30 Day SEO Experiment: Macbook pro EMD back on 1st page

[elvisduarte]

Dan:

I noticed the macbook sites are showing no ranking for google as of today.
What do you attribute that to?
sorry, I'm a newbie.

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by anwar001

the important thing is whether the rankings stick ove time after you have stopped building links to them aggressively and move on to next projects

ya ya that's true. I'll be working on them to build more consistent backlinks and have them ranking again soon.

Originally Posted by charlesgosu

Very nice method here... I'm new in SEO and this could help me.. Learned few techniques and strategies.

Glad you like it.

Originally Posted by dotcomken

Very nice effort here Dan. It just shows what a little time and effort for one site can bring in terms of success. I do not like using labels like passive income in regards to our sites. In the end we are getting paid for our time creating buzz and backlinks. How much we get paid is a clear indicator of our value at the end of the day.

Ya that's a good point - it does require a bit of work in the beginning. But what I mean by passive is that after everything is done and I've got top rankings for a site, I can sit back and never touch it again and have it bring money in.

Originally Posted by elvisduarte

Dan:

I noticed the macbook sites are showing no ranking for google as of today.
What do you attribute that to?
sorry, I'm a newbie.

lostwishes is still on the 2nd page. the emd dropped off the face of the earth. Well I attribute it to the google dance and not building backlinks consistently enough. I need to be focused on building these backlinks more consistently.

[masterofinternate]

My Goodness!!!
Your campaigning plan is just Awesome.I'm going to start my own and really inspired by you. Your real life experiment is going to be a great guideline for me.
Thanks man.

[Dan B Rusu]

Check this out. I dont expect the site to remain in #1 - it's still bouncing around - but still very cool to see this. Huge jump in traffic also

[terryd]

I notice you have quite high bounce rates, do you think that this can affect your serps at all or do other sites you own have high bounce rates and yet achieve good serps?

[Dylan K]

any conversions with the jump in traffic?

[dagaul101]

Nice experiment, mature domains are excellent if they can be obtained at a reasonable price, as sometimes they do outrank exact match domains even without the keyword in the url

[elvisduarte]

Awesome experiment!
I am following it all the time.
I agree with you on the profiles. I've done it and not even a single one have shown up.
Same with directory submissions. I rather put a bit of money hiring a High PR backlink service than trying to get 5 backlinks out 2500 submissions in a directory.
Keep it up dude!
Very instructional!

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by terryd

I notice you have quite high bounce rates, do you think that this can affect your serps at all or do other sites you own have high bounce rates and yet achieve good serps?

Most my sites have high bounce rates because if you think about it, these sites arent made for people to come on and browse around. They hit the homepage, follow the affiliate link, or leave, it's that simple.

Ya i'm sure the bounce rate has hurt my rankings in some way.

Originally Posted by hoot33

any conversions with the jump in traffic?

Yup, got 3 conversions in the past 3 days, pretty stoked about that. More to come..

Originally Posted by dagaul101

Nice experiment, mature domains are excellent if they can be obtained at a reasonable price, as sometimes they do outrank exact match domains even without the keyword in the url

yup yup, that true. I usually grab em for under $20

Originally Posted by elvisduarte

Awesome experiment!
I am following it all the time.
I agree with you on the profiles. I've done it and not even a single one have shown up.
Same with directory submissions. I rather put a bit of money hiring a High PR backlink service than trying to get 5 backlinks out 2500 submissions in a directory.
Keep it up dude!
Very instructional!

Ya, i like the directory submission still, but definitely do get the most out of either manually building the links or hiring someone.

[Dan B Rusu]

Logged on this morning and found this nice surprise. The emd is back on the 1st page. I expect it to bounce around a bit more, but also to settle down on the 1st page really soon!

[sylarrr]

I did some research on Blogging to the bank and it seems to be just another scam. Do you find it ethical to be a member/promoter of fraud scheme? What is the return rate of this product?

