly, you are building links onto the longer tail terms in your market and paying more attention to segmenting your market into bite size chunks that are thematically relevant to those who are searching for content on a different set with its own IP. Once again, there is no need to immediately link up to your main hub. What you are doing is setting your main site up for an eventual splash for a more general term.
- Finally, you are really getting to know your market which will not only influence the quality of the content you create but will give you a much better understanding of the people in your niche in general. I can’t say enough about this. If you don’t know your market, you are sunk from the get go. Sure, you can throw up some adsense, but in many cases there are much better options out there than contextual ads.
If you can have the wherewithall to focus on just one niche and know the niche inside out, your chances of succeeding will be multiplied, not only in ranking but in making money within the market.
Now, I know that this seems like I have made this overly complicated so I am going to break it down into its simplest terms here:
- Spend an exorbitant amount of time on keyword research- Focus on general terms first and drill down. Segment the market into bite size chunks, separating the niches into groups that is relevant to search. (in other words, someone search for home remedies for warts is most likely not interested in home remedies for genital warts….They are the same market but not relevant to each other).
- Bite the bullet and build second tier websites that are focused exclusively on the segment. Make the content good enough to satisfy the casual reader. In a lot of cases, your second tier sites could be mini authority websites for the microniche. Kayak fishing has a pretty devout, almost cultish market within the fishing niche for example. It is also not very competitive. Controlling this market would be easier and more attainable than trying to swallow the fishing market. But, if you can control the kayak fishing market with a website, then you can boost your fishing site with a powerful link. And the best part? It is contextual. Of course, the main issue is knowledge which you could learn as you go. This will make the site more linkable for other webmaster’s to potentially pass a link on its own merit.
- Build your main hub content from the content on your second tier websites-Simply rewrite the stuff or give it a better angle. Make sure to silo the website out where your content on warts is not linking to your content on gout (or whatever). This will give your sections more relevance.
- The content for your main hub has to be slick and good enough to pass a real directory test such as yahoo directory or DMOZ. The directory links are the only links that google “legally” allows. And to be perfectly honest with you, although a link from DMOZ or Yahoo isn’t as powerful as some would have you believe, the reality is that it is a trusted link from an authority directory.
- Build links to your second tier sites but don’t link to your main hub immediately. There is reason to give someone your blueprint. And since an authority site is “long term”, it usually needs a more long term structured plan. Typically, I won’t link up until around the 6-8 month mark or until my microniches are getting some decent traffic organically AND are expressing a fair pagerank (once again, it doesn’t necessarily matter but I am using Pagerank as a reference point).
Should you link freely to others in your niche on your second and third tier websites? The answer is yes. But be aware that you could find verticals and other niches in the market that are relevant but not as thematic as your website. In other words, if you have a hardwood flooring site, linking to another flooring site not related to hardwood flooring such as cork flooring is not as thematic as linking to a site which specializes in laminate flooring…..(laminate is a term that is viewed as synonymic with hardwood….cork isn’t although it is “flooring”)
Build your second tier first and add content to your main hub preserving the thematic segments of your market. Eventually link them up to boost your main hub… I know, it is old school SEO but it worked 4 years ago and it works now. In fact, chances are good that it will work 20 years from now, given the fact that google simply wants to return the most relevant information to whatever it is that the searcher is searching for.
Of course, you could keep doing what you have been doing and getting the same results that you have been getting (which for the mass majority of my readers is not much). You could try to spin and sucker punch your way to high SERP rankings for a couple hundred dollars by exploiting a loophole in google OR you could actually do something that will get you ranked and keep you ranked.
By the way, from solely an Internet marketing perspective, understand that what I talk about here is nothing different than what Frank Kern or Howie Schartz talks about. From a marketing perspective you are creating funnels to your main site by segmenting and satisfying the searchers needs with relevant content. But that is another story for another day.
One last thing and then I am out- I will eventually get around to talking about relevancy in the eyes of google (with some advanced search operators that you probably don’t know about) as well as how to properly silo an authority website so you get the most bang for your buck with the least amount of backlinks. It is just a monster of a post and I have to tame it to make it more readable…..
