An SEO Newbie Guideline
- SEO |
This is intended to be kind of a reference point for people who are newer to SEO. It's the basic outline of what I do to get my own sites and those of my clients ranked.
Everyone kind of has to find their own personal groove for SEO and no two people do things exactly alike so if you don't completely agree with what I'm saying, that's ok
Personally I get VERY good results doing what I am going to share with you though so if you are new or struggling, hopefuly this post will benefit you some.
Because I outsource nearly all of my work now, I'll be talking quite a bit from that standpoint but you can apply these same principles to doing the work manually or even using 1 or 2 of your own programs.
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Here's the thing, you should NEVER put all your eggs in one basket. I use a wide variety of sources to create backlinks. 99% of them are very good quality sources.
Article Distribution
The first thing I almost always do is write and distribute a quality and spun article. When I first started I was broke so I would write it, spin it, and then distribute it myself using Article Marketing Robot.
Nowadays, I pay other people to do all of that for me. You can find some great services on Wicked Fire which will do this for you too.
Some people will disagree with me but I promise you that if done correctly, article marketing is one of the most powerful SEO tactics you can use.
What to know:
1. Articles should be spun at the sentence level as well as the word level.
2. Google doesn't check for grammar at this time but it does not like a lot of spelling errors.
3. The article has to be spun at a very minimum of 100%. I mean that is the absolutely bare minimum too. A well spun article should be more like 200 - 500% spun though.
4. If you are outsourcing the distribution, make sure the articles are going to be submitted to at least 2 or 3 of the bigger private blogging networks.
Every google update seems to nerf Article Directories a little bit more and it does tend to make them go out of business. There are not anywhere near as many quality Directories today as there were two years ago so to make up for the lack of quality and quantity, these private blogging networks are a must.
Social Bookmarks
There are multiple services where you can buy these really cheaply. While some people will say that you shouldn't mass SB your money site, I have done it to more than 100 websites and never once had a problem.
What to know:
1. One of the reasons I haven't had a problem is because I screen the service. I'd rather have fewer high quality SB's than hundreds of low quality SB's.
2. There are some good services that will submit to a few hundred good SB marking sites but if your website is newer, you need to make sure they will drip feed the backlinks in. You don't want them to all hit your site at once.
3. Some of my favorite services give about 50 high quality SB's and then blog comment or forum post 1 - 3k backlinks to the SB's creating a 2 tier structure. This has worked very well for me.
Forum Profiles
At one point in time, creating a billion Forum Profiles was a very powerful strategy. Not so much any more.
Google knows if you have a backlink at some russian cartoon forum and your website is about Weight Loss, it's probably not relevant.
Also most forum profiles are very bare and Google has now greatly devalued backlinks that are not surrounded by content.
That being said, I still like to have 50 - 100 high pr forum profiles built for my money site. It still shows diversity if nothing else and Google likes that.
In addition to creating diversity, it's also a good source of some high PR backlinks even if they aren't as powerful as they once were.
What to know:
1. Find a service or your own forums that will allow you to post some content on your profile page. It will increase the odds that your profile gets indexed and also help make your backlink more powerful
.EDU & .GOV
A lot of people will say that Matt Cutts said these backlinks aren't worth more. I say B.S.
Of course Matt Cutts is going to publicly state that. It helps keep the stampede down. What Google says and what is actually true are not always the same thing though. Google is a business and like all businesses it will release to the public what it feels is in it's best interest.
You shouldn't be trying to go hogwild with .edu/.gov links anyway, it could look really fishy really fast.
However, in my experience, it does seem to be of benefit to occasionally get a couple of these.
What to know:
1. Go for real .edu and .gov backlinks. .edu.xx and .gov.xx does not seem to be a benefit. That may just be my mind playing tricks on me and not a fact but that's certainly the way it feels to me.
Web 2.0 Properties
These are great! I like to build at least 3 sites.
1. Squidoo
2. Wordpress
3. Blogger
and backlink those sites as well. You can do more, I usually buy a bulk package where I get 10 - 50 built but when I was just starting and broke, I manually built on these 3.
What to know:
1. If you really want to maximize your web 2.0 sites you need to build backlinks to them too. Just building on them and putting in a backlink to your main site is not enough.
2. You need to make sure whatever content is on them is unique. Don't use a rehashed article. It's ok to spin a brand new article for them if it's spun properly, but make sure each site is unique. A well spun article being distributed to 3 - 50 sites should be great!
What to never do!
1. Don't buy mass blog comments, forum profiles, forum comments, untested mass SB submissions or anything else that comes in MASS form unless you have tested on a website that you can afford to get sandboxed or penalized.
