Ambitious undertaking, Terry. Thanks for sharing this with the gang.

got this thread plugged into my tivo. Looks like it's goanna be a thrilling ride.






Cal

Many thanks for the feedback and I want to add that I will be going for a NON-IM, non-Make Money Online niche in the experiment.

Of course, those are valid niches but I want this experiment to get outside the crowded IM pool.

Therefore, I'm looking at niches with a level of emotional desperation in the target market in a niche that I have never been in before (the same situation usually facing newbies)...

[DELETED]

Like all other I also want to say thank you for your great article. It is really fantastic.

Will very much look forward to the results.

Good luck with your ambitious experiment - I look forward to the results, maybe all Warriors can learn something from this.

My thinking at the moment is that without revealing the articles, site and keywords, this experiment loses a lot of interest.

What I'll do is provide some other attractive keywords in the chosen niche for the 'keyword vultures' to attack which hopefully will draw some of them off.

OK, here's my first screw-up in preparation for this experiment and exactly why this whole process is of value to everyone following along.

I was experimenting with Human Rewriter and just got back my first rewritten article (in under 24 hours by using the Express option) and wanted my article to have plenty of spin syntax options so that it would be good for 20-30 semi-original articles. This was for an article in an unrelated niche as a test.

When I set up the article though, I only asked for one rewrite but "Word Spins Per Sentence: 3" and "Spin Options Per Word: 2". These last 2 settings are the maximum you can request.

The produced spun article needed a little correction here and there which is fine but basically - unless I'm doing something wrong - I only have 2 articles: my original and the single rewritten one. Not quite what I had in mind.

In short, if you are using this service, you MUST choose 4 or 5 rewrites when you FIRST submit the article for spinning BUT keep in mind that this will 4-5x the price so you could be looking at $20-$30 for an article that has a 30-spin 'lifespan'.




That's OK as it saves a lot of time at my end and a buck an article is hard to complain about.

Also note that at Human Rewriter, without the express option ("Rush My Order" for 1.25 'credits'), article turnaround time is presently 48-72 hours.

A lot of IM is trial-and-error and my little errors with new services and programs (like this) in my experiment should mean that you won't need to.

If Jeremy Kelsall (or another Warrior experienced with HR) reads this and thinks the above is incorrect, I'd love to be advised otherwise Jeremy (he uses this service a lot)...

Latest update:

Thanks for the positive feedback, firstly.

Apologies to Human Rewriter as my second and third test articles (for other sites of mine) came back with spun syntax OK - setting was one rewrite with the maximum number of word spins per sentence and maximum number of spins per word (about $6 for a 500 word article); maybe I missed changing those on the very first article

BUT...

when I pasted these two spun articles into SENuke and checked their uniqueness level under the "Social Network/Article Directory Nuke" module, the two spun articles achieved scores of only 10% and 15% unique. 20% is a minimum and 30% preferred.

HR are now showing a 3-6 day backlog so I will look at Human Spinner as an alternative (good to try both of course). Later in the test I will feed in some HR-spun content for my SENuke Linkwheels for Article 3 (2 rewrites per article - about $12 per spun article).

That means that I will spin articles myself in Power Article Rewriter as I have pretty much settled on my niche and keywords for Thursday's launch...

All set to go for tomorrow and lots of stuff to share then!

DAY 1 - PART 1

OK, let's get rocking and rolling!

Even though Keyword research isn't the main part of this experiment, I still wanted to document my process.

In short, I wanted to target a niche that I have never worked in before (like newbies), involves a degree of emotional desperation on the part of potential buyers (instead of a hobby like kite flying or RC cars - actually those RC car guys are pretty fanatical!) and wasn't in 'make money online'.

For the Keyword research part of my experiment, I've bought Keyword Elite 2.0, used Micro Niche Finder (which I've had for a long time) and SENuke (which I've trialled for 7 days only in the past but am using 'properly' now with Tom Brite's assistance).

I am also in Jeremy Kelsall and Donald Van Fossen's SEO Bootcamp (which I do recommend) as I'm always hungry for new tactics to expand my IM repertoire.

Obviously I'm also using my own accumulated IM knowledge from the last year and a half or so.

Now, in order to keep the experiment as 'pure' as possible, I'm going to reveal everything I'm doing here EXCEPT the keywords I'm targeting and the articles and site I've created (at least not until further on in the experiment).

As the experiment unfolds, I will reveal all of these as I think it is necessary for the enjoyment of participation.

Also, my own view towards mistakes, failures and screw-ups as we proceed is that they're great as I can continue to fine-tune my IM strategy and not make those same errors again - trial and error in part.

Now, today the experiment has begun so I've been doing my specific keyword research, using all of the above tools and finding out a few interesting things which I'll share in a moment.

Firstly though, here are the tables of a bunch of keywords from which I will shortly choose my final 4 (for the 3 GoArticles and one new site).

The column on USA Exact Monthly Search Volume is straight out of Google's Keyword Tool BUT underneath that, I've included the Keyword Elite monthly search estimate which usually is VERY different (even though it is presumably based on Google results).

In comparison, Micro Niche Finder (MNF) delivers exactly the same search volume as Google's Keyword Tool.

In the comparison table, I have also included SENuke's estimate of whether ranking is achievable for a specific Keyword.

SOC stands for Strength of Competition and each program makes a guess about how hard it is to rank for a Keyword - the lower the number the better and green means go, amber means treat with doubt (a bit hard to rank) and red means forget it, too hard.

Later in the experiment, I will publish the unblurred table here.

However, in the next post here below, I will outline the dangers of relying on all this information and what else I take into account when targeting a niche.

Oh and another nice tip I accidentally picked up in the SEO Bootcamp of Jeremy and Don (which I don't think they'll mind me sharing as they didn't make a big deal of it) is that when you are using Yahoo Site Explorer to check a site's backlinks, do it with the SEO Quake for Firefox plugin enabled so that you can see the PR and other details about sites linking to the one you are analysing e.g.


Here are my initial Keyword research tables which I will discuss in more detail in the next post below:

DAY 2 UPDATE:

Thanks for the support!

OK, so 2 of my 3 GoArticles are live but I'm still waiting on the third (the first were up in under 12 hours).

I also set up the site for Test 4 using namecheap and my hostgator reseller account.

The .com domain was of course already taken so I added a '2' at the end e.g mydomain2.com just like you have to do with a new email address sometimes.

There are no hyphens/dashes in the domain, just one long word string.

I set up WP on the site, customised settings, theme, plugins, permalinks etc and will post screen grabs of all that tomorrow.

I posted my new article tailored for that 4th keyword to my new WP blog (using the free Direct Response theme), added the keywords from all 4 test versions here as category and tag names.

I then 'enrolled' in Warrior Ken Fry's Social Bookmarking 101 program with the inner page post url and I am now waiting to find out if that site/page has been approved to go live in the system. I'll let you know on that.

As the SENuke target article (#3 if you remember) is live, I can start on my link wheel for that tomorrow (Saturday) as soon as my maximum variation article is back from Human Rewriter (all $35 of it) - hopefully my SENuke gunslinger partner Tom Brite won't be out surfing then!

OK, good day's work today - loads of screen grabs up tomorrow and more good fun then, gotta go to Salsa now...

Excellent idea Rendix and I know some Warriors run a 24 hour Adwords test on impressions to try to get a true picture of traffic given the apparent unreliability of the usual reporting tools.

In my setup for this experiment, the difference in reported numbers in both the Google Keyword Tool and Keyword Elite was crazy on some terms (both exact match)!

this is exactly what i need to.Thanks for letting Terry know that,Rendix.Bookmarked this thread Terry.Thanks for starting such a cool experiment.I have found jumptags to be better for indexing.you may try that:
Jumptags.com - Beyond Social Bookmarking

Brilliant idea. thanks for sharing. looking for result

Perhaps the most important aspect of your "experiment", which I appreciate from a scientific view, is the use of a "wildcard" element. Keeps it honest.

Hi
terry
good
go ahead

[DELETED]

I am really excited about the results.Please let us know the updates.

Terry,

I just discovered your thread and I love it. I have too much A.D.D to read the entire thread to find out what happened, so I was wondering if you could share your findings. What was the result of your 60 day experiment?

I appreciate you starting this awesome thread, and am looking forward to hearing your results

[DELETED]

very helpful..thnks.

[DELETED]

[DELETED]

I second that. I'll be closely monitoring your progress Terry. This is one good experiment and is definitely going to go well, in any case. In the end, when Terry reveals the best approach, everyone who will try to emulate this will have to take into consideration the karma-effect of 'being able to help other fellow webmasters'.

Many thanks for the supportive posts!

OK, here's today's update:

As per a suggestion above, I ran all 4 URLS through Jumptags and my bookmarklet-heavy Firefox toolbar e.g.


The sites started turning up in Mister Wong pretty quickly (go figure!) BUT both Digg and Mixx refuse to accept GoArticles submissions.

However, they will accept submissions from other sites linking to GoArticles so tomorrow I'll hit that too.

From memory, adding a URL to your WF sig file will get spotted pretty quickly with a Google Alert too (not doing it on my sig for obvious reasons).

Also today, I created the first 10 IRRELEVANT backlinks to Article 1 from Angela's recent packets BUT I logged the URLs in a Word document so that I can audit those links with one click each week to check whether they've been deleted and I need to replace any e.g.


It's simple but effective (of course you could do it in Excel too but I personally find that program too unwieldy for simple jobs).

Once I had the 10 backlink URLs for Article 1 (the IRRELEVANT ones), I created a unique RSS feed over at

WebDevTips - Code Generators - RSS Headliner

and pumped it into RSSBot. However, when I went to also add it in to Feedburner, FeedAgg, they told me that the feed was corrupt so I'll have to recreate that tomorrow and hit it again.

I will also run each backlink through my full bookmarklet range (see above pic).

Now, here is my WP custom setup that has worked pretty well for me in the past (remember I would only backlink a keyword-intensive inner post page and not the domain name if I were setting this up normally).

Plugins:


My usual set are All-In-One-SEO; Google Sitemaps, Google Analytics, Jeremy and Don's Content Blender (to make posts look more unique) and Ghost Pinger.

I like the simplicity and direct professionalism of the "Direct Response" Theme from "Happy Joe".

You can see a sample of it here from one of my other blogs.

Other important WP steps (sorry if you already know these but I'm spelling out all the steps!):

Make the Permalinks SEO-Friendly:


Expand the automatic RSS feed list (list from a great old Tommy Gadget WSO - thanks T!):


Make sure the privacy default switch is changed so that search engines can find you:


I also allow only one post per page to [a] improve readability and [b] possibly get more individual pages per site:


More in the next post, this one is getting kinda long...

Hi Terry,

Great work. I'm sure this will become an epic thread with hundreds of eager Warriors following your experiment. I'm bookmarking this thread.

Thanks Terry for coming up with this.

Monday Night Update:

Thanks for the support above and great to see Ken Fry joining in - Ken has said that my new site (Test 4) will be approved and in the SB101 system by Wednesday (Sept 23).

That's good news and SB101 may be the dark horse to win the race!

Firstly to Fernando's question: running a proper comparative test on the Content Blender plugin is on my 'To Do' list but I'm trusting Jeremy Kelsall and Don there as their other stuff is really solid (until I get around to it).

With Ghost Pinger, I put that in the 'it can't hurt' box but isn't essential in my view.

As of about Midnight Monday night, none of the 4 have yet been indexed and I added the sites to 2 backlink sites that I know from Google Alerts are 'seen' by the bots pretty quickly.

However, patience is importance and it's where these sites will be in 30/60/90/120 days that really matters.

Now, this experiment isn't without unexpected twists and turns and two of these landed in my email inbox today.

Here's one from the SENuke crew:

Hey guys,

First of all, our sincerest apologies if you've been getting low success rates with some of the SEnuke modules.