51 Responses to “Link Building Strategies Going from the bottom up….”
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This post reaffirms the fact that this is my favorite blog.
I’ve started a plan that follows exactly what you’re outlining here. I’ve got one “authority site” that targets the big term, and am building niche sites as I see what terms the authority one is ranking easily for.
How do you monetize your second tier sites? Or do you monetize them at all? Most of my income is from adsense and I’m a bit hesitant about having the same ad code on the first and second tier. Should I scrap adsense on the second tier and figure something else out?
Geoff
Hey Geoff…thanks man….As far as monetizing a site, I have second tier (and third tier) sites that are monetized with adsense and haven’t seen much of a negative effect. All that said, monetize to your market’s needs. In other words, if your niche site is about the benefits of green tea, then an adsense ad may not make as much money as say, a green tea that is only available online, has an affiliate program, and you happen to have a coupon code for it, ya feel me? Sometimes I won’t monetize them at all if I am not getting a good conversion rate. I never monetize just for the sake of monetizing. You could also look into building a list and selling them on the back end. There are so many options available and there isn’t a clear cut rule on what you should or should not do.
Just don’t get hung up on what type of monetization method.
Leo,
You really put adsense on your sites you link to your tier 1 site? Wow never tested it to see if there would be a negative consequence just assumed so.
Shit, that sounds like a lot of work. Can I just have some of your money?
Hell of a post. Hell of a process. Do you put Adsense on your funnel sites as well? I understand the benefit of separate IPs, but isn’t that moot if Google can see that they’re both sporting the same Adsense account?
Also, how are you plumping those suckers up? Do you apply any “thin linking” strategies to give your funnel sites clout during that first 6-8 months?
And another question, mister – being new to this, I don’t have much of an initial budget ($8 is pushing it). Early on, could I save a little money on hosting by creating beefy, well-linked blogs, infobarrels, hubs…until I can ease into purchasing hosting, or should I not even waste my time?
Maybe I’m reading too far into it, but your method sounds pretty slick, and if I were to adopt it, I’d hate to jack it all up.
Again, great post. I’ve really enjoyed reading your material.
Dave Lopan
Well this is one way to go about it. Very involved and overwhelming for any beginners out there. However I have been having spectacular success by picking good niches and doing the normal link trades and articles. Picking keywords is important, knowing what to write and how to write it is important, and where to get links is important. I’m not greedy with my niches either. I have one site that gets over 1000 uniques a day but all my others are in the low hundreds or less. It all adds up though to a very nice income.
I’m about 6 months in as an IMer and I rarely read any blogs – just Ben K’s and Grizz – and I’m a TKA student, too, FYI. And this perspective of yours… I love it. It’s long term, and it focuses on providing content to the users, too. As much as I think it’s true (and can vouch for already with my limited experience) that sniper sites with so-so content can make money, I am not confident that those sites offer a viable means of long term income.
I am all about making a long term plan and I really appreciate the tactics and planning perspective you’re giving away here, for free no less, for someone like me who is new to the game but has my eyes and ears open for long term planning. Awesome!
Thanks Leo, and I look forward to more posts.
Hi Leo. Very nice loooong posts you have here on your blog. I found your site from Ben’s latest post.
I would never put adsense on two sites and links them together. I would not make it too easy for google to find my link sites and punish them all.
Very useful article, thanks!
Just a couple of things I wasn’t clear about:
- Does each second tier site have to be on a separate IP? Are you trying to hide the fact that they’re all controlled by you?
-Similarly – if you’re building links to the second tier sites from article directories, hubs etc – do you use a different pen name for each site?
Hi Leo, thanks for this post. I’m planning an authority site in a fairly competitive market right now, but on a topic I know a lot about – so this couldn’t come at a better time. I was going to ask about monetizing your secondary sites too and I’m surprised to read that you do so (only because so many others seem to caution against this). Food for thought.
I’ll be very interested to read more about how you break your sites into silos. Can you do this in wordpress using categories? Or is a different CMS the way to go?
Great post Leo
Short question. Do you use private whois for the second tier sites, to stay under the radar?
Leo you are the best, please post more and more great posts like this one.