[Dylan K]

Originally Posted by sylarrr

I did some research on Blogging to the bank and it seems to be just another scam. Do you find it ethical to be a member/promoter of fraud scheme? What is the return rate of this product?

keep your bad ju ju out of this sweet a$$ thread.

[OnlineMarketingSys]

Originally Posted by Daniel7rusu

Logged on this morning and found this nice surprise. The emd is back on the 1st page. I expect it to bounce around a bit more, but also to settle down on the 1st page really soon!

Some really good stuff and great transparency here. I just hope for your sake that you did this on a hosting account setup for just this domain and completely separate from your other accts.

You don't want Google to come around and play wackodomain's because they didn't like or agree with your linking structure.... It happened not to long ago with a pretty big promoter that launched a course and his core business that is affiliate links really took a dive when all 100+ of his sites were severely sand boxed.

[Dylan K]

Any updates today Danny Boy???

[cybernet]

based on your experiment, on the scale 1 to 10, how do you rate the importance of

1) EMD in a new domain name


2) MATURE domain names

Could you also explain how you define a "mature" domain name?

For example, would you call the following domain name mature (desirable)?

keywordblabla.com was used for a site from 1999 to 2006

In 2006 the site was disabled (hosting account closed)

The ownership has not changed
The registrant has not changed


I'm planning to revive this site - get a new hosting, write a new content on the same old topic.



thanks

[Andy Hart]

Originally Posted by sylarrr

I did some research on Blogging to the bank and it seems to be just another scam. Do you find it ethical to be a member/promoter of fraud scheme? What is the return rate of this product?

Originally Posted by hoot33

keep your bad ju ju out of this sweet a$$ thread.

Keep out of this thread!!?? Why? Are you Allen Says??

The guy has a valid point.

I think this whole experiment is great and hats off to the OP for doing it but....

"Blogging to the Bank" is a terrible product (check the warrior review section and thats just for starters) and the author "Rob Benwell" ..... well lets just say .

So I have to ask, why take the time to promote and rank for such a bad product which is slated all over the internet? Isn't that counter-productive?

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by sylarrr

I did some research on Blogging to the bank and it seems to be just another scam. Do you find it ethical to be a member/promoter of fraud scheme? What is the return rate of this product?

Originally Posted by hoot33

keep your bad ju ju out of this sweet a$$ thread.

Thanks for bringing this up. I'm not normally in the IM niche, where I think 99% of products are junk/scams and only take advantage of newbies by not telling them the whole truth and making huge promises. But the blogging to the bank was one that I grabbed out of the auction to test as an exact match, matured domain. It just happened to be for a product that is questionable (i've never actually read it, just rewrote a review).

So ya to answer your question, I don't like promoting these things and will not do it in the future unless I read the product and like it.

Originally Posted by OnlineMarketingSys

Some really good stuff and great transparency here. I just hope for your sake that you did this on a hosting account setup for just this domain and completely separate from your other accts.

You don't want Google to come around and play wackodomain's because they didn't like or agree with your linking structure.... It happened not to long ago with a pretty big promoter that launched a course and his core business that is affiliate links really took a dive when all 100+ of his sites were severely sand boxed.

Everything is on a shared hosting account, are you saying google would "sandbox" all the domains on that server, including others? I dont know, i have a hard time with this... What if his competition was building a link structure in the background to sabotage his sites?

I'd say he was doing something super spammy, blackhat, or scammy.

Originally Posted by hoot33

Any updates today Danny Boy???

I'll post a big one at the end of this week

Originally Posted by cybernet

based on your experiment, on the scale 1 to 10, how do you rate the importance of

1) EMD in a new domain name


2) MATURE domain names

Could you also explain how you define a "mature" domain name?

