3 1/2 month report update

I've written a bunch of posts in the past listing the various things that I've tried for a few new sites that have been up now for 3 months. I thought I'd share what I've learned.

Month 1
I optimized all the sites with header tags, meta descriptions, titles, keyword density at 5-7% etc. In the first month I was basically only using links from profile sites and got most of them from using Angela's and PJ's WSO. Results were great as I was moving up the ranks fairly quickly for retarded hard keywords and major competition. I was still sitting fairly low on the radar still at this point though. I couldn't expect much as I was facing anywhere from 1.5 million to 836 million other pages for any given keyword.

Month 2
I got brave enough to venture outside and learn more about SEO and how different methods might produce results. I've learned how to bookmark, add RSS feeds, pinging and produce articles to help speed up the linking for these sites. I've also learned a little about link wheels, pyramid linking, cascade linking and 2-stage linking. A combination of all of these strategies helped me break through this wall that I was facing using only profile back links and it worked. I started to be seen withing the top 100 for all my keywords I was targeting and also some others that I wasn't that started showing up as a bonus of which I never optimized for. I was now at a new wall that I couldn't really break through sitting around 75-100.

Month 3
This month I was eager to hit the first pages no matter how long and hard it was. I decided to use SENuke, blog my butt off everywhere and write a ton of articles. I've written around 100 articles, most of which were 100% original, blogging like crazy and continued doing everything from the first two months. As a result I am now sitting on pages 1-3 for all of my keywords and have the most important 10 on the first pages of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Start of Month 4
I'm at another wall where I really want to dominate the first pages for all of my keywords. I've continued to do everything that I've done for the last 3 month with the exception of canceling SENuke. I'll talk about that later if interested. I'm noticing a major dance going on with various keywords but more with individual search engines. Some days I'm off the radar completely with Bing or Yahoo but usually within a day or two end up ranking much higher. Strange and frustrating, yet excited to see the end result.

What I've Learned
In this short time span I've learned that any one approach by itself will not be enough to dominate anything. I've purchased a few WSO's from this forum and many were great. Some not so much or repeated what another WSO said. Article submissions didn't really effect my rankings like I thought it would and was the most time consuming method that I've tried. I'm pretty much done with article marketing as it doesn't really pertain to my business. Blogging had the most dramatic affect for a short time but certainly help put my site on the map. I believe this is one of the most important factors of me getting ranked so quickly out of my tough competition. I believe in the long run, profile linking is the strongest of the methods and I love Terry Kyle's WSO as it points out how to find your own links. This is a great strategy and has paid itself over already. As for bookmarking and the RSS feeds I'm still on the fence with that one as I have yet to see any major affect on my rankings.

Other things that I've learned about SEO is to not rush into anything and make a schedule for my tasks or else I'll become overwhelmed. Nothing happens overnight and shouldn't for many reasons. I made a list of site to create accounts on and sat on them for at least 4 days before adding my profile links. None have been delete as of yet. Most of the articles, bookmarks, RSS feeds, pings and profiles that I did try to do on the same day usually got an account banned or removed within hours. Slow and steady is the best way to do things or you're just wasting your time.

I hope this post has helped some of you new people out as you have learned something from my 3 1/2 month experiment. By the way, in the 3 1/2 months that I've been doing this experiment, my business has earned roughly $16,000. My business is not a IM deal but rather a real business with a very targeted market. The same strategies can be applied to IM though. Happy turkey day!