Mike
@ Dennis- I don’t but I do use different names…family members and what not. I am not doing it so much to obfuscate the connections for google though. I do it to separate them from other marketers. Personally, I am not too paranoid about google.
@Tim Building silos is pretty much old school SEO and is based on the premise that separating things out into subthemes in which only the most relevant content matches the interests of the searcher will naturally garner higher SERP rankings. You can do this in wordpress but you would have to utilize pages and create “virtual silos”. I guess you could also do this with categories for a blog but have never tried. Keeping things separate and pointing to your silos main page would be more difficult to manage. I am going to eventually finish the post on how to properly implement silos for your internet marketing sometime. Like I said at the end of this post, it is a monster post and I am having a difficult time breaking it down into chunks to be read.
@ Cat All of my sites are on separate IP’s and I use a new hosting account for each. The idea is that if your site can’t make $5-8 a month then you should probably look into another line of work. I am not trying to hide the fact that I own all of the domains…..I AM HIDING THE FACT THAT I OWN ALL THE DOMAINS
Yes, I pretty much have a whole range of personas but will use them with other unrelated niches. Some folks say that I am being overly paranoid but I know how easy it is to disseminate another marketers campaign and duplicate the results…..Having personas across the board, especially on sites that I control will help to mask my goals. You can almost always spot a marketer’s work because usually it is subpar in quality and the intention is very clear what the site is for.
Hi Sami, good point. So many get too focused on adsense as a main source of revenue. If you are concerned about google linking your accounts, simply add other revenue streams into the equation. Start a list and work that list for backend profits. There are other options. And since it is very likely that your second tier sites will get traffic, why not, ya know?
@ BenQ Thanks man. This is a long term plan for working google in the way they want to be worked. I can’t emphasize that while “quality” is subjective and while you can game the system with markov engines (well, not anymore), MFA sites (not really anymore), spun content, and other subpar junk, the reality is that Google needs to provide the searcher with exactly what they are looking for. If they don’t, people will search for a SE that does and google will lose money as a result.
They are constantly refining their ways to do this in the algo. What this means for most internet marketers is that if you are banking on making a long term income with shady sites that use shady techniques to game the system, chances are you will have to restart over several times. Now, in the short term, it really doesn’t matter, right?
For example, remember the ebay sniper sites that took the make money crowd by storm? For awhile, people were buying up 100’s of domains and simply throwing up code to display whatever products that were listing in their searches. This worked for a while and a lot of people were making tons of money doing it. Most of these sites were too thin on content. Most of those using ebay sniper sites were employing BANS to get them up which left a huge footprint for google to follow. The result was a mass deindexing of most of these sites. The ones that remained were ones that had unique content in addition to the ebay widgets. I know. I still have several up and running that get a smattering of hits here and there.
BTW- Court’s program is a good program to start out with and one that I recommend to anyone who is ready to start making money but don’t have an idea as to where to start. It is basic but who says things have to be complicated right?
And I know that it appears that my strategies look like a lot of work but in reality, they really aren’t. If you think about it, they are predicated on common sense. If you know that Google is looking to find the most relevant stuff on a searcher’s topic because that is how google makes money and if you know that links will help boost your rank and if you know that it isn’t just any link but links from trusted websites that are related to the topic on hand, then it is only common sense that you would start broad and then narrow the keywords down and create a circle of sites that will eventually rank for the subthemes and get that trustrank and point to your main hub.
Now, I am not saying that crap pages/websites won’t make you money. I think that Ben has put that to rest with his success. But he works in massive volumes of pages and focuses in on long tails that can easily get his page ranked. If you do the math, this method works as well. If you have 3,000 pages online that get just 1 hit (average per page) per day, then you will have 90,000 uniques roughly a month. If you slap adsense on these pages and the pages get a 2% CTR and average .25 per click, then you are looking at roughly $500 per month. Those are low numbers though both in CTR and CPC.
All this said, what happens if I have a similar website, have accrued trust with google and write content for one of his longtails? Well, the reality is if the content is thematically squared with the rest of my content, I could likely cruise by his site in rankings simply by using internal linking on my authority site. Wikipedia does it all the time. So does EZA.