The last update was over a month ago, and a few sites have changed their submission systems. No update in a whole month is very unlike us (if you've been following us for a while).

The reason for the delay this time is that we're working on a massive update, and we really can't release things mid-update.

This update will add about 20 new sites in the social network nuke module. That is our most popular module and we wanted to take it to the next level However, adding sites to this module is not an easy task...

These 20 new sites will be in PR ranges 6 to 9. This means that now you can press the Start button and have blogs/hubs/wikis/pages created instantly on almost 40 high PR sites like hubpages, blogspot and wetpaint. And most of these links are dofollow! Imagine all the link juice you can get and the massive linkwheels, and blog networks you can create with one click!

Another reason for the delay is that we're working on making SEnuke fully compatible with IE 8. Making the video module compatible will take some time, but the rest of SEnuke will be fully compatible with IE 8 for the next update.

Other than that, we're working on a better registration system inside the software, and adding a bunch of member requests.

All this has taken us longer than we expected and our sincerest apologies for that, but just know that we haven't been sitting around lazily It will be well worth the wait!

Moreover, work is well underway to create SEnuke from scratch in a completely new technology which will allow for scheduled submissions, background submissions, submissions without using Internet Explorer, and lots of other cool new goodies that members have requested, plus it'll make it a lot more stable.

So keep your eyes peeled for the next email from us announcing when the update goes live. Should be Monday, Sept. 28th

To be continued in the next post...

Tuesday Morning:

Test 4 - the new website with a 2 at the end of the keyword term in the dot com domain (e.g. mydomain2.com) has now been indexed by Google.

I've also added additional bookmarklets to my Firefox toolbar to help speed up the bookmarking of backlink sites e.g.


I have also been fixing up my installation of Warrior Big Mike's SocialBot to blast at the backlink sites to help make sure that Google finds them.

In theory, this new website (Test 4) should be up and getting social bookmarked by others in Ken Fry's SB101 tomorrow.

The other interesting email I received yesterday was this one from Lemonarian - a linkwheel proponent whose list I'm on:

Hi everyone...

Since I discovered the LinkWheel methodology back in February 2009, a lot has changed.

It's not nearly as effective. When I released the report, it quickly became viral and everyone and their grandmother was doing LinkWheels left and right... a lot of people made money.

Now, it seems Google's caught on.

So I recommend you STOP doing perfect wheels and start mixing it up.

The real power comes from interlinking the web properties. There's nothing magical about the "wheel" structure. That's really just a name.

The power, as I said, is in interlinking them.

So mix it up as much as you can at all times.

Remember not to do reciprocal links.

In closing, here's an example of how you could "mix it up":

<< CLICK - PICTURE HERE >>

Also notice that I never "close" a wheel.

And oh, if you blatantly copy that... well that might not be the best idea, since a couple thousand other people is getting this email.

MIX IT UP!

The principle is still valid, just try to leave as little footprints as possible.

Stay cool,
Linus

Food for thought and today relevant backlinks for Test 2 are the order of the day...

Wednesday Update:

Thanks Ken - great to have your input on board.

I don't claim to be an expert on RSS and have always done it because 'you're supposed to' but I've seen pretty mixed results - the best results for me have been with FeedAgg.

With this experiment, I have created RSS feeds for the GoArticles too though through this site:

WebDevTips - Code Generators - RSS Headliner

rather than through GA which doen't give individual authors an RSS feed - which EZA does - but rather only has RSS feeds for article categories.

Things are a little quite at the moment BUT:

Test 4 - the new website with a WP blog IS in Ken Fry's SB101 program whereby a group of webmasters social bookmark each other's sites with a set range of sites.

So Test 4 on SB101 is live and running!

Bookmarking each of Ken's assignments (using bookmarklets) takes no more than 5 minutes and each webmaster is expected to 'do their homework' and social bookmark their 'homework assignment' every few days (about 10 other sites per 'assignment').

Mainly at the moment I'm backlinking Article 1 and Article 2. Remember that SENuke will roll (hopefully) on Monday when SEN goes through a massive update.

Each day or so I add a 'new' spun article to Test 4, the new website.

Still Articles 1, 2 and 3 have not been indexed by Google - only the new website has been so far.

Interestingly though, each site is returning very different backlink reporting in Yahoo Site Explorer e.g.


Ladygaga.com is a PR7 site that I use sometimes (used on all 4 test sites here) because Google Alerts picks up new links there very quickly (e.g. under 20 minutes) BUT that doesn't mean that Google will index the linked site/s there!

I will fire a question to Matt Cutts over on Google's new Webmaster Central area of YouTube which is quite useful for us backlinkers if you 'read between the lines' of his answers there.

If my question makes it into a YT video there during the life of this experiment, I'll add it to this thread.


Remember that these sites went through basically the identical process of getting indexed (not quite yet!) by Google and the difference between results on GoArticles above shows that SEO/SEM is not a perfect, predictable science.

I expect the first week or two of this experiment to be a little light on action but hopefully things will heat up after that, so stay tuned...

Hrmmm .... this sounds familiar.

I'm sorta feeling left out Terry

You mention every other backlinking appoeach BUT ....

Lovin this thread.

Truly awesome post, seriously I check this every day after I get off of my J.O.B. thanks for the hard work!

Try this free service from Mr Brute Force Pete:

HTML to RSS Feed Creator, easily create rss feeds by Peter Drew

You can consolidate several URLS to create a single Rss feed URL that you can ping...

Hope it helps..

DaNNy

P.S. Can't wait to see the results.. will be following this thread

To be honest Terry, even though I recently bought your WSO I don't know a heck of a lot and a bit of what your doing is just going over my head. I would be very interested in the CB process if it doesn't slow the thread down too much with basics for everyone else.

Thanks Terry for posting and sharing this great experiment! Your methodology simply rocks!

Very quick update:

SENuke update complete so I'm busy creating new social accounts for the first linkwheel on Article #2 tomorrow and devouring Warrior Tom Brite's SENuke guide right now.

Looks like Article 1 has hit Page 1 of Google USA for it's term (according to the GoogleGlobal plugin for Firefox) though a second US results tool I use (Google Ad Preview) - because I'm in London UK - says it's still on Page 2. Weird.

Remember, Article 1 has the IRRELEVANT backlinks.

I will answer all the above questions tomorrow when I get the first linkwheel up...

When the experiment is nearing its conclusion, I will reveal not one, but two, other secret SEO experiments with other methodologies I have also been conducting in this same niche - exciting, huh?

Hi Jason. I don't have any splogs for this experiment nor have I used them myself in the past. Have you had success with that approach?

There will however be a couple of other approaches to SEO/linkbuilding revealed near the end of this experiment.

Back to this experiment:

We are getting into the SENuke phase now.

Now with the upgraded SEN, in theory you can set up a linkwheel consisting of 34 'spokes' or sites linking to each other and your money site.

Actually, if you add in USFree Ads and some article directories, it's quite a few more.

Each site was hit with a spun version of an article of around 39% originality that I created with Warrior Sebastian Kohl's (I think that's his name) Power Article Rewriter.

There are many of these types of programs available now and of course Human Rewriter too - which I have used for other tests in this experiment.

If you want to save some money while trying a manual linkwheel approach without SENuke, these are the 34 sites I attempted to set up:

However, typical of this process, some sites fail to set up e.g.


BUT

once the wheel has been theoretically created, it is extremely important to manually check the integrity of your wheel.

When I did, I found that Zoho requires a login to view the post so that effectively 'broke' the 'chain'.

SENuke took about 30 minutes or less to create the wheel and I took maybe another hour checking and changing links so that it worked in a sequence.

If you recall an earlier post with Lemonarium's thoughts about mixing up the wheel like a 'mesh', that will be a future step (after I chat to Warrior Tom Brite about it).

Eventually I settled on a wheel of 28 sites and I did not let SENuke ping the sites until the wheel integrity was manually tested.

I then pinged the new sites through SENuke to:


However, I also noted the RSS feed URLs of the sites that DO offer RSS e.g.


As I'm writing this, I've got RSSbot spreading my RSS feeds for those linkwheel 'spoke' sites to help their indexing.

At the moment, Article 1 and 3 (before the SENuke effect) are both on Page 2 of Google for their respective terms but surprisingly Article 2 has not even been indexed yet and Test 4 has been indexed though not yet appearing in the SERPs. More work needed on Article 2 indexing-wise.

I checked Test 4's progress with SB101 and this inner-page URL has about 30 social bookmarks each from different accounts across each Web 2.0 property there. Obviously Test 4, the WP site, hasn't reached its Google 'tipping point' yet.

Here are the latest Analytics from ClickBank:


That's the latest so far and remember to hit the "Thanks" button on the right below if this thread is proving useful for you.

More soon...

Terrry,

Congrats on the progress you're making with this project.

About the linkwheel:28 spokes is a sizeable linkwheel. Did you go with a closed or a broken structure? Also, did you focus on just one keyword for your anchor text or did you vary the anchor text with related keywords?

Looking forward to reading the next update. Keep up the good work.

Ray

An xrumer blast will vary in effectiveness for every use. Different people have different targets; some of the guys on Digital Point will use the same target list for each of their customers, not achieving the potential of the software.
Also, different article directories will produce different results. Some pages will stay on page 1, others will fall dramatically after 2-3 weeks due to the rapid fall in link velocity. But not all. It's all very interesting stuff. I think the xrumer test is beyond the scope of this experiment.

OK - haven't checked in for a bit with a thousand things to do but here's the latest:

Article 1

Article 1 now has about 100 IRRELEVANT backlinks and - according to BOTH the GoogleGlobal Firefox plugin AND Google Ad Preview Tool - is sitting at #4 on Page 1 of Google USA for its keyword term. Ahead of it is an older GoArticle, a .edu page and an about.com sub-page. However, the backlinks to those authority pages (not sites) aren't particularly strong. Article 1 is bringing in the affiliate hops as the screen grab below shows, where I'll talk about conclusions from that table. By the weekend, Article 1 should have about 150 IRRELEVANT backlinks. On face value, the relevancy of backlinks, or lack thereof, doesn't seem to be hurting its ranking.

One more important point: In terms of link density on the page, the backlink on each of those sites is the ONLY one placed there. Same for Article 2.

Article 2

Article 2 has about 100 RELEVANT backlinks but has STILL not been indexed by Google! As such, it cannot appear in the search rankings. However, the Web 2.0 properties that I used to help get it indexed are sprinkled throughout the first 5 pages of Google. I expect those to fall off pretty soon. Could be that the Googlebots don't visit the sites of this (very slightly obscure) niche that often.

Article 3

Our 28-spoke linkwheel has been created, has structural integrity and a unique CB Tracking ID for the linkwheel aff links: LWHEEL (you can see it on the pic below). If I get some volume on those, I'll create unique CB Tracking IDs for each of the 28 sites. I have fed the sites that have RSS into RSSBot and through my usual cluster of FeedAgg, FeedAge, Feedburner, Feedraider, Pingomatic, Autopinger and MillionRSS. I have also been social bookmarking a couple of the 'spokes' each day.

As yet, none of the 28 have been indexed and at the moment, I can't find Article 3 in the top 10 pages of Google USA for its keyword term. I suspect that Google is 'digesting' the new backlinks.

Test 4

The new WP-based site is relying on the power of SB101 but even though Web 2.0 bookmarks from other members of SB101 are turning up through the first 10 pages of Google for its term, the site itself isn't - not yet anyways!

ClickBank Latest Analytics:


Now some conclusions we could draw so far from these analytics (remember to ignore the sale as that was a test of my cb vendor process):

[1] Article 1 has had a total 22 hops so far. Only 1 of those came from the Bio Box! Link 1a at the top of the article (before the actual article content) has attracted 9 hops from which 2 have resulted in Order Form impressions on the Vendor site. That sounds pretty promising to me even if there are no sales as yet from that Tracking ID. In contrast, the link WITHIN the article has attracted 12 hops with 0 Order Form impressions! The only hoplink from the Bio Box did NOT result in an order form impression.