2. Don't buy mass anything on a newer website.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, that’s it. Now go out there, get your rankings and get your money!
Everyone kind of has to find their own personal groove for SEO and no two people do things exactly alike so if you don't completely agree with what I'm saying, that's ok
Personally I get VERY good results doing what I am going to share with you though so if you are new or struggling, hopefuly this post will benefit you some.
Because I outsource nearly all of my work now, I'll be talking quite a bit from that standpoint but you can apply these same principles to doing the work manually or even using 1 or 2 of your own programs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the thing, you should NEVER put all your eggs in one basket. I use a wide variety of sources to create backlinks. 99% of them are very good quality sources.
Article Distribution
The first thing I almost always do is write and distribute a quality and spun article. When I first started I was broke so I would write it, spin it, and then distribute it myself using Article Marketing Robot.
Nowadays, I pay other people to do all of that for me. You can find some great services on Wicked Fire which will do this for you too.
Some people will disagree with me but I promise you that if done correctly, article marketing is one of the most powerful SEO tactics you can use.
What to know:
1. Articles should be spun at the sentence level as well as the word level.
2. Google doesn't check for grammar at this time but it does not like a lot of spelling errors.
3. The article has to be spun at a very minimum of 100%. I mean that is the absolutely bare minimum too. A well spun article should be more like 200 - 500% spun though.
4. If you are outsourcing the distribution, make sure the articles are going to be submitted to at least 2 or 3 of the bigger private blogging networks.
Every google update seems to nerf Article Directories a little bit more and it does tend to make them go out of business. There are not anywhere near as many quality Directories today as there were two years ago so to make up for the lack of quality and quantity, these private blogging networks are a must.
Social Bookmarks
There are multiple services where you can buy these really cheaply. While some people will say that you shouldn't mass SB your money site, I have done it to more than 100 websites and never once had a problem.
What to know:
1. One of the reasons I haven't had a problem is because I screen the service. I'd rather have fewer high quality SB's than hundreds of low quality SB's.
2. There are some good services that will submit to a few hundred good SB marking sites but if your website is newer, you need to make sure they will drip feed the backlinks in. You don't want them to all hit your site at once.
3. Some of my favorite services give about 50 high quality SB's and then blog comment or forum post 1 - 3k backlinks to the SB's creating a 2 tier structure. This has worked very well for me.
Forum Profiles
At one point in time, creating a billion Forum Profiles was a very powerful strategy. Not so much any more.
Google knows if you have a backlink at some russian cartoon forum and your website is about Weight Loss, it's probably not relevant.
Also most forum profiles are very bare and Google has now greatly devalued backlinks that are not surrounded by content.
That being said, I still like to have 50 - 100 high pr forum profiles built for my money site. It still shows diversity if nothing else and Google likes that.
In addition to creating diversity, it's also a good source of some high PR backlinks even if they aren't as powerful as they once were.
What to know:
1. Find a service or your own forums that will allow you to post some content on your profile page. It will increase the odds that your profile gets indexed and also help make your backlink more powerful
.EDU & .GOV
A lot of people will say that Matt Cutts said these backlinks aren't worth more. I say B.S.
Of course Matt Cutts is going to publicly state that. It helps keep the stampede down. What Google says and what is actually true are not always the same thing though. Google is a business and like all businesses it will release to the public what it feels is in it's best interest.
You shouldn't be trying to go hogwild with .edu/.gov links anyway, it could look really fishy really fast.
However, in my experience, it does seem to be of benefit to occasionally get a couple of these.
What to know:
1. Go for real .edu and .gov backlinks. .edu.xx and .gov.xx does not seem to be a benefit. That may just be my mind playing tricks on me and not a fact but that's certainly the way it feels to me.
Web 2.0 Properties
These are great! I like to build at least 3 sites.
1. Squidoo
2. Wordpress
3. Blogger
and backlink those sites as well. You can do more, I usually buy a bulk package where I get 10 - 50 built but when I was just starting and broke, I manually built on these 3.
What to know:
1. If you really want to maximize your web 2.0 sites you need to build backlinks to them too. Just building on them and putting in a backlink to your main site is not enough.
2. You need to make sure whatever content is on them is unique. Don't use a rehashed article. It's ok to spin a brand new article for them if it's spun properly, but make sure each site is unique. A well spun article being distributed to 3 - 50 sites should be great!
What to never do!
1. Don't buy mass blog comments, forum profiles, forum comments, untested mass SB submissions or anything else that comes in MASS form unless you have tested on a website that you can afford to get sandboxed or penalized.
2. Don't buy mass anything on a newer website.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, that’s it. Now go out there, get your rankings and get your money!
"If you don't quit, you can't fail"
Success will follow.