@ Jaison Picking the right niches is important, right? I think that there is something to be said for proper keyword research. Every once in a while, you get lucky as well. I have to admit I am a market squatter though. I like to live in a market rather than dabble in a dozen different things. I find it pays off very well and more quickly.
@ Dave It is a lot of work but that is a relative thing. If you are constantly having to press the reset button because google adds something else in the algo then that is pretty much lost time even if you made a chunk of change from the get go.
For the record, I don’t want anyone to think I am this squeaky clean marketer because I ain’t. I use a lot of the same tactics as Ben. I use BH strategies here and there. I will take a competitor’s website and tear it apart and analyze it (which I love doing) to examine what they are doing to get ranked….is it the amount of links they have?….how are they linking internally?….are they using LSI themes in their title tags AND in their headers?…..Are the anchor text pointing to the page internally reflecting different ways to say the same thing?….all of this helps me to understand things a bit better.
Of course, the best way to truly understand how something works is to actually rank for a keyword and watch it when you start adding and taking away from things.
But this is all SEO voodoo and although I love doing it (I get a charge out of it), in the end the real deal is what kind of money can be made from it…..
As far as building them up, it is easy. You take a niche….let’s say hardwood floors…..Hardwood flooring is very general but I know that there are different themes on hardwood flooring…for instance, people searching for hardwood floor cleaners would be different than people search for hardwood floor reviews….and people searching for information on how to refinish a hardwood floor would probably not be care about the best hardwood floors because they have passed that.
However, a super site would probably have all of the answers, right? So, I would build a separate site for each of my silos to my authority site. Every piece of content would simply be re-written…one page for my silo..the other page for my second tier site. This makes things very easy. You are basically duplicating the authority site twice and pulling apart all the relevant material based on what the searchers are really looking for.
As far a clout, yeah, I will primarily focus on building links to my secondary tier for a while and build up clout and trust. With doing it, I will get to find a lot of long tails I never thought of for possible inclusion.
Oh, and typically, I have most of the content in place for my authority site before I launch the secondary tiers. The reason why is because content is what takes the longest. After that, all I have to worry about is a plan (which I talked about last week). The whole process usually takes 1-6 months, depending on how general of theme I am going for and how deep I go within the market.
I advocate separate hosting for each site. However, as Grizzly has so eloquently demonstrated, you can feasibly do it on a free hosted blog or website. Google doesn’t necessarily care what platform you are using. What I would probably do if money is an issue is do some keyword research on a market, find some long tails and then build a platform of infobarrels and hubpages based on the longtails. While the traffic has leveled off for both of these sites, last month I still made a little over a grand with the pages already indexed.
Hey Leo,
I as well just found our blog from ben k’s website. I ve been following him recently, and have been following Griz,Vic,Court and the rest of those usual suspects for little over a year now. Gotta say, enjoy your perspective and honesty.
Looking forward to reading the whole blog…my little treat inbetween building sites and links. Looking forward to more great posts.
BTW, I’m going to do all the reading, but maybe a quick, where did you start, and how long ago?
Hey Matt…thanks and I started this by accident actually a little over 10 years ago in the forex niche. That was a long time ago though.
That;s right, it was with the email marketing thing! So you got in when things were really just getting going. I think I still had dial up then.
Guess I should feel pretty good at my accomplishments for just at 2 years then!
I’ll be seeing you around other posts
Leo,
I just realized you are the perfect person to ask. After Hostgator, what web hosting company would you go with next? I want to spread out a little too but don’t know who to go with other than NOT DreamHost.
I use a bevy of hosts including godaddy, yahoo, ipage, fatcow, a+ and hostgator. The only hosting I have had issues with in the past of this group was A+ because for one reason or another, they like to add a custom domain server which means that you have to have them remove it to move it to another host….very annoying.
Thanks for the response Leo. I agree that it makes sense to hide your tracks from other marketers as much as possible. My authority sites are with the same host, but I’ll look into finding other hosts (and maybe using free platforms too) when it comes to building second tier sites to back them up.
Now I’ll have to read through your archives – lots of great info here! Looking forward to your post on siloing too – this is something I’m not too clear about currently.