For example, would you call the following domain name mature (desirable)?

keywordblabla.com was used for a site from 1999 to 2006

In 2006 the site was disabled (hosting account closed)

The ownership has not changed
The registrant has not changed


I'm planning to revive this site - get a new hosting, write a new content on the same old topic.



thanks

Well if i had to put it on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give both emd and mature domains a 10 haha. They're both really important for fast rankings, but like I said before, I'd rather have a relevant matured domain than an emd.

Matured domain = aged, has previous content, and previous backlinks. Those are the things I look for.

Originally Posted by Andy Hart

Keep out of this thread!!?? Why? Are you Allen Says??

The guy has a valid point.

I think this whole experiment is great and hats off to the OP for doing it but....

"Blogging to the Bank" is a terrible product (check the warrior review section and thats just for starters) and the author "Rob Benwell" ..... well lets just say .

So I have to ask, why take the time to promote and rank for such a bad product which is slated all over the internet? Isn't that counter-productive?

Ya, like I just wrote earlier, I'm never very into these IM products and so had no idea BTTB is a bad product. I grabbed it cause it was available in the auction as a matured, emd. Maybe I'll grab a copy of BTTB, and if it's really that horrible, shut my site down.





Update coming soon!

[RussellMax]

Awesome thread.. Just been really helpful. Thank You!

[marketingstudent]

good article m following it

[Andy Hart]

Hey Daniel,

Thanks for the reply, fair enough as to your reasons why.

I like the fact you answered professionally, you can usually tell alot about a person about how they respond to certain types of questions.

I said it once and I'll say it again, really great thread, very detailed and will no doubt help alot of people.

Thanks
Andy

[BradBergeron]

Any chance you could (or already have?) pointed out where you buy mature domains?

Also - the profile backlink, directory submission, blog commenting team - how much do you pay for such a "team" or is it outsourced to someone in the services section?

Thank you! Love this thread!

[Art_Marks]

Originally Posted by BradBergeron

Any chance you could (or already have?) pointed out where you buy mature domains?

Also - the profile backlink, directory submission, blog commenting team - how much do you pay for such a "team" or is it outsourced to someone in the services section?

Thank you! Love this thread!

I would like to know that too.
BTW, will you make any updates on how much traffic you got and how much you earned?

[aulia]

any updates?

[andydraysen]

this is a great thread guys! i have a question though

after finding a keyword what should i look for in the competition? my competition ranks 4 to 6 in PR and has about 20k backlinks in yahoo inlink. Is this something i can compete with or is it not worth it?

i notice that some of the competition in macbook pro review results are very strong and rank very high are backlinks the best way to beat competition?

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by BradBergeron

Any chance you could (or already have?) pointed out where you buy mature domains?

Also - the profile backlink, directory submission, blog commenting team - how much do you pay for such a "team" or is it outsourced to someone in the services section?

Thank you! Love this thread!

I grab most my domains from godaddy auction. I'm developing a good piece of software right now that will help you find quality, matured domains from godaddy and other sources. I'll update you guys when this is ready.

I outsource mainly to outsourcers on odesk

Originally Posted by Art_Marks

I would like to know that too.
BTW, will you make any updates on how much traffic you got and how much you earned?

sure, i will below

Originally Posted by andydraysen

this is a great thread guys! i have a question though

after finding a keyword what should i look for in the competition? my competition ranks 4 to 6 in PR and has about 20k backlinks in yahoo inlink. Is this something i can compete with or is it not worth it?

i notice that some of the competition in macbook pro review results are very strong and rank very high are backlinks the best way to beat competition?

Dont look so much at PR, as you should look to see if it's inner pages or root domains ranking, the age of the sites, backlinks linking it, and quality of the backlinks. PR helps you quickly gauge competition, but it's not the end all qualifier.

[Dan B Rusu]

2/7 Update

I wanted to do a quick earnings update.



1st Amazon commission! While they didnt buy the $1500 macbook I had hoped, I'm nice to see some earnings coming in and I'm still waiting for the big commission off a macbook pro sale to come in.

BTTB is doing well, 2 sells in the last month.

That's about it for now!