This is part of the reason why I like GoArticles - you can have your aff links wherever you want in the article (the top looks good so far!), an article will go live in under 24 hours, the page isn't as saturated with AdSense as EZA and GA articles respond really well to simple backlinks! Let's see how things progress on this one.

BTW, my CB Vendor gravity was around 100 so I'm assuming he or she is getting reasonable conversions.

[2] Article 2 is not ranking on Google so I'm assuming that the 13 hops there are from curious surfers who stumbled across my backlinks on forum profiles etc. As yet, 0 Order Form impressions there. Boo-hoo.

[3] Article 3 has 13 hops with 0 Order Form impressions so far. That's OK as this one is relying on SENuke which hasn't been on the job that long.

[4] Test 4 has 7 hops for 2 Order Form impressions though it has no Google SERP help so far, just Web 2.0 bookmarks via SB101.

[5] So far the Linkwheel from Article 3 has delivered 4 hops with 0 Order Form impressions. Very early days there.

Other News:

I have been trying Warrior Steve Hawkins WSO of a semi-automated backlink program and it is very good. It works with a clever right click menu function that allows you to paste in a whole page of information that you have entered or individual boxes that need filling in e.g.


If you are doing backlinks yourself or just don't want to pay for outsourcing, this is an excellent alternative - you can check out Steve's program in the WSO section here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...thly-fees.html

I'll talk more about Steve's program in the days ahead as I use it more but I have found it much more intuitive than say Roboform.

Also, I want to do an additional test with a new self-hosted WP blog in this niche where all content comes from an original source that is posted into the blog by email automatically. All earnings from this site would be from AdSense only and I have a source of unique content that I will go into later. The problem is that I cannot get my WP blog-by-email to work properly with any plugin or approach. Anybody here cracked this one? Let me know by PM please as it would be an interesting extra experiment in this whole process.

Now for some correspondence:

Why not use the direct CB encrypted hoplink from GA to CB?

Stay tuned - shocking revelations ahead Nolan!

Just wondering if there are advantages to cloaking?

The problem I have with any cloaking is that you have to totally TRUST the integrity of the cloaking mechanism. Plus, would a general public buyer know (or care about) the type of link they are following. Personally, I doubt it and am torn on the 'conventional wisdom' of cloaking. Again, stay tuned for news on that front ahead.

Also any reason you choose SB101 in particular as the site alternative? Is it a good program?...Are there others like it or is SB101 the de facto standard for placing a site on a bookmarking network?

SB101 has been getting plenty of attention on WF and I wanted to feature a broad range of SEO approaches in this experiment which might answer a lot of questions for us backlinking bandits in one go. Link Juicer is another one getting attention using a similar-ish methodology. Is SB101 the de fact standard? Probably not yet but to be fair, Ken Fry, who is a very decent guy by the way, has not had it running all that long (I don't think) but time will tell and I love the creative ingenuity of things like SB101, LJ etc.

Hi PRM. You're pretty generous with my time! Only kidding. I am unfamiliar with xrumer - can you elaborate in this thread - but I have a couple of top secret additional tests going on too (not to mention the autoblog by email that one clever techie reader here will help me with - fingers crossed!).

Also, from my WSO thread, I did want to quote a post there as I feel it shows exactly the kind of patience and persistence essential for IM success (and life too, probably if that's not too deep):

Good work THM...

Just when 'er indoors is nagging me to get an early night, I stumble across this gem of a thread. An hour and a half later and I have barely touched the surface. As they say in Star Wars "May Divorce Be With You"

It was worth staying up for though Terry, fantastic work

That's #4 J - the one powered by SB101.

Plus I've got some other 'secret stuff' happening too which I'll reveal later...sneaky, huh?

Close to the end of Week 4 of our (theoretically) 8 Week experiment and we have...our first sale:


Remember to ignore that $34.51 sale as that was a test of my other CB vendor account.

I've obscured the amount to keep the niche secret a little longer - it was twenty something dollars.

If you recall, after 123 unsuccessful hops, we switched to a DIFFERENT CB vendor in the same niche (though I haven't replaced the linkwheel aff links - yet) with just under double the gravity.

Here is the latest CB Analytics breakdown in terms of raw hops since the experiment began and Tracking ID breakdown:

Interestingly, the link proving the most successful is the one at the very top of the article between the headline and the article itself - pity EZA don't allow this! If you don't know what I mean, here is one of my other GA articles in a completely different niche (aff linked to Amazon Associates):


I have a lot of other GA articles under aliases but that one is under my name.

While one sale is hardly conclusive evidence, that link was performing the best out of all the links in terms of order form impressions BEFORE the sale.

Now though the CB vendor we have switched to pays about $9 less per sale than the first one we tried, the fact that CB vendor #1 wasn't converting (for us!) made it pointless to continue there without changing something.

Incidentally, one of the main arguments AGAINST affiliate marketing is that you are helping to build the long-term list of the vendor who can (potentially) milk that list for years. So, why not have links in your GoArticle to your own Aweber signup page where you capture the prospect on your list BEFORE trying to persuade them on to the CB vendor.

I haven't tried this approach myself yet but it IS on my 2010 'to do' list (though that is a scarily big list at the moment!).

Interestingly, all of the heavy lifting is being done by Article 1 at the moment. Article 3 is still only on page 3 of Google and the others aren't in the mix yet.

But hopefully you can see the potential of having a bunch of these GoArticles ranking well through sustained backlinking for different terms in different niches.

Now, let's look at a few questions:

Hi Esh,

Hopefully the above screen grabs from the whole experiment clarify the hops/day progress and numbers.

Google in the UK (where I live, far from my home in Sydney) normally has roughly - give or take a few positions - the same results as Google USA. However Esh, I will report UK results as well in future progress updates.

Doing an extra 4 articles is not physically possible at the moment BUT am I doing some other secret experiments that I will reveal later.

Paul has given me permission to post this PM here for everyone's benefit:

IMHO, the 'method' of judging competition by using "in quotes" figures needs to be discarded firstly.

That would be like judging the strength of competition of a horse race, boxing tournament or yachting regatta simply by the number of competitors.

What matters is the QUALITY of the competition NOT the number. If you only had ten competing sites and they were all 10 year old authority sites with thousands of backlinks to the page/s you are trying to beat, forget about it.

As you have hopefully read by now, that Article 1 in this experiment took 150 backlinks and 4 weeks to get a decent ranking and sale.

Backlinking is a real 'tipping point' activity in my experience - a site can be doing nothing for months sometimes, despite constant backlinking, then one day, it soars. My gaspressurewasherhq.com site previously mentioned was exactly like that.

The trick Paul is to keep at it with a bunch of GoArticles (30 is way too many, try under 10 to focus on at first) and eventually some/many will get to the top - IF you haven't picked fights with very tough opponents! Plus, make sure the keyword is in your title (preferably at the start) and throw an aff link in at the top of the article as per the pic above.

With my WSO, I'll let other Warriors reviews of it on my WSO thread speak for its quality.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Followers of this thread may be aware that I am tinkering with other backlinking and SEO stuff all the time. You can now follow those experiments, discoveries and discussions by dropping in here. It's all free, like this thread too.

More coming soon and thanks for the above support...

Hi cmo140,

Let me take a shot at answering your questions.

First, the WSOs (Warrior Special Offers) he's talking about are backlink packages sold by Angela, Paul and Terry. Here are links to all 3 threads so you can read up on them:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...of-inside.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...inks-free.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...inks-free.html

Second, the idea of making $100 a day from GO Articles is to write and submit articles to goarticles.com (you must sign up first) in niches where there's some desperation like say "get your ex back" for example.

Each of these articles should have a link to the merchant sales page for the product you are promoting. As this thread suggests (and I didn't realize till reading it), it's good to put one link to the merchant BEFORE the actual article itself.

Then, you take the backlinks from Angela, PJ, Terry or a combination of the 3 and build backlinks to your GO Articles. These links are from page rank 4 to 9 so they are good quality and enough of them (this depends on keyword and strength of competition but generally 150 to 300 links) should put your GO article to the first page of Google, where your traffic will increase substantially. Repeat this process until your income reaches $100/day.

The main thing I'm learning as a newbie like yourself is that the process can be frustrating-especially if you haven't proven to yourself yet that you can earn a consistent income with this method. Doubt creeps in and you sometimes feel like the whole thing's not worth it.

So, it is important to be persistent with ONE method and not jump from one thing to another. If this is the method you choose, just keep at it until you see consistent income and try your best to avoid distractions. Seems to me this is the real key to success in this business.

Hi Terry,

I really like your research-based approach.

1. What is your experience on the rate that articles on Go Articles and Ezine Articles builds inbound links from diversified ips as a result of others publishing the articles VS. publishing press releases?

2. Do you get more authority from the inbound links on the press releases and does that amount to much boost in the end?

3. Do you have any research that shows the value of links ONLY from having your article on ezine articles and GA vs. the inbound links when those articles are picked up by diversified ip's BUT all duplicate content?

4. Do you know of any research OTHER than yours that compares the effectiveness of different links.

Say links from common web 2.0 sites, vs links you pick up from Go Articles and Ezine Articles, vs. links from the community profiles, vs. links for .edu and .gov profies, vs. forums, vs bookmarking vs. blog comments vs. whatever else?

I see a lot of opinions. But I don't know of any actual research.

Best wishes,

Marlon

Bro,

Check out product launch formula in google.

Search "traffic secrets".

sales letter generator

I wish I had time to grab some of those awesome screen caps like you are doing. What I see is LONG TAIL keywords seem to do very well when you register the domain.

But maybe if you had the keyword in the filename and did a little linking it would be all the same. I DO see the exact domain a lot in slow and mid range searches in the number 1 spot.

Probably mostly low range.

IP DIVERSITY

Look at the backlinks on your BIG sites that get ranked high. They almost always do a sitewide buy of an ad on a high pr domain for the inbound links.

You DO see these links when you do a backlinkwatch search.

Why they do this I'm not sure. And does it really help. I'm not sure. But I read this and it seems to be true that the big authority sites buy a sitewide ad buy on other big authority sites.

But I haven't done anything remotely resembling the research you're doing.

DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS?

What about plain ol' directory submissions and believe it or not submitting to 1000+ search engines like the OLD days? That gives you an ip diversity of inbound links, right?

Marlon

Dont confuse same site/domain name/url with IP's

Your example proves domain diversity - not IP diversity [ IMHO ]

Big Difference, especially in the efficacy and value of the backlinks.

Much respect and props Terry - this is a tremendous resource thread.

To your success,

Steve

Hi,

Check out:

internet marketing secrets

Michael Campbell is #1 with internetmarketingsecrets.com.

He is #5 or 6 with the term internet marketing strategy using
internetmarketingstrategy.com.

Look at:

fat loss secrets

thefatlosssecret.com is #1 two and the #1 ranking has keywords also.

search: "burn the fat"

burnthefat.com is #1

burnthefatblog is #2

search: "guitar secrets"

guitarsecrets.com is #1

skateboard secrets

search: "photoshop secrets"

photoshopsecret.com is #1

What I read in the past was that the domain name had a 20% or 30% weight in the Google Algo. James Brausch published that once I believe based on his research of high ranking domains.

Still, I have no idea the difference between the keywords in the domain vs. just in the file name.

Marlon

OK, things are pretty busy now - understandably - but wanted to update and answer a few questions.

Firstly, from a PM to me:

1. Firstly i wanted to know if you can achieve 1st page results for terms that say have a soc of 10 and below using the type of link building you talk about in your ebook. I know that things are unpredictable but i am talking about your experience, does it happen often or do you need to do other link building.