@ Cat Using the same host doesn’t necessarily matter….you can use the same host and have different accounts on separate C-blocks, IP-wise. Free platforms are always an option.
Last weekend I was thinking about this approach and I asked myself, why should I prepare more (niche) sites, if I can focus all my attention on one authority site.
Now I know. Thanks for making things clear for me.
Leo, good stuff. This is a part of the business you really have to understand to get it right. I’ve recently been studying the effects of buying older “expired” domains. It seems, as long as they haven’t been abused, that they can give you a jump on the ranking game for 2nd tiered sites, what’s your take on this??
Regards…
Hi Leo,
Very informative post once again.
I really enjoy learning how you view SEO and how it is a long term project if a person wants a long term income. That just makes sense.
I am unclear about the different themes on your authority site. Are you saying that your internal linking will all stay within a particular theme. So for example, all your bamboo flooring posts if they link internally would be linked to other bamboo posts and all the oak flooring posts link to only oak posts? I understand the importance of your 2nd tier sites targeting the proper themed posts but I am now sure what you do with the themes themselves with your authority site.
Are you just setting up a site with say 10 bamboo posts and 10 oak posts and 10 of some other type flooring and then do you internally link those to create theme pockets within the authority?
I am just unclear about how you use the theme idea within the site?
Thanks for all the great information.
@ Andy Yeah, it is part of siloing out a site. You keep all silos separate (unless they are synonymic) which feed into your main theme (your home page). The idea behind it is to create the most relevant information in the same groupings to make the silo stronger….think of it in the mind of a searcher….if you are looking for cool dog tricks, then chances are you won’t be interested in “how to house train your dog”…or that wasn’t your intention. Grouping synonymic posts together whether being through subfolders or virtual silos makes for a much stronger silo SEO wise. I will get more into that later. I have been writing the post on building silos but I am having problems organizing into something worth reading that is easy to understand.
@ Ric I really have no opinion on buying expired domains. I know a lot of folks talk about it and many suggest it and I understand the strategy behind it but I think that if you were going to purchase an expired domain, the best bet would be to grab the previous site’s cache and reproduce it on exactly as it was before it expired. Why not? After all, it is free content that is meant for the site, right? Plus, it looks more like a change in ownership didn’t happen.
I have bought expired domains before and have had mixed results. I think that if you are doing anything long term, it shouldn’t really matter. After all, there are plenty of other ways to drum up targeted traffic without relying on organic traffic and usually it takes just a few months for google to recognize that you are legit. Compare that to the years you plan to run the site and it seems like a pretty small amount of time.
Wow, great article. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a new post for a while.
I don’t really understand how you apply the “relevant but not thematic” approach. I understand what you’re getting at, but I can’t seem to apply it to other niches. Let’s use your example of kayak fishing. What would be a synonymic vertical to it? If I understand you correctly, something like “canoe fishing” would not be thematic, but I can’t seem to think of anything that could.
Another quick question – do you write the article for your main hub then rewrite it for your 2nd tier, or do you write the 2nd tier, then build on the content later on to post on your main hub? If the latter, do you even create your main authority site (at least to get it indexed) before you’ve completed all your 2nd tier sites?
Also, not to sound like a pompous a-hole, but in your 5th bullet of suggestions (”Build links to 2nd tier…), I think you mean “There is NO reason to give someone your blueprint.” I’m not really one to correct, but it does affect the point your getting across.
@ Anthony You aren’t pompous…I obviously need an editor…you need a job?;)
Okay, to answer your question. I haven’t done much digging into kayak fishing but I am going to assume that you can’t get lower (actually you can…I talked with a buddy who happens to kayak fish and there is a such thing as ocean kayak fishing and lake kayak fishing, kayak fishing tools, kayak fly fishing, ect…ect… ..). In this case, you start broad…fishing…then hone down….bass fishing, offshore fishing, ect. All of these are relevant but not thematic. As far as synonymic vertical, a canoe is synonymic with a kayak, at least in google’s eyes are they don’t see anything different between a canoe and a kayak (I used an advanced operator to get this information). Typically, I find other verticals in niche magazine ads. I figure if someone is willing to pay for an ad for a couple months, then there should be some interest.