[BradBergeron]

I was told by a friend (I think?) that the GoDaddy auctions age was false b/c they've just always been parked - eg: the amount of domain age weight it holds is as good as a fresh domain but apparently that's not true?

[ExploringInfinity]

Originally Posted by hoot33

keep your bad ju ju out of this sweet a$$ thread.

This thread is awesome. It's been incredible to read the whole thing and see it play out for real, in real time. What a great thread.

It's helped me in a ton of ways. I was frightened when my site disappeared from google for 5 days, but it came back with better ranking. As I read this thread, I see that it happens all the time, and it's not anything to worry about.

Awesome!

[yuxx109]

Are you using any other script/technique to help index your backlinks? or just let them be indexed naturally?

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by BradBergeron

I was told by a friend (I think?) that the GoDaddy auctions age was false b/c they've just always been parked - eg: the amount of domain age weight it holds is as good as a fresh domain but apparently that's not true?

Ya check to make sure they've had content on them previously using archive.org. This way you're not getting a domain that was always just parked.

Originally Posted by ExploringInfinity

This thread is awesome. It's been incredible to read the whole thing and see it play out for real, in real time. What a great thread.

It's helped me in a ton of ways. I was frightened when my site disappeared from google for 5 days, but it came back with better ranking. As I read this thread, I see that it happens all the time, and it's not anything to worry about.

Awesome!

Awesome, glad you like it.

Originally Posted by yuxx109

Are you using any other script/technique to help index your backlinks? or just let them be indexed naturally?

I've just been letting them get picked up naturally. I've started experimenting on my own with ways to get them indexed for better rankings - especially the profile backlinks as those have a hard time getting indexed.

[ryanjm]

Looks like your EMD got the same Google slap almost every new EMD has gotten lately.

[sylarrr]

At the moment macbookproreview.org is sitting on 198 for G dot com for keyword: macbook pro review

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by ryanjm

Looks like your EMD got the same Google slap almost every new EMD has gotten lately.

Originally Posted by sylarrr

At the moment macbookproreview.org is sitting on 198 for G dot com for keyword: macbook pro review

Just checked this and I found it on the 1st page, 10th position. It's still bouncing around, especially since I have not been as consistent with the backlinks as I should be. I'll be doing some work on the domains to get them ranking higher in the next couple weeks. Blogging to the bank is still #1, and shaving products is still #3. Not too bad I'd say.

[BradBergeron]

So Daniel, I found a domain at TDNAM for a mere $10. It has just under 1500 backlinks to the home page and is 14 years old. It's PR is 0 (no submission in DMOZ or Yahoo directories though).

One thing though, the Wayback Machine only gives archived pages for Dec 1996 to Jul 2004 (NOT 2010/2011).

Would it be worth it to do a review site for TVs with this domain?

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by BradBergeron

So Daniel, I found a domain at TDNAM for a mere $10. It has just under 1500 backlinks to the home page and is 14 years old. It's PR is 0 (no submission in DMOZ or Yahoo directories though).

One thing though, the Wayback Machine only gives archived pages for Dec 1996 to Jul 2004 (NOT 2010/2011).

Would it be worth it to do a review site for TVs with this domain?

Brad,

That sounds like a great domain, nice find. Be sure to check it's backlinks on alexa.com to ensure that it's got quality backlinks coming in. The wayback machine won't give you content past 2007/2008, so don't worry too much about that.

Yup, sounds like it would be worth grabbing.

Dan

[BradBergeron]

Apparently only 182 sites linking in (so the sites must have about 9 different pages on average linking to the domain?). Domain Age Check Tool - SEOLogs.com verifies it was bought 15 years ago and Wayback Machine verifies snapshots of the web page from 1996! Now I just need to figure out how to get a TDNAM account...I wish GoDaddy took Paypal (balance). I may just have to get a friend to buy me a GoDaddy gift card, no?