Not sure which program you are using to gauge SOC - Micro Niche Finder, Keyword Elite etc. However, make sure that any SOC calculation takes backlinks into account. At the moment, I don't believe that MNF does that but I'm pretty sure that KE does. You can also use SEO Quake and SEO for Firefox to dig into competition too. Look at links to the specific page you are trying to beat and remember that Google ranks pages not sites e.g.

no matter how much authority or backlinks with completely different anchor text Wikipedia's page on chimpanzees is, it will never rank for a golf club search. That might sound obvious but I mean DON'T assume that because an about.com site page is at #1 for a niche you want to go after and you see that the WHOLE about.com site has 400,000 backlinks, look closer and see how many backlinks are going to the SPECIFIC page you have to beat.

If you are serious about getting to #1 on Google, your only real competition is the ONE site currently there - forget all about that search "in quotes" stuff.

Develop you OWN 'SOC' criteria - look at site age (more on that below with my experiment articles), page backlinks, .edu page backlinks, .gov backlinks, backlink IP diversity and anchor text targeted.

How?

SEO for Firefox: site age, page backlinks, .edu page backlinks, .gov backlinks

Backlinkwatch.com: backlink IP diversity (or at least links on same domain) competitor anchor text

2. Can you please give me an example of one of your sites (not go article) where you only use the profile link building, where you are on page one, please tell me how many profile links you did in order to get there.

Sure. Amazon.com: Small Business Ideas: 400 Latest & Greatest Small Business Ideas (9780955898907): Terry Kyle: Books (targeting 'small business ideas').


According to Yahoo Site Explorer, it has roughly 1300 backlinks - reported! More like over 2000 though. If that isn't a goldmine of backlink sites I just handed you, I don't know what is!

That is a slightly competitive term and you probably won't need that volume for Page 1 - it all depends on your competition.

I just want to analyze the soc and so on in order to see how effective the profile links really are.

Knock yourself out bro!

3. Also i would like your opinion on xfactors ADSENSE course if you know about it? Its basically to look for ultra low competition niches- make a 5 page website (must be about products) - then write about 2 ezine articles for each page so that you can get other webmasters to publish your article and therefore your link.( this should give IP diversity right?) - You need to make about 50 of these and you should be above $100 per day minimum.

I don't know that AdSense course but I'm sure there are reviews of it over in the Product Reviews sub-forum of WF.

5. Do YOU think this is a decent plan that has potential to work, especially if i add say 2 profile links per page on the sites.

If it fits with XFactor's methodology and that process is proving effective. I say more about backlink volume below.

6. Is internet marketing your full time job - i basically want to know if what methods you use has the potential to give someone else a full time wage.

Yes and yes. Though I plan to get really good at guitar, form a band next year and knock off Coldplay as the world's biggest band!

I would respect your opinions - i am very comitted to making a full time living from internet marketing, i also live in uk actually ( london) not that its relevant :-)

Glad to help. You definitely CAN make a fulltime living in IM but try to make the financial transition a gradual one from your J-O-B. Overnight success is pretty unlikely BUT if you invest the time in your 'IM degree', you should eventually start honing the specific skillset and translating that into money. Don't forget too that there are loads of different ways to make money in IM so try to find ways that are a natural fit for your personality.

Hi IML,

That's a valid point though I do have one WP blog in the first 4 tests and one in my other 'secret 4'. More will be revealed on that soon.

This experiment is one of many possibly configurations and I heartily encourage you or other Warriors to run an experiment here which I would love to follow based on a bunch of WP blogs.

Interestingly, that GA authority isn't helping Article 2 with its relevant backlinks at the moment - it's coming last so far!

When you mention normal backlinking as opposed to relevant sites, do you mean posting a link for say an acne product on a blog about forex trading? That type of thing?

More like posting a profile link to an acne product on Billboard.com's social community (for music discussions).

Given that you are not closing linkwheels on Senuke, are there cheaper alternatives to get a good benefit. For example using a good article/blog submitter and submitting it to RSS feeds with another software?

You can definitely do it manually and/or RSSBot but the time and labour involved may make you suicidal after a week!

Recently I tried to link from GoArticles to a post on ezines. Despited verifying my article was there and I had an exact match for the URL...I kept getting a message from ezines that the article was no longer there (even though it was) so is linking from Go to ezines not possible?

Interesting! I've never tried to do that but I will try to put links to EZA from one of my GoArticles this week. I'll post the results here.

Let me also add that in the past I have used mass article directory submission very aggressively. The actual mass submission program was amazing and efficient BUT I never found much of a rankings bump from it.

What about the RSS feed did you make these for individual articles?

Yep you can use the service here to create an RSS feed from any page on the web (mentioned in an earlier post). Make sure you validate your feed here too so that it will work.

I thought feeds were for a number of articles.

Also what about submitting to directories for links...Would they have to be relevant ones?

In my last post, Matt Cutts from Google talks about their attitude to directories (they don't like a lot of them). If you're committed to this approach, try the $299 option - subject to editorial approval - to the Yahoo Directory.

Love to hear if other Warriors have had success with the $299 yahoo Directory listing?

Next Issue - Backlink Volume In Your Competitors' Sites vs Yours?

Now when checking out potential competitors, it's very easy to get carried away with the vulnerability of some niches because they have hardly any or 0 REPORTED backlinks.

We see hardly any backlinks in some top 5/top 3/#1 sites in a niche and all the party lights go on and we jump in. Now of course a lack of REPORTED backlinks is great BUT isn't just a mathematical race.

For example, Article 1 in this experiment now has 250 decent backlinks. It has been as high as #4 on Page 1 but is presently sitting low down on Page 2 for its term.

That of course affects our business model because traffic is not going through our hoplinks at the same rate as when we were high up on Page 1 (and made that sale) e.g.


Now on a purely mathematical level, there are presently articles from Buzzle and EZA with either very few reported backlinks or 0 above my 250-backlink article.

Huh?

Now if backlinking or SEO was a purely mathematical backlinks 'arms race', the moment I had one more equivalent PR backlink than the site above me, my site would immediately jump above them.

But that just doesn't happen!

Instead, my theory is this. (Everyone's got one!)

Google (via Matt Cutts etc etc) is always yabbering on about 'authority sites' (which they adore).

And a genuine, real, true, authentic authority site only gains real, authentic authority over time (it kind of mimics the 'real world' in that sense). Not necessarily years but time.

The halo of authority is NOT established by suddenly having 9000 links (of course there are exceptions to this rule as TMZ proved in the MJ case).

And all we are really doing with backlinking is SIMULATING authority.

Yes Google loves fresh content but often that content disappears down the SERPs pretty quickly (Digg, for example).

That's why patience is SO important while - through backlinking - we build or simulate the halo of authority through widely diverse backlinks.

Sometimes this happens quickly, a lot of the time it doesn't.

In a way, this is an experiment in using 4 different methods of simulating the halo of authority in order to rank.

For Test 4 - the WP blog powered by SB101 is at #26 on the Live search network but still failing to gain traction with Google.

So in this process of backlinking - simulating authority - we need to adjust our expectations so that we can ride out the 'tipping point' on the backlinking journey.

The tipping point is the stage in backlinking when SERP rankings start moving up massively, sometimes tens or even hundreds of places. Nothing happens for a while and you might feel bored, frustrated and like giving up.

BUT DON'T!

In the recent past, I have had over 40 different sites on Page 1 of Google for their desired search terms and they ALL had one thing in common: their rates of progression all varied widely!

They ALL took a different timeframe to build their simulated halo of authority.

I have less than that on Page 1 now as I'm focusing on a smaller number of sites (at last - says my my saintly-patient girlfriend).

At the moment, our 4 test sites (and the secret ones) are still building their authority status. In a way, that seems almost unrelated to the actual volume of backlinks (especially compared to higher competitors) but eventually that WILL even out, the authority status will be established through time and CONTINUOUS backlinking and we will get high search engine rankings.

Hope all that yabbering on helps and feel free to keep firing questions (if I've missed yours, please put it in again) and don't forget that "Thanks" button on the bottom right - if you haven't already!

This is kinda off-topic but when I originally posted this thread in the main discussion, a mod pushed it over to the 'Mind/Success' sub-forum and not many Warriors got to benefit from it so I'm reposting it here:

How I Got Stephen "7 Habits" Covey To Endorse My Book For $10 ('Sales' Letter Included)

Here is a valuable marketing lesson for fellow Warriors.

A while back, one of my books, "400 Latest & Greatest Small Business Ideas From Around The World" was released through Amazon on a tiny marketing budget (read virtually 'zero').

As a result, getting quality endorsements for the book was critical.

So far, the book has received great endorsements from Duncan Bannatyne (from BBC's "Dragons' Den"), the Editor of "Real Business" magazine, David Meerman Scott and, and more recently Stephen R. Covey, Author of The "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" & "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness".

Dr Covey has stated for marketing use that my book is "A marvelous resource for anyone looking to start a business--packed with good ideas, including the pros and cons of each concept." I can use this endorsement in all marketing materials, web promotion, on the cover etc

How did I get these endorsements including Dr Covey's?

Simple. I sent them a copy of the book and a polite letter asking for it.

Total cost: about $10 each.

I almost had the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" guy on board (with the same letter below) - it didn't work out and I've had a few 'no's' (e.g. Richard Branson) on the way but the 'yes's' are marketing gold that money couldn't buy (these guys are multimillionaires).

The moral of the story is that we should never talk ourselves out of an opportunity without at least trying.

One important tip: Make sure the envelope you send with the letter in is stamped "Personal" or "Confidential" to give it a chance of reaching the inner circle of your target.

Here's the actual approach letter I used - hope this helps you and PM me if you need further advice on this kind of approach

ATT: Dr Stephen R. Covey
2200 West Parkway Blvd
Salt Lake City, UT 84119

Dear Dr Covey,

RE: POSSIBLE ONE-LINE ENDORSEMENT OF NEW BOOK FOR ENTREPRENEURS

As a long-time fan of your work and the London-based author/editor of the enclosed new entrepreneurial small business title,

Small Business Ideas:
400 Latest & Greatest Small Business Ideas From Around The World
2008/09 Edition
(ISBN 9780955898907)

I was hoping that you could briefly peruse the enclosed book and consider a one-sentence endorsement of it.

As this unique book encourages entrepreneurship and self-empowerment - much like your own inspiring works - it seems like the kind of publication you might consider endorsing. In a way, this book also celebrates the remarkable brilliance of business and product innovation around the world today and offers the necessary information for entrepreneurs to contact these individuals and organisations.

A one-line endorsement by yourself - if kindly given - would thus be used on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and on future editions of the book. The book has just been released on Amazon.

Your kind recommendation would also be a tremendous help to a fellow entrepreneur, albeit one further down the 'food chain' than yourself.

If considered favourably, such an endorsement can be sent through e-mail to me via terrykyleXXX@yahoo.com or by the fax number above.

Sincere thanks in advance for your time Dr Covey and feel free to contact me in Britain on +44-XXXX-XXXX if you have further questions.

Best regards


Terry Kyle

Thanks so much for sharing that Chris ("jcbradley") - brilliant!

Thanks Marlon - interesting and a part of putting the pieces of the SEO 'puzzle' together.

Yes my 2 books on Amazon are through Lightning Source (the quality of the books is very good) and as the writer/editor AND publisher with LS, I get more than 50% of the Amazon retail price. That's WAY more than a writer with a 'normal' publisher would (where royalties are scandalously low).

The only drawback in that deal is that royalty payments are made 4 months after the initial sale but once the monthly direct payments are coming in, that's not a big deal.

Now, as you read this, a new secret experiment is going on backlinking wise with a new GoArticle in the niche. I'll reveal that specific process in my next post but it's sort of different to all the others. What I will say is that 12,000 backlinks are being built to a brand new GoArticle tonight. Yep tonight. I'm as curious as you see how that goes!

Anyway, with the other sites, while loads of backlinks are being built, stability in the SERPs is still not there but I think it's very useful to analyse the metrics we do have so far.