Second question- I usually will write my main site, silo by silo and get 75% finished with it before going after the second tier. I won’t publish the authority site until I have at least 5 pages of content under each silo although I typically have somewhere in the ballpark of 20-30 articles per silo. I guess you could do this in reverse. By the time you are doing rewrites you know enough about the niche that you usually don’t need a cheat sheet and can write free hand without much of a problem. The quicker it is up there, the better it is for you overall, as building trust takes time.
I have a lot of ideas, questions but I will just say, that I’m subscribing. This is one of the best sources I ever read.
@Leo
Thanks for the response. It makes better sense now and I appreciate the work you put in explaining your concepts.
Le0-
Hi- i really found your posts to be insightful and honest- thanks for sharing! I’m curious to gain your feedback on some of these IM “programs,” that help beginners like me, get started. Are you familiar w/ Wealthy Affiliate? I cannot seem to dig up any dirt on them, but considering their website is so cryptic there has to be a catch. I’m willing to pay some coin for a program that will provide key info and access but obviously, i don’t wanna be scammed.
Thoughts?
TIA,
J. Cange
@J. Cange Not familiar with wealthy affiliate and don’t know a thing about it to make an opinion one way or another. I very rarely go with membership programs as they typically won’t tell you anything you don’t already know. When you are looking at these types of things, you need to ask yourself, what benefit would your business get out of it? What type of ROI would there be for your time? I think that a lot of internet marketers tend to look for a push button system. In reality, there isn’t one.
Hi Leo, I’ve spent the last 2 days reading your entire blog. I have a question, but I can’t remember which post triggered it, so I hope it is okay if I ask it here.
When you are putting out a bunch of web 2.0 pages to see which one Google favors, before you link them together, what do you put in your Ezine articles resource box? Do you leave it blank?
Also, what tools do you use to manage your personals and keep them straight?
Thanks,
Greg
@ Greg
Typically, when it comes to linking web2.0 pages,If I use an article directory (which isn’t always, btw) I will link an ezine or goarticle (or whatever article directory I decide on using) with the keyword that I think will rank ALTHOUGH sometimes I will go back and make an adjustment or two to the title tag as well as the anchor if the web2.0 property is ranking and getting traffic volume with something else.
Understand that web2.0 properties are perfect testing grounds because there is very little consequence if you set off a filter or penalty. In other words, I have done things like sending 10,000+ low quality links at a page just to see how the google algo responds. (which btw, is not much either positive or negative…).
As far as tools and keeping campaigns straight, I simply use the handy dandy excel sheet…it takes more time but makes things more orderly. I have yet to find something that works better.
Leo,
I found this blog post very interesting, one thing I have an issue with is what is the best way to link from your tier 2 sites to your hub site? I am thinking in context links, what are your thoughts on how many? I am always worried about over doing it.
I used to do blogroll links from tier 2 to hub but it seems to not be working as well now.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
@ Derrick
In context links are the best way to link your second tier to your money site. Blogroll links are good to obfuscate and hide your other links from other marketers (since it is sitewide, depending on how large the site is, you could be getting hundreds of “inlinks”…and what marketer is willing to scroll through those to find the “real” ones, right?)
Thanks Leo, not sure if you have ever read Revenge on the Mininet an ebook from around 2003 or so. very similar to what you described above(although obviously modernized). Funny that the basic principles still work.
@ DerrickP
Yeah, revenge of the mininet is a good book with some of its principles that work even today. He had another book that was pretty good back then as well but the name escapes me.
On a side note, this book is no longer available for sale or download. However, I did find it online. To get revenge of the mininet, you can click here. When you read this, you will notice some very big similarities between the link wheel and the mini net. The reason why is because they are pretty much the same. Creating a mini-net is fairly complicated because just like all link schemes, it relies heavily on deception but you will get a fairly clear look into the proper way to build and interlink websites. This said, there are some things that have changed.
And don’t blame me if I this link disappears. I don’t own it and don’t know the owner. I merely found it while looking for a viable link for those interested.
Leo,
I disagree with you slightly a linkwheel at least my understanding of it involves mostly forum profiles and such with very little content or parasite hosts with minimal quality content.