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by BradBergeron

Apparently only 182 sites linking in (so the sites must have about 9 different pages on average linking to the domain?). Domain Age Check Tool - SEOLogs.com verifies it was bought 15 years ago and Wayback Machine verifies snapshots of the web page from 1996! Now I just need to figure out how to get a TDNAM account...I wish GoDaddy took Paypal (balance). I may just have to get a friend to buy me a GoDaddy gift card, no?

Sounds like you've discovered a great domain. Godaddy does accept paypal don't they? I usually pay for my domains thru paypal.

[ramashankar]

Very intresting frnd.

[CRTrainer]

Just bought your course Daniel and I must say I'm impressed. Great job with this case study also.

[D. Spidey]

Awesome experiment. Thanks for sharing the results.

[JSProjects]

I love threads like these. Hit the "thanks" button for you and look forward to giving it a read.

[Moondive]

Great experiment i must try it on my websites

[ryanjm]

I think the results of this experiment prove: It's hard to rank well for competitive terms Macbook review would be a somewhat valuable keyword, but isn't on first page anywhere, let alone knocking on #1's door. The b2tb is a scam product so it's value on 1st page is zero. Shaving products is "ok" but it's just not a high value term since 99% of people are just looking for some disposable razors, and the search volume is negligible if you're not #1 for that term.

Great experiment though and good effort.

[Slaughter]

Seems like a cool thread. Subscribed!

Karan

[33zpix]

thanks Daniel and engaged contributors!- this thread is great, a valuable tutorial on the real time results of SEO /Ranking work. Glad I found it even at this late date. Got here thru an affiliate email promo for your WSO "Massive..." course -(somehow I cannot find a Name for it) sounds good and you have offered a lot-

[Dan B Rusu]

Originally Posted by CRTrainer

Just bought your course Daniel and I must say I'm impressed. Great job with this case study also.

Thanks, appreciate it!

Originally Posted by D. Spidey

Awesome experiment. Thanks for sharing the results.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

Originally Posted by JSProjects

I love threads like these. Hit the "thanks" button for you and look forward to giving it a read.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Moondive

Great experiment i must try it on my websites

The more case studies out there the better.

Originally Posted by ryanjm

I think the results of this experiment prove: It's hard to rank well for competitive terms Macbook review would be a somewhat valuable keyword, but isn't on first page anywhere, let alone knocking on #1's door. The b2tb is a scam product so it's value on 1st page is zero. Shaving products is "ok" but it's just not a high value term since 99% of people are just looking for some disposable razors, and the search volume is negligible if you're not #1 for that term.

Great experiment though and good effort.

Ryan, thanks for the input. The sites have been bouncing around abit, and someday will be on the first page, other days not.

For Blogging to the bank, whether the product is a scam or not, i've been able to show the power of matured and exact match domains mixed together. The site is consistently #1 (beats the product site) for blogging to the bank on google.

For macbook pro review, I've posted up update on the rankings below

Originally Posted by 33zpix

thanks Daniel and engaged contributors!- this thread is great, a valuable tutorial on the real time results of SEO /Ranking work. Glad I found it even at this late date. Got here thru an affiliate email promo for your WSO "Massive..." course -(somehow I cannot find a Name for it) sounds good and you have offered a lot-

Thanks for the kind words. The wso is 1st page killer earnings and you can see it in my sig. I outline this seo process in greater detail in the wso

[Dan B Rusu]

* 3/5 Update on Macbook Pro Review

I wanted to post an update on the macbook pro review sites. one of them got their 1st big commission



This commission was earning from lostwishes . com (the matured domain)

Here's how it's rankings are looking:



#2 right now for "macbook pro review" on google!



The EMD (macbookproreview . org) has completely dropped off the results, and is now on page 10 somewhere. Something went terribly wrong with this site's rankings one day. Looks like the matured domain was able to take alot more backlink building than the new emd was. I'll be doing some work on it to see if I can get it out of googles sandbox.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

[sylarrr]

Congratulations on first big commission!

Any more updates?