I once heard one great discriminator for the difference between a failing business and a succeeding one - the successful company is fully aware of every metric measurement related to its business and the dud one ain't.

Yes, setting up tracking metrics and checking that stuff is a drag and pain in the backside a lot of the time but it's not as much of a drag as 'failure'.

In my own IM journey, once I got my focus OFF financial goals and ON to metric targets, ironically I started to do a WHOLE lot better. Weird, huh?

So let's look at the very latest CB Analytics and see what we can deduce (some of which might be disproven later):


What conclusions can we make from these stats? Remember that after 123 hops, we switched to a different CB vendor though Tracking Code LWHEEL is still to the old vendor.

I really should have changed all those to the new CB vendor AND given them all a unique Tracking Code. Shame on me.

So far, the most successful type of link (in terms of getting hops to the order form) by far is the one like this between the headline and article itself:


If you have a GoArticle, you really should try this type of link and also add a unique CB Tracking Code to it so you can track it.

In a way, if you have picked up nothing else from following this experiment, this ONE tactic could make you a lot more money - IF you are driving CONSISTENT traffic to that GoArticle!

You can buy me a beer when you visit London next!


That's what I feel is necessary in IM instruction - "microdetails" like this and which I will (when I get the time in the next couple of days) go into more in my free SEO Backlinks Diary which you can join in right here.

Even if this experiment stopped right now, that is something you could apply straight away and use to boost your IM income - the evidence is apparent up above there...

So, from our CB Analytics for the entire experiment period, we can also see that:

SENuke's Web 2.0 links ("lwheel" and "art3ow" for Outer Wheel) are not driving hops through to the Order Page at all.

This is another crucial factor in your IM business model: finding traffic that converts well.

For example, in my experience, I find YouTube traffic terrible for conversion. I'm not saying that's true on all products for all IMarketers, just my findings.

I also find Amazon traffic outside of the Christmas period (when I get 30%+) disappointing in terms of conversions and the commissions are tiny. I'm actually getting out of Amazon Associates affiliate stuff for that reason. And a 24 hour cookie is just too stingy!

Yes you do get incidental sales of unrelated items from affiliate links (e.g. someone comes through your jewelry aff link and buys an AC/DC CD) but I think to do it well requires total focus and long-term resources. Just my opinion there and if you're succeeding financially with Amazon, more power to you!

Also our CB analytics show that Bio Boxes (they end in a "C") on ALL the articles in this test have failed to deliver 1 Order Form impression!

Wow!

How much potential value is lost from Ezine Articles where only a Bio Box link is permitted (or is it one link after the first 2 paragraphs? I forget as EZA isn't one of my business models).

It would actually be interesting to see a similar kind of experiment to this one with EzineArticles.

Site 5 (it's a secret and is actually using a strategy that involves no backlinking whatsoever) has delivered 19 hops BUT no Order Form impressions thus far. I''l reveal what's going on there soon.

All in all, there are actually 7 experiments in all going on, not 4 (no wonder my girlfriend is grumpy!):

#1: IRRELEVANT LINKS >> GoArticle
#2: RELEVANT LINKS >> GoArticle
#3: SENuke >> GoArticle
#4: Warrior Ken Fry's Social BookMarking 101 >> New WP site
#5: No Backlinking at all >> New WP Site
#6: 12000 Mega Backlink Blitz Overnight >> New GoArticle
#7: 1500 Backlinks over next 4 Weeks >> New GoArticle

I've looked really closely at doing Free Traffic System too and definitely wanted to but my resources are already at maximum so I'll have to save that one for another time and document it for my free subscribers.

Soon I will go into exactly how Tests 5, 6 and 7 are being powered.

Two Final Points for tonight before I hit the sack:

[1] IM guy Joe Lavery promotes a CB system "Response Dynamite" (you can watch his video here - this is not an aff link but you can learn some good stuff here; I don't know Joe personally and have never met him or corresponded with him) whereby he advocates AVOIDING ClickBank vendor's order forms and setting up your own copycat page of the vendor - ethically dubious I know but bear with me - BECAUSE his testing, according to him, shows that there is too much FAILURE in the tracking and reporting of sales from a CB vendor's order form.

Now technically I don't quite know (yet) how Joe does this with a DIRECT order page to ClickBank but he argues that a much more accurate sales reportage takes place that way.

When I look at my top affiliate link in Article 1 (Irelevant Backlinks) giving me 4 Order Form Impression Counts and only 1 sale, Joe might have something there (trying not get sued by CB here!) though that could be a little premature.

Point 2

In these 7 tests, I have deliberately avoided using my normal backlinking tactics but instead have gone with the 'normal', conventional method of building juice to these test sites. Why? Simply to avoid any later accusations of bias in the running of the experiment.

Remember, we are focusing on the metrics here and learning from them. We are looking for "hops>order form impressions>order form submissions>sales>no/low refunds".

Party on and I WILL be starting my brief SEO Backlink diary notes in the next day or two - signup link above. These won't be affiliate link spamfests just brief diary notes on cool new tools, tactics and tricks I'm monkeying around with at the moment.

See you there where my first 'diary entry' will be about a shocking new 'game changing' (sorry about the cliche there!) platform for backlinking that I will (hopefully) be launching in Q1 2010. It's top secret. Ssshhhhh.

(the signup link is above).

Hi

How you have time to do these amazing, detailed posts, run your business AND see your girlfriend, I don't know.

You're inspiring to all.

I've learned a lot about seo from you!

I'm surprised SE Nuke hasn't done better in the short term. In the long run, I figure Google will catch up to the link wheels and spun content.

Marlon

Great thread Terry, lots of great info here.

As for goarticle's signature box not delivering any hops, I find GA's ctr for the resource box is horrible compared to other 2 article directories I use. We are talking like 10% of EA's ctr for the exact same article. Not sure why it is that way, but that's been my experience with GA.

I am curious how you are going to make 15000 links

I also agree. But a site should have a variety of backlinks and anchor texts to look more natural, but of course somehow the main keyword should be included on a number of incoming anchor texts... It's all a fine balance.

Yes, I am Adam

I believe google will display slightly different results depending on your location (or the location of the closest google server to you) even though we both searched on the exact same domain. I read this a long time ago in this forum. So where I see #2, you see #5... but I searched right now, and still see #2.

As for the pending side, I have purposely not made the site 'known' until I knew where I was going with it (that and the coder stopped coding :S). I should have listened to Ryan Lee and not got a 'mate' on the job.

Totally agree with backlinks being the holy grail, in 2002 my first website gained a pr4 status ... I had no idea what that was then or how to get it.. I figured every site was like that as I did nothing special, or did I? Turned out, all those little posts back to my site worked in my favor! I thought I was just killing time.

BTW That site (my first site) now has a PR0 ....
Knowledge is powerful... whether it be good or bad knowledge.... it WILL be relative, count on it! That is why I love this forum and should really head into the war room soon.

#1 Rule for SEO - Keep it human!

What a fantastic thread this is becoming! Thanks for all the fine work, Terry!

You are right about PR not affecting rankings, Jerry West will always update when new PR drops and says look at your rankings and traffic. Most time they are never affected.

As for your advice on continual backlinking, i know from my own experience you HAVE to. plus i think its common sense.

I was doing angelas backlink packets for 2 of my main keywords and had #1 for both these keywords for a good 6 months but then "forgot" about these for a couple of months, didnt get any backlinks and then i dropped out of the #1 spot. in one keyword, i dropped to #7. but with more backlinks, gained #1 for both kws again.

one note here...after getting #1, you do not need to be as aggressive as you were, i call this a maintenance phase.

Chris

Hi Terry

Thank you so much for this great thread. I am learning loads and cant wait to see what your end result is. I have also subscribed to your newsletter.

All the best

Rach

here are my thoughts.. better to add modifiers to your main keyword... ie.. dog training also use... buy dog training..dog training online.. just do keyword research and see what people are typing before and after your main keyword phrase. these are usually very easy to rank for. i have one site where i have #1 rankings for over a dozen different variations. ive also have top 3-4 rankings on reversal of keyword... training dog.

i know alot of people say to create a new page for training dog but i stumbled upon this when i started to see that kw rise in the rankings when i started to get links for the main phrase so i then started to get more backlinks with the reverse order and it started to rise again. havent got the #1 for that reversal yet but doing a test and see if it works.

chris

Sorry about delay in updating - lots of new things going on and different things to share.

Before I do all that, let's have a quick look at the latest CB Analytics:


Now SENuke which has gotten its article to a seemingly stable #6 on Google so far has chimed with a sale from just 5 hops. Nice.

Interestingly that has come from the link WITHIN the body of the GoArticle.

GoArticle 1 is snoozing on Page 3 at the moment so not really delivering the hops.

GoArticle 2 (Relevant Links Only) - the biggest disappointment so far - has only just been indexed FINALLY and is not in the top 10 pages of Google for its search term. It has about the same number of backlinks now as GA #1.

The new WP blog is still nowhere except at #31 on Live (I'm using RankChecker for that measurement).

Test 7 has brought in 1 hop so far but there's more to that as will be discussed below.

Now 1 sale from 5 hops seems really promising but this may have been a fluke and might not be sustained but it does suggest that money can be made from low traffic. If it can deliver that sort of result consistently from a #6 position, it should be doing really well at #1.

In fact, if that GoArticle was not a part of this experiment, I would now be throwing every possible backlinking resource I could at it!

One quick other point I want to add is this:

If you are struggling to find new angles for different articles in the same niche, consider these approaches (as I partly did in this test as you will see later in the experiment):

(1) a straight, formal, factual, informative article with clearly defined SPECIFIC problem/s and SPECIFIC solution/s (Eben Pagan is brilliant on this point!);

(2) a first-person narrative of a character who has solved their problem using the CB vendor's product BUT try to keep it real-ish and make her/him quite skeptical;

(3) Write from the perspective of the VILLAIN e.g. a cheating husband glad that his wife doesn't know about reverse phone lookup and will never check his cell; or from the perspective of a panic attack and give it a mischievous persona;

(4) An advice column response with the 'letter' and the agony aunt response;

(5) a Q & A of a leading 'expert' or doctor on a subject (with bolded questions and unbolded responses).

Plus, any other different format from a magazine or newspapers.

To be honest, I'm not sure how these fit with these new FTC regs in the US but hopefully that's given you some food for thought.

Answers to questions (I'll try to get every last one answered in this session) in the next post/s here!

Guess Terry has inspired me too!

Wrote a GoArticle with a clickbank affiliate links in it. Going to put up 50 backlinks to it every week, as well as some blog commenting (though the niche isn't really inviting to blog commenting) and a link wheel or two. See how it ranks (it is a rather competitive niche with competitive keyword) and I'll keep you updated on my progress!

So far google doesn't wantto index it after some bookmarking and a few links.

Very short on time at the moment (it's Saturday night - party on!) and will respond to lots of things above BUT wanted to add this bit of extra value to the thread:

After a pretty thorough blitz, this GoArticle of mine for a term with (supposedly) 2400 unique searches a month has gotten (back) to #1 (it has been there before but neglect is a cruel master):


The link to that GoArticle is here and this is the pretty much the format I'm using for the 'secret' niche - though this article is shorter (you don't need 500 words after all?) and I don't use those makeshift arrows in those.

I'm targeting the phrase: how to deal with panic attacks

Yes, this thread is now officially turning into The Angela Experiment.

I've also added new hoplinks from the CB experiment account to this article so we can track that info there too.

Enjoy!

And thanks for the support above.

By the way, in the relevant link in my signature you can hear a free extract of about 12 minutes from my interview with Andy (it's worth listening to just that if nothing else).

Backlink Flood contains tons of backlink building strategies and includes software to speed up keyword research and an article spinner. But there is no automated backlink building stuff in there.

Cheers,

Andy

PS: Can I politely request that any other BLF questions are PM'd to me. I don't want Terry's ace thread getting hijacked by pre-sales questions.