If you apply the mininet concept with quality content(like you talk about in your original post), it really isn’t much different that what you were telling people to do.
I don’t think I would follow the link diagrams specific like to the book, ever site would look the same, but overall the concept seem golden.
I just have to go back and rebuild or modify my existing sites away from blogroll sitewide links to incontext links and I should be doing much better ranking wise again.
Hi Leo,
I’ve read this post numerous times and I know the topic of the blog farm is very taboo to talk about, at least openly in MMO. I know Ben has made an extensive post about it at his blog but I’m still trying to wrap my head around SEO. I’m still in the process of going through your entire blog but I’m learning a lot.
My focus is on building micro niche adsense sites that is based off the xfactor method that he has promoted as a WSO on the Warrior Forum. Essentially, he advocates targeting product niches like ‘thick yoga mats’ then building a 5 pager around it while submitted articles to EZA to get it ranked for the target phrase.
I can say with 100% certainty that his methods work from personal experience as I’m currently averaging about $30/day but I’m working to get it at least over a hundred. But I feel the days of the ultra niche sites are slowly coming to an end as authority sites should be the main focus now.
With that said, I’m only focusing on this method so that I can at least have a steady income until I can actually spend the time to fully build out authority sites. Please let me know if I have this correctly. So… let’s say that I’m building a micro niche site like thickyogamats .com or something.
I put up about 5 pages of content that focus on the main term and other related terms in the niche. Now.. I do understand that building the 2nd tier network can take some time to gain PR and rankings. So I might build out additional blogs that focus on the following terms:
kids yoga mat
cotton yoga mat
prana yoga mat
cheap yoga mats
Then, build these blogs out with maybe 5-15 posts of content while backlinking them with article submissions. Once they start to gain PR or rankings for their target phrase after a few months, then these can be considered very powerful links. So after that, these blogs then link back to the main money site.
Do I have that done right? Or… in the case of a micro niche site like thickyogamats .com, would you focus the 2nd tier blogs around super long tails that contain the seed phrase like ‘extra thick yoga mats,’buy thick yoga mats, ‘how to use thick yoga mats,’ etc.?
Really loving your blog so far. You give a ton of useful information and for that I am really grateful. I’ve have learned sooooo much from you, Grizzly and Ben in the last few months that everything is starting to click in place. Now… like you said, the missing ingredient is being able to create a worthy network of sites that can help increae rankings for the main website.
The problem with these ultra niche sites is finding those authority links can be hard since competitors usually don’t give them out (unless you pay). So, I think I should start thinking long term while building out my network but I just want to make sure that I have it down correctly.
I apologize for the ultra long comment (look at what you and Griz did to me!!) but I would greatly appreciate any kind of feedback.
Hann
@ hann
You could use 2 strategies: the first one would be to make complete niche sites that focus on the silos of your website. This will take a while to rank normally simply because the top end of your silos (or keywords) will still be somewhat competitive.
You could also build pages on sites that already have some authority for some immediate benefit while you wait. These can be web2.0 properties but you have to focus in on what’s hot at the moment (squidoo was hot a year or so back…hubpages was hot 6 months ago…ezine articles almost always rank well out of the box) and direct these longer tails to your micro-niche (2nd tier) blogs which ultimately have a product you are selling or promoting adsense or whatever.
Using the second strategy will make you feel like you are building momentum because the effects can be felt within the first month. If you don’t mind waiting, focusing in on 2nd tier and your authority site is the way to go though.
That is only my opinion though.
Just found your site from Splork. Since your site asks for a comment here I go.
I was feeling a bit overwhelmed today about my intended marketing strategy and thinking seriously about using one of those backlink subscription services. I think you just talked me out of it. Back to doing things the hard and safe way. But man, writing enough quality guest posts is real work when you have a day job!
Followed your long post from BetterNetworker.I’m impressed — you give more than SEO tactics for putting up a Wordpress Blog. You also go more into detail, the how and why, you tie sites together — than Jeff Johnson does – in his free UnderGround Training.
Thank You !
Hey Carl, Shot you an email….
‘preciate the comment. Dunno anything about Jeff Johnson and his traffic strategy so I don’t really know where we differ or are similar.