#1 for me. I am going to have to by a copycat and copy your intro external link format from your goarticles I think

Definitely interesting idea... but it is time quite time consuming to find inactive accounts..

Hey Esh,

Good tips! will your quick indexing tip work on a ALOT of sites, im talking hundreds. i have over 800 pages where i have links but not indexed. I had someone from odesk check on over 1600 links that i have gotten over the last 6-9 months on my main 2 sites and 855 are not indexed and another 185 deleted. and those deleted were not ones that were deleted right away..i usually check the links 2-3 weeks after they were posted.

and i did search for speedy backlinks on here but not sure if i found the wso for it.

Chris

Can somebody please explain the above. What is "their "query" links which gets you a link."? How this works?

@TerryKyle

Hey buddy. I was having success with your methods and still have rankings for a few different articles and stuff on goarticles and articelbase.

There is now a new issue and I can't seem to get past it.

Google aren't indexing any new goarticles... Are you finding the same issue?

Thanks

My goarticles are getting indexed as of right now, but it sure is taking longer. Funny thing I noticed - with a new GA account your first couple of articles seem to get indexed pretty quickly though. Just my experience

Hey BIG JP

When I ran my cursor over the anchor text Terry used it shows hes linked - but to a different site to his (billboard) only when sitting the cursor on the fullstop at the end does it show his site link ..... so all looks like a normal link and for me it may be a good answer to some of my relationship type keywords .

Im a little confused as to how the code would look like though to get this kind of double anchor text link. Can anybody help with that?


Thanks unlimited1

I can't paste BB code into a post here as WF runs on BB Code and turns it into a link.

Don't forget, you can always right-click and View Page Source or View Source Code and find and copy the relevant bit of code.

So, here's a picture of both BB Code and HTML Code:


ALSO: That QUIT Indexing Tool I mentioned above no longer functions in free or paid form - whoops! Sorry about that.

So now the spammers will gonna ruin Articlebase too?

Hi Dolly,

The tool I use is Rank Checker for Firefox. You can get it here:

Rank Checker - Track Google, Yahoo! Search, & Microsoft Rankings Free

HOWEVER, there are certain problems with this tool (if anybody knows a better one, I'd love to hear about it!).

Problem 1: Rank Checker can't handle long URLs so let's say you have an Amazon book page (I do). You CAN'T put the URL of your page into Rank Checker, only amazon.com

That means that Rank Checker will list the highest page on Amazon for the term that you specify - whether it's yours or not!

The same goes for any ezinearticle, goarticle etc - it will only list the highest ranking page from that domain (which may or may not be yours!).

Problem 2: Rank Checker's result are usually an approximate guide and may not reflect the very latest SERP results.

I do still use it for a quick snapshot and have a pretty good idea of where my 40-50 sites are at any one time so it's still useful - just not perfect.

I also hope that you have your hundreds of articles spread across multiple accounts to reduce their vulnerability to an EZA policy change (ask Dean Shainin about this!).

It's long but if you can't see the value, you're not looking very closely.

Agreed. If you can't add at least a word or two then this is a dangerous waste of time (just adding a linked ! or . for example)

Personally I think a better way would be to find forums that are in your niche and then create 1 non-spammy anchored "niche" phrase. It's been working for me for at least 2 months now.

If this is correct and google penalizes this technique, then I can easily do this to my competition....I'm testing this at the moment and lets see what happens...

Sorry about absence guys - flat out on last minute tweaks and extra info added to my WSO report update!

I need more outsourcers!

Will update EVERYTHING here shortly.

Now that makes sense. Just so I'm clear, all of previous postings will update to include your link in your profile? All at once? Wow. That could be impressive.

Hey..this might be a noob question but it's one I'm not entirely clear on. Do the individual posts to one forum count equally as a backlink if they are all coming from one place?

I've heard it both ways; some say a link is a link, but I've heard that at some point, all of those links from one place somehow counts less than the same number of backlinks from individual sites on separate IPs.

It's obviously working for you in the car forums. Do you see a bump in rank or traffic when you pull the trigger on forum signatures? That's an interesting slant of forum posting...suppose you could even outsource the posting too...hmmmm.

Thanks!

OK next step in the hiring of an elancer for a backlinking job (if you aren't using John Dales, my normal guy) - skip ahead of this looooooong post if you already know this stuff:


Continued in next post...

Thanks for clearing something up for me. I was just checking some of backlinks in backlinkwatch and the anchor text was "Visit So and So's homepage". I was like huh? Now I realize they were posts in forums with a link back to my homepage.

This has got me pretty excited. Thanks for sharing this valuable observation.

Update coming shortly DD. Thanks.

Yes You're rite, it doesn't seem to be up to scratch, I have only tried it a few times, but I prefer to just use Yahoo site explorer with SEOquake, that suits me fine.

"SmileySamurai" I really like that...Just thinking what I can use it for now, maybe I will name one of my children in the future with that name...

Big JP Smiley Samurai Junior - Not bad Huh?

As for the tracking being available in the free version, I am not entirely sure, as I have, wait for it.... Professional Version... Yeah Thats rite lol

But "JasonMorgan" Seems to think It is available with some limits, so it may be worth checking out.

All the Best

JP

Hi Sherry,

I chose an elancer I trust at $75 for 150 sites (up to 3 links on each with a brief bio sentence and photo added to each profile).

If you looked at the pics from my elance job above, I had quotes from $25 into hundreds. I settled on someone I knew.

Sorry to hear about your freelance trouble - when you find good ones, treat them well and keep them!

IMO, screaming at anyone for anything isn't on but I know you were kidding about that (I think).

My main backlinking guy is Warrior John Dales (I've linked his name) - he's rock solid and my backup is QuickExpress (Soniya) on Elance. They are both very professional and have my trust.

If you use them, please look after them and negotiate realistic timeframes.

Also Sherry, did you PM me back about the updated 811 sites file yet?

Anything automated can be regarded as a 'spam machine' but you'll soon see some pretty interesting alternatives when the tactical part of my WSO is finished (including Sean Donohoe's stuff!).

That's your problem.

Thank you everyone.

Been swamped with the update to my WSO but back with loads more soon.

Yep Mark - Backlink Booster, looks sensational!

I started reading this thread just to follow the experiments and their results. However, I'm finding that the commentary has provided me more education than I had really bargained for. So first of all, thanks to Terry for the thread. Second, thanks to all the other participants for helping tutor me. You guys and gals are the very best!

Hi Terry,

I just spent my last 4 hours with you. Great thread and I'm increadibly anxious to see the final tallys.

The amount of information in this thread, much of which is somewhat disconnected from the main theme, is absolutely priceless.

Thanks so much,
-Robert

Hi Terry,

Wanted to say thanks - this is a great piece of work

*tips hat*

Ed

"IM" Refers to Internet Marketing or Internet Marketer, depending on the context of the sentence...

Don't worry about asking anything that you don't understand, we all have been there at one point...

DJBory

Those kind of links which I call "Profiles Backlinks" Takes longer to show up, and some of them never does, however, they work very nice and you will get results with those links but remember to diversify to get better results...

I bookmark every profile link with a software to help Google to find them faster. Socialbot will do it, or if you are short of money you can use Onlywire, not as good as the others but it does the job... I usually get a bust in less than 24 hours every time I do that

[DELETED]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Later tonight, I will pull the metaphorical curtain back and reveal the experiment niche, the GoArticles and the new WP site created for this experiment.

We will look at the CB Analytics and dissect the findings...

It has been roughly two months since our journey together began so tonight I will reveal EVERYTHING and outline my strategy for the next month on these same sites!

Exciting, huh?

I'll answer your question too Will!

Been reading this thread for a while and missed it for last few weeks.... Looks like I came back just in time for the grand unveiling!

Awesome work here Terry, we all appreciate it!

Terry, any update on Seans software release?

At last - backups complete and Windows 7 in!

Firstly some house keeping before the cloth comes off...

This is one of the best things I learned from Stompernet and has given me great results Will.

Instead of pointing tons of links at a homepage which in theory doesn't look 'natural', create links FROM an inner page TO an inner page - these are the types of links that genuine authority sites or viral articles attract - SPECIFIC ones.

Imagine this Will: tomorrow a brilliant new video is uploaded to YouTube featuring three squirrels juggling nuts. It's hilarious and becomes a huge hit (think 'Battle at Kruger' big - amazing video by the way).

The links from people's blogs and sites WON'T connect to youtube dot com, they WILL connect to the specific page WITHIN YouTube.

That's the principle; I've had great results with it and stick at it. In fact, I never backlink to my homepages if I can help it, it's linked from that inner page anyway and doing this can give give you a shot at a 'double listing' of 2 indented results locking up more screen real estate for you!

Hope that clarifies.

Sean says next week Chris so fingers crossed!

Roll those drums Bruce!

Actually I already linked my smiley faces above to a couple of the articles - no amateur detectives online tonight apparently!

You will need,

A copy of FireFox

Step #1

First you need to do is break your list of profile links into sets of 20 then,
put them into this format

Profile URL1|Profile URL 2|Profile Url 3|....

(to get pipe symbol | it is usually shift \)

set #2

Profile URL21|Profile URL22|..... etc..

Then all you need to do is with Firefox open, got to

Tools --> Options -->

and put your first set of 20 URL's in the home page area.

Step #2

Hit the Home Button on FireFox.

This will open all 20 profile links at the same time.

You can then scan through your results by clicking on each tab.

You should be able to check a hundred or more this way in less than 10 minutes if your internet speed is fast.

Terry, this has been a great thread, loaded with more information and real-world proof than most SEO books and strategies. Thanks for sharing your day to day results and thoughts. And I got a great chuckle from your articles.

Incidentally, I'm not surprised that you're not getting great sales for this niche. Most women with a yeast infection are just going to go down to the drug store and buy some Monistat over the counter. Trust me, if you have a yeast infection, you aren't going to spend a lot of time researching it. You want that itch to stop NOW!!!!

Hi J,

Thanks for dropping in.

I don't know that sites like Buzzle, ArticlesBase or Zimbio are the most used when compared with the other big guns.

Obviously there are vulnerabilities to building a business on 'parasite-hosting' but I am seeing these sites a lot in high SERP positions right now.

Interesting that Squidoo seems to be back - I've never had much luck with it but plenty of Warriors swear by Squidoo.

Maybe all the editorial changes made over there have been rewarded in Google's algorithmic changes?

I'm with you Jazbo. I think we're all with you on the value of this thread.

What the heck is it doing out here in the free SEO forum anyway? If this isn't War Room material, I don't know what is!

Note that I'm almost certain (as certain as a human could be without asking Sean) that Sean's ping bookmarklet is not the "1 clicK' backlink booster they everyone has been touting. My thought that was that Sean was just adding his version of the bookmarklet to add "stickyness" to that page touting his new product.

If you think that google put a bigger emphasis on the domain name then maybe it would be better to buy cheap keyword.info domain that make an article?

dubdubdub.keyword.com . = significant impact on rankings.

dubdubdub.goarticles.com/keyword = considered "best practice", but will have little to no effect on your rankings.

Of Course its not easy, But what is the best method on this. What software should I use. Reading through this, many times people talk about software, rank checkers, Senuke. I guess what I am looking for what Software did Terry use. Maybe there should be a list of everything he used with prices.

Not if I get 2,000,001!

For those following my Panic Attacks article for the term, how to deal with panic attacks (which has been bouncing between #1 and #3 up against a tag-team of Squidoo troublemakers):

How To Deal With Panic Attacks?: GoArticles.com

I have just completely rewritten the article and shortened the headline to the keyword phrase.

It's still in my vast backlinking factory though but watch how it falls and (hopefully) bounces back over the coming days/week or two.

The point?

If an article isn't working with a #1 ranking, don't be afraid to change it!

I am going against some of the findings of this experiment with a totally different strategy now. Let's see if this does a better job of preselling as the previous one wasn't performing.

Just a quick note on my forthcoming Google Sniper review for my SEO Notes subscribers. If you are using this system now, strongly consider adding heavy (outsourced) backlinking (to go after more competitive terms), a WP plugin like WPUnique or Content Blender, PLR articles for your non-main posts, Google Analyticator and less reliance on On-Page SEO.

No disrespect to George Brown at all with those observations, just my options for strengthening his well-articulated program.

With a similar-ish system, IPK, my success in the past was pretty limited because I didn't do those things (wish I understood them back then - duh! ).

More on that stuff in my full review. Articlesbase article on yeast infections holding at #8/#9 on Page 1 still.

Note the domain PR is taken into account as well...I'd say it is even more heavily weighted than the page PR.

If you are on my list, I just sent out my analysis and recommendations on Google Sniper - WITHOUT affiliate links (so there FTC!)...more soon.

OK - tons of questions and comments to reply which I will (just gotta get a 2nd body!).

Will be back soon to do that and update experiment news. Where does the time go?

Just wanted to let my free SEO Notes list subscribers here know that I have just emailed you about Part 2 of my Google Sniper analysis (no I'm not a GS affiliate) which I've just finished.

It's very long and detailed and has a lot of stuff for all forms of IM, not just GS.

If you aren't on that list, you can sign up here:

Backlinks Black Belt Free Reports

and I'll resend the analyses again tomorrow so you can get it.

Answers are coming to questions and comments on this thread (man, you should see my flooded PM and email inboxes!)...

My two cents would be to keep with the existing site if it is at all related. That's because you already have an internal linking strategy in place, external links, some level of domain age and domain authority. It would seem to be a waste to chuck all that in hopes that a new site would do better. OR, you could set up a new site AND a new page to the existing site, and test 50 links or so to both and see what works better. Then continue building links to the winner. Hope that helps!

Hi Terry would love to know your overall feedback on Senuke?

By that way thanks for the posts.

Thank you D.

As is probably obvious, I really enjoy thinking and writing about all this stuff and get a kick out of contributing (in some small way) to the success of others.

I don't promote any affiliate offers to my subscribers, just what I think is valuable SEO/IM information - though I do reserve the right to occasionally mention anything new that I've released!

Plus, my newsletter subscribers, like Matt Carter and Carl Ringwall, often share truly awesome stuff with me like that (free) SEO software that I'll be doing my GS-style analysis next week.

First, I am working on my detailed analysis of making the most of Backlink Booster. And my Salsa moves of course!

My eventual goal is to be a part of an IM sub-community where we are ALL succeeding through shared knowledge and tools, kind of a more focused micro-version of the Warrior Forum.

Thank you Mark - stay tuned for an SEO bombshell next week!

Thanks YK.

Yes Chris and Medway, it is SEO Spyglass and it was actually Tom (thmgoodw) who kindly brought this amazing program up in this thread first and took the trouble to put the video in there too (Matt Carter also mentioned it to me from memory, thanks to both guys).

Great work Tom!

Now, SEO Spyglass delivers so much information that it's easy to get overwhelmed by it all.

Also, it's not the information that's presented to you that matters but how to interpret it and then how to use it.

That's why my detailed analysis will be going in to.

SEO Spyglass is not perfect and I have encountered some problems using it.

But one indisputable fact that has come up (which contradicts my recommendations) is using exact anchor text. I am checking high-ranking site after site after site and most of those have relatively few exact keyword anchor text backlinks (some have almost 50% of their backlinks as unanchored links i.e. images)!

That's SEO Spyglass 1, Terry Kyle 0 - drats!

BUT

the page title and H1 tag are almost always their exact keyword (no newsflash there of course).

Do backlinks need to have your exact keyword anchor text?

Apparently not.

Do relevant backlinks matter?

Don't seem to (not news on this thread either).

Can you find the forums and blogs where your rivals are getting most of their link power?

Yep - even with the free version of SEO Spyglass where you can't save results and can only analyse 1000 results, you can see where the boffins at Link Assistant (makers of SEO Spyglass) theorise that the most power is coming from (it's their guess but could be useful).

I am testing the paid one and running checks on sites where I am analysing 7000-8000 backlinks going to one page (takes a loooooooong time, by the way and sometimes crashes mid-job).

But there is no Yahoo Site Explorer or link:url 'gentleman's agreement' here about only showing a sub-set of links or maximum of 1000.

Cool huh?

Just one of the ways that SEO Spyglass will change IM is in figuring out competition strength. Forget all that "in quotes" stuff.

Now - even with the free version - you can check things like how many homepage backlinks are coming to a competitors high-ranking page (and/or whole site) where the PR (if that matters) is undiluted. These are often paid links but some of these high-ranking sites have hundreds of paid homepage links!

Obviously, I'll go into this much more in my multi-part analysis but I recommend going and having a play with SEO Spyglass.

This program could be the final word on a LOT of time-consuming SEO debates.

LBD,

I didn't read the Sanders piece. Also, I'm not a big article marketer, and I probably only have a dozen or so articles over at ezine (for my one ecommerce site) But, I'll chime in anyway.

Perhaps he was referring to having two anchor text links in the same resource box, and going to the same outbound url. If that is the case...then it is correct to say that you will only get 1st link credit from G. That is...you will only get credit/juice for the 1st link that G. sees. Now, if those two links point to different outbound urls, then that statement does not hold true.

Also, I would concur with Terry...in that 30 backlinks from the same domain would not carry the same weight as 30 backlinks from 30 different domains. That said, I'd rather have 30 backlinks from a PR6 domain than 30 backlinks from 30 PR1 domains - Just my opinion.

Lastly, depending on your site, goals, and quality of your articles...there can be much more to gain from Ezine, then just backlinks. If you have high quality articles...you can hope to get some of them picked up by half-ass decent publishing based sites. If you do have high quality content...take a look to see if some sites may have picked it up - If they have (and there decent sites), initiate correspondence with them...and see if they want more content. They may own more sites, as well.

I noticed this on a new domain the other day. The second anchor didn't show up in SEO Spyglass or Yahoo. In that case both were going to the same url.

One anomoly I noticed in yahoo/seotoolbar was that on the main domain url it shows 3 backlinks for the domain and 3 for that page. So 3 total for the site.

Yet when I go to one of the inner pages that was linked to one of the ezine articles it now shows 3 links to domain and 1 to that page.

If I then go to another inner page it shows again 3 total for domain and 1 for that inner page.

So although its reporting 3 total links to the domain, if you add them up on a page per page basis its actually 5.

4 of these links are coming from 2 ezine articles so perhaps yahoo consolidates them as being 'similar' which then throws off the reporting.

[DELETED]

Hi Doug--

I think we were talking about using seo spyglass for competition spying (and monitoring our own sites) and getting loads of good backlink sources. It really isn't supposed to take the place of something like Market Samurai for the purpose of assessing competition (which I also have and use daily).

Hi,
Out of curiosity which program gives you more (better, accurate) information, Market Samurai or Spyglass?
Regards

It would be interesting to know if they count sidebar type links as powerful as in content links as those are supposed to be worth more.

I'm not sure it's completely worthless though. Even if they are just using the page pr and outbound links that at least tells you something.

Thanks for the clarification J. That makes it much better value.

Hey Bruce,

I'm sure that you will be hearing more about that program in the coming weeks and months. The method I outlined takes a while to set up (doesn't anything good?) but theoretically should help a lot. I'll report back on it when my BB network is up and running.

You bet Matt. My next post in fact.

All coming here RG!

One of the best threads I've come across....this is awesome stuff!

-=Vel=-

You must be looking at something like backlinks into goarticles.

Even in SEO Spyglass I see only 3,843 backlinks going to Angela's article.

On the other hand, there are 903 backlinks for Terry's entire domain.

I'm not sure why you would think Terry's domain would outrank Angela's article based upon those numbers.

Your looking at the wrong number, chief. She only has a couple thousand backlinks to her article. Your looking at the backlink # for Goarticles.com

If you only needed to add 20 backlinks to get something to rank, then that's one thing. But anything that needs 1000+ backlinks to rank well, one would have to be pretty dense to only get backlinks from one type of source

Actually, alot of her early packets had lots of great sites to blog comment and web 2.0 properties to post content on but as more spammers got a hold of these, they ruined those types of sites so she quit getting those to put in the packet.

That sucked bc she really was able to find some great authority do follow blogs. at one point there were over a 100 different sites just for blog commenting and i bet only a handful are even still worth it.

Hi Bruce - yes those 250,000 links are to GoArticles.

Interestingly, I'm showing just over 6000 backlinks to her article in Spyglass which differs from some other results reported here.

Also, if you recall, I completely changed my GoArticle on "how to deal with panic attacks". I expected a temporary drop in the SERPs but it remained at between #1 and #3, even when the new material appeared in the SERP snippet.

Moral of the story? Don't be afraid to completely redraft a page that is ranking well - it's the backlinks keeping it there, not the configuration of on-page content.

This fits with Andy Fletcher's friend Oz, whose recent SEO experiment supports the LACK of impact of on-page SEO compared to backlinks.

On one other issue, in a couple of competitive niches I'm in - where I presume my competitors are continually backlinking - whenever I start varying my anchor text to look more 'natural', I start to sink down. When I blast exact-keyword-only backlinks with NO variation, I rise again.

Interesting.

I agree,I just noticed this and think it must sway the results.

Hi PRM,

Have you been trying Backlink Booster with my email autoblogpost twist as detailed for my list subscribers?

As I go into in that BB analysis, I'm not a big fan of RSS, not even a small one in fact and I feel that Google likes blog posts much more than RSS feeds so where possible, use a service like feedmyinbox dot com to turn your feeds into actual blog posts on a bunch of Web 2.0 blogging platforms. The setup is tedious but is a one-off.

I also do stuff like pasting my profile URLs (yep dozens and dozens of them at a time) into pastehtml.com and running that one page of profile links through SocialBot/Onlywire.

I have also used my dot telegraph dot co dot uk and ladygaga dot com in the same way.

Hope that helps!

Hi again PRM,

Apart from Backlink Booster here, those are free websites. I can't put a figure on it but the results seem to benefit from those steps.

To be honest PRM, I build so many backlinks to so many sites (through outsourcing of course), I would probably want to kill myself if I felt I had to check their indexing status. Slight exaggeration but you get the idea!

The point you raise is a really interesting one though: is a crawled but unindexed profile page of backlinking value? We should never confuse crawling with indexing - two completely separate things.

On the basis of a minor research project of mine, I'm going to say yes, unindexed but crawled links do definitely help.

Let me explain.

There are mechanisms on the web for building literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of backlinks a year. I go into this in my WSO. However, the REPORTED backlinks are not permanent and only occasionally appear on pages during certain refreshes/reloads.

Yet YSE and Google SEEM to reward these temporary backlinks in their overall link volume.

Also, more importantly, when I checked a bunch of a random site's profile page backlinks in SEO Spyglass just now, those pages are NOT indexed but are being REPORTED. That site IS doing well in the SERPs.

Bottom line? Do what you can to help your backlinks get indexed but don't agonize over it and keep building quality links in volume to your sites.

Your sites will eventually see the SERP benefit.

Hey Marlon,

That is spot on, guys like jerry west, dan theiss, leslie rhode and others guys i respect will say the same thing that its quality over quantity.

And i know from my own results that i am outranking alot of people that have waaaayy more links than i do.

now this doesnt mean i still dont get lower quality links bc they are easy to get and i also use these lower quality of links to build my link reputation and when i get a very high quality links, say on a PR8 forum, i wont use keyword anchor text, ill just link my name. i want the link to sick!! and then use lower quality sites to build up the link reputation.

Chris

OK, some really important posts to respond to here but first Sam Carson kindly allowed me to make this email from him and my response public. Remember, these are just my thoughts and opinions based on my own journey and we all have to make our own way:

Hi Terry

...Below are details of my 2 sites

1). Best Registry Cleaner - Scan your Computer Free PR 3 Alexa - 309,400

I created this wordpress blog a couple of years back. All the content on the site is unique. Since the last 2 weeks I stopped adding content, instead I am getting it free from UAW Plug-in. I am not sure what the impact of having outbound links on this content affects my site. Please let me know and I will stop this service if it does more harm than good.

I just checked my awstats, Total Unique Visitors in Nov is 3010 and Dec so far is 1481. I got only 89 sales in all of 2009, an average of $200 income per month. I am attaching a spreadsheet from Revenuewire that shows the details of which page bagged a sale.

2). Self Improvement PR 1

This XSitePro review site has around 40 Clickbank products, I did not promote it much, got around 5 sales.

I know some people build very tightly focused niche sites based on one product. I believe in authority sites with a lot of content so google does not deem it a thin affiliate site. Maybe I am wrong. Please let me know if I should go ahead with this site or just dump it and go for single product sites or a theme site based on one category.

3). Make Money At Home by Learning Internet Marketing With Videos

I figured it is better to sell an IM product since there are so many people wanting to work from home or generate a second income, I purchased some IM PLR Videos and hired a designer to do the graphics. This is a brand new site and I did not promote it so far.

My goal is to generate around $3,000 a month so it can supplement my wife's income.

I am confused. Should I go ahead promoting above three sites?

Thanks a lot

Sam

Hiya Sam,

The stated and implied issues here are relevant to every single Internet Marketer at some point in their journey.

Before I get down to your sites specifically, I want to outline my prescription for IM (and possibly general business) success:

If you've heard my interview with Andy Fletcher, one of the things we discussed in that (fun) 2-hour marathon was the turning point from not doing well to making real progress. From memory, Andy's turnaround moment was really grasping the power of outsourcing - James Schramko goes into this in his helpful interview with Alex Gilberg here.

For me, it was different. For me, it was really asking myself if I was being ambitious enough. The answer was an unavoidable NO.

Many successful people argue that if you have the right mindset, the tactics (the 'how') will occur naturally. I've always been a bit of a new tactic 'junkie' thinking that this was how success could be achieved (regardless of how success is measured - it's a little different for everyone).

Then I was watching that 3-way interview here between Frank Kern, John Reese and Tony Robbins and Tony said something like, it takes guts to really go for a great vision of your life and most people hide behind cynicism, scepticism and negativity as a mask for their cowardice. This was powerful - to me anyway - and even though I've done some outrageously ambitious things in life, I was being too safe and too timid in my IM projects.

Let me come back to more on that in a moment...

Now I also believe that you have to find the right (IM) business that fits with your own natural personality. That's why certain types of IM are just not for me - CPA, article marketing (where you write hundreds of articles), offline 'gold' (though I do have some offline clients by accident - drats!) etc. Yet for other IMers, they love those types of business models and I genuinely wish them well.

But apart from finding the right IM business model, I believe it is also important to flow with where success is leading you - provided that it isn't incompatible with your natural personality. When I was doing ebooks on writing competitions for fellow writers in 1998, I had no idea that I would eventually be immersed in the world of backlinks and backlinking in 2009 - no idea whatsoever. Now I do have many many other non-SEO/backlinks sites and income sources but backlinking seems like where I'm sort of meant to be.

And from January onwards, in partnership with another Warrior, I'll be in it WAY WAY more than I am now - you'll see what I mean.

Part of what has created some success for me is (hopefully) following these principles:

- Being willing to go out, try bold things, approach others theoretically higher up the food chain, be vulnerable, engage in debates (politely) and help as many people as possible. Use platforms like blogtalkradio, podcasting, forums (naturally) etc. Become 'THE guy' (or one of them) in your sub-niche. Don't just do what everybody else is doing - shake it up and try unusual things - Shoemoney does very well from this approach.

Think of it like this: the internet is like a (free) broadcasting medium like radio or TV except that in fact you are 'narrowcasting' or engaged in a dialogue with people more or less like you. The freedom that gives us is extraordinary and unprecedented - IF fear, laziness and/or self-doubt don't sabotage us!

- I try (but sometimes fail) to answer every single PM and email I get personally (I know what it's like to get ignored too!);

- I refund instantly when requested to and without any argument - my reputation is worth FAR more than the puny dollar amount involved;

- I hardly ever promote affiliate offers (and don't ever do that with my list subscribers - feel free to sign up here ) because I know what it's like to get flooded with emails about the same product near launch day from a bunch of different marketers;

- I genuinely get a kick out of helping people and hopefully that comes through in what I do and if I don't know something, I'll happily admit it every time;

- Building relationships with other Internet Marketers for the long-term almost as business partners rather than clients/customers;

- Understanding that we were once all raw noobies who didn't know anything about anything and not letting some experience or commercial success foster any arrogance or condescension - ever;

- Avoiding personal slanging matches and sticking only with the issues in any debate;

- Maintaining a consistent tone across all communications (for example, some individuals have an aggressive posture in their normal posting but are super-nice when trying to sell something);

- Do NOT view any 'rival' as a rival. What? Other operators in your niche are potential partners, not competitors. Most niche devotees buy from everybody so work together - guys like Pagan, Kern and Reese worked this out a long time ago;

- Recognising that while we all work very hard and (hopefully) diligently on our IM projects, we are not ER doctors saving lives so a sense of perspective, humour and priority is essential;

- Being committed to the long-term journey of developing knowledge and skills within a particular area, possibly a niche within a niche e.g. backlinking WITHIN SEO WITHIN IM; being an expert/content aggregator in advising mothers concerned about their obese children (weight loss sub-niche); helping Eastern Europeans set up businesses in Britain (immigration+small business); helping disabled women facing menopause etc etc (these were all off the top of my head so send me a check for 25% of all the money you make from those!).

For me, like Salsa, Thai cooking and rollerblading, Internet Marketing is something I plan to be doing for the rest of my life so my discipline in learning about, for example, the ins and outs of backlinking, is pretty strong. Hopefully, the Internet Marketers that use my products or services now will still be doing so in 10 years (just as I will be using the products and services of people I like doing business with and get great value from now in 10 years also). In that context, refunds or the rare unpleasant individual are insignificant in comparison with the proverbial 'big picture'.

- Developing a mindset of 'gap-spotting' in your chosen niches. It has literally never been easier in human history to create and publish your own commercial products than it is right now - you almost don't even need a computer such is cheap/free technology now. Make valuable e-products filling gaps in your niche and you will be amazed at the results and each one will give you so much more confidence to do the next one and the next.

Among all the products that I promote, my own products (e.g. my books on Amazon, report on Clickbank) make 10x+ the money I make promoting other people's stuff. In my view, if you aren't making your own products, you will struggle to do well in the short to medium term (in the long term, you may have the knowledge, skills and mindset to be a 'super affiliate').

These are all principles that can be transplanted into any (IM) business and help it build momentum and grow - for the long term.

I've yammered on about MINDSET a LOT there Sam because I feel that our websites (like the tidiness of our bedrooms/homes) are outer reflections of our INNER mindset and emotional state.

With your sites, it is important to know exactly which keyword you have mainly gone after with each one - was it the domain name keywords.

In a way, cutting through all of the info overload and technobabble clutter, all we need in IM is simple: a single sales page that turns enough visitors into buyers to make the exercise worthwhile (or visitors into list subscribers for later selling).

Once you have that precious asset, you can then drive traffic to it from so many sources - sources OUTSIDE AdWords (Adbrite etc), banners or threads on relevant forums, blogroll links on popular relevant blogs etc. Obviously the metrics and profitablity need to be constantly monitored but that's normal.

This site - Best Registry Cleaner - Scan your Computer Free - looks like a normal kind of conduit site Chris Rempel style and may only need traffic either through backlinking for organic traffic or paid traffic. Here, researching your competitors is vital in terms of your backlinking campaigns or the more expensive option is PPC (but look beyond Google). I make money in this niche but I don't know if it will necessarily meet your income goals. I do OK on the keyword Windows XP Registry Repair so you may want to use that one. Just send me the usual 25% check of all your earnings .

Now this site - Self Improvement - is the weakest of the three. It has no hook, no focus 'above the fold' and has a fairly bland, corporate generic look. If you are serious about building a great self improvement authority site, there is a lot of great content out there that you could freely aggregate. If you check around on the heavyweight self improvement websites (Dr Phil, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra etc) and look for ideas, you should get plenty. If you were into self-help, would that site excite you? Again Sam, what keywords are you after? And how competitive are those terms? If you get stuck for for keyword ideas, use the Google Wonder Wheel - see my blog for full details.

Site 3: Make Money At Home by Learning Internet Marketing With Videos

This is nothing personal at all Sam because there is a lot of this in IM but when newish Internet Marketers try to sell products about making money online and they aren't making money online, I feel they are going down the wrong path (just my opinion). It isn't authentic to you, looks like a lot of other make money online type sites and feels pretty generic. Now I know that a lot of the heavyweights in the MMO niche have similar-looking sites but they have a lot of other factors that have established their name as a brand.

In fact, that's precisely what you should look to do: build your name, Sam Carson, as a brand in a particular niche. And if one niche sounds too limited, don't forget that most niches have a load of different keywords that you can attack. Again, let me reach into the cabinet once again for the broken record, keyword research and competitor analysis is EVERYTHING before leaping in. Once you do, promote it to death - backlink it, forum signature it on 19 different relevant forums, do some YouTube videos etc.

Of course, my comments could/do look hypocritical because I am active in a bunch of niches - I bought a model boat kit Amazon Associates site the other day here on WF - but that is kind of separate to my main brand-building action (sort of a hobby site - yes I need to get a life!).

James Schramko put it well in the video (linked above): just be a solution provider to a problem (and do it in a way that builds your name as a long-term brand synonymous with exceptional value for money and great service; pretty old-fashioned huh?).

Hopefully Sam, I haven't been too rough on you here BUT nothing would please me more than to see you succeed SPECTACULARLY and you can post extra thoughts here or email me and we'll continue this dialogue until you get there.

For now, if you can update us here on the keyword research or thinking behind these sites and we can all chip in with our thoughts.

That must be be enough rambling from me for one night and hope that helps Sam!

Hi Terry,

Hope you don't mind answering a question from a new user. How profitable was this experiment? I've read through the whole thread and it seems you spent lots on tools and links. Your results summary post seems to say that you only actually made a couple of sales though for about $20.

So over the 60 day experiment you spent $100s and only made $40? Or am I missing something?

Thanks,

Best post ever! Keep it up Terry.

Hi Matthew,

A quick question.. I've been catching up on terry's thread and seo spyglass has been mentioned several times and something that interests me..

I currently have 'seo elite', what does seo spy glass do that seo elite doesnt?

Regards

Steve

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread- I've learned alot!

Can someone please educate me as to whether straight html web address backlinks (xxxdotcom) to my site are of any use..?


thank you for the help!

Hi, I'm on the road on holidays but will get back to Michael's points etc soon (when the plane lands in Belfast!)...

Shouldn't be more than $200 Jack - much less if you go with someone relatively new on elance.com (see my earlier post and pics in this thread on setting up and completing a job there).

Hi Chris,

WPUnique - I think - is much more up to date as Steven Fullman released a fresh update a week or two ago. I'd go with that one.

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Hi

Thank you for your kind response.

As you have suggested, i wish to do the advanced backlinking when there is a stiffer competition.

Just a small question.After indexing has been in place and i have verified by searching the backlink url in google. Right after this, when can i expect google's reaction on a possitive movement in SERPs?

Thanks again

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Big surprise - but not every forum wants to be linking out to nasty porn, phishing sites, etc. You may think your spam is benign - and it may be, but the spam link from the idiot after you is not. So the forum owner periodically removes everything questionable from inactive accounts.

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