Spilling My Exact SEO Process - Everything I Know

Before you read this, this post is a rant/informational post for SEOs in the beginner-mediocre levels. I hope I can save you some time and major headache by sharing this with you. I was inspired to write this just out of frustration of seeing newbies feed poor information, and from recently hearing a speech from LEE Mcintyre about giving people your best info free. So you know, today, after much study of SEO, I provide SEO services to small/medium businesses (danielbrusu.com) and am an affiliate marketer.

MY ACTUAL PROCESS I USE FOR AFFILIATE SITE BUILDING AND RANKING.

This part is absolute Gold. Use it, it works. More information about each part in the next section, All the pieces of the puzzle.

My steps:

1. Do research, find a profitable niche/product with enough search engine searches. Theres way too much info already out there on this so I wont go into it. I like to gather 4 of the top keywords I want to target.

2. Buy Domain. Go to godaddy.com/auctions. Find an aged domain. Must be at least as old as the domains on the first page for your keyword. I use PageRank | Google PageRank, Bulk Page Rank, Domain Age, Backlinks, Alexa Rank Checkerto check ages of domains on 1st page. With keyword in the domain is best, but if you cant find one like that, dont sweat it. Age is better.

3. Start backlinking. This is what I do:

You must start with Low Tier backlinks. It is highly unnatural to get High Tier backlinks right away.

(for anchor text - vary your links between the top 4 keywords (in order of search volume) or so you found in step one. I like to do:

keyword 1: 50% of backlinks
keyword 2: 20%
keyword 3: 20%
keyword 4: 10%

You dont have to use this, but again, you need to look natural. having all the same anchor is not natural.

Week 1:

a. Do Directory submission - there is alot of different software out there for this.

b. Build 300 profile backlinks - I know this seems like alot, but these backlinks get crawled and noticed by search engines very slowly, so they wont see all 300 at once.

c. Social Bookmarking - Use software for this. I like to send out to maybe 20-30 bookmarking sites/week constantly after this point.

d. Start article network links - I start this either in week 1 or 2, depending on the domain age and whether the site is indexed or not. there are many networks out there like AMA and linkvana. Choose one you like and in your price range, and start building 2-5 backlinks from them daily. This will continue til you reach your ranking goals, everyweek I like to amp the number of backlinks up.

Week 2/3:

at this point your site should be in the serps for your keyword. Use rankcheck to check this. If it isnt in the serps, I'll only do (d) and do (e) and (f) in later weeks. If it is, I'll continue and do (e) and (f) also.

d. Blog commenting (low PR blog pages (pr0-2)) - Maybe 20-30 comments depends on what mood Im in. Remember, must look natural, so you should do dofollow and nofollow. Maybe 70%dofollow and 30%nofollow.

e. Blog commenting (high PR blog pages (pr2-7)) - 20 or so. This will continue every week from now on til I get the ranking I want.

f. High PR Homepage Links.

This is a powerful method, but you must be careful. If you do this too soon for your site, you will not see any benefit from it, in fact red flags will shoot up on Google's side. Do it slowly, and only a few links at the beginning to "test the waters". Your site should be on the 2nd page/3rd page at the least before you do this method. Any early and you wont get any benefits, at least I never did.

There is really two ways to do this:

1. Buy links - you cant get a PR 4 link from digital point for $50ish/year.

2. Build your own network - this is what I have done. I've got a network of high PR sites (bought them from digitalpoint or godaddy auctions) and I use these sites to build links to my other sites.

*Hint: if you want to build your own network, make sure your sites are on unique C-class IPs and put your links in the CONTENT, not sidebar or footer.

I have my own network of sites and do 2-4 high PR backlinks per week after this point til I have maxed out my network.



All the pieces of the puzzle - the key to PROPER SEO

They say you learn the most from your failures, and its absolutely true. Through my failures I learned what I believed to be the pieces of the puzzle to looking natural to search engines and getting high rankings asap.

1. Domain age
2. Search phrase in domain
3. Get CONSISTANT links
4. Low Tier vs High Tier Links

1. Domain Age

One thing often overlooked by affiliate marketers and online marketers is the domain age.

UNNATURAL: You're targeting the keyword "Hulk Hogan grill" and every site on the first page ranking has an age between 5-10 years. Yet your using a brand spanking new domain.

NATURAL: Your domain is close to the same age as the other domains on the first page.

This should always be your mindset when doing SEO - Natural vs. Unnatural.

SOLUTION: 1st check the age of the domains on the 1st page, I dont worry too much about PR. To do this, I like to copy all the domain urls on the 1st page for my targeted keyword and put them in this tool: PageRank | Google PageRank, Bulk Page Rank, Domain Age, Backlinks, Alexa Rank Checker The minimum domain age you'll need is based off of what domain ages are ranking on the 1st page for your keyword.

Then, go to godaddy.com/auctions and try to get a relevant domain, with as much age as possible.

You can ranking with brand new domains, like I did with 101cheesecakerecipes.co, but it is SO MUCH HARDER!!! Well, it's relatively easy to get to the bottom of the 1st page, but you'll need a lot of patience if you want to get to the top of the 1st page as it takes months.

2. It is of course best to have the keyword your targeting in the domain. However, if you can't find a domain with your keywords that has enough age, settle for a less relevant domain with age.

ie: If your doing "hulk hogan grills" and cant find an aged domain with that keyword in it, or anything similar, but you find "coolgrillsonline.com" with age of 5, get it.

Not everyone will agree with me on this one, but I prefer alot of age over having the exact keyword in the domain. Unless of course it is an exact match, like hulkhogangrills.com, then does are better than age.

3. Backlinks

Ok finally the good stuff.

With my 101cheesecakerecipes site, knowing very little about SEO was actually a good thing, because I built links slowly and constantly as I learned and went along.

The problem was as soon as I learned more backlinking methods, I couldn't help my self from building everything at once, or in a very short period of time - it's very tempting.

But this is THE WORST THING you can do. Its extremely unnatural, and will raise "google flags" for your site.

You need to disciple yourself and build links slowly and constantly. Set out a schedule and say "I'll build 20 links every Monday for this site" for example. The older the domain, the more freedom you have to build links quicker as the domain age takes care of some of the google flags.

Now I know if your like me your thinking "I want my site to rank in the top asap". Well thats the reason for the aged domains. Google is more lax with aged domains so you can build backlinks faster to them.

4. There are two types of backlinks you can get: Low Tier (low pagerank, often 0) and High Tier (pagerank links, authority sites). I talk more about these below.

Oh ya, when I saw Pagerank, i mean the pagerank of the PAGE your backlink is from, not the DOMAIN. The page is what matters most.

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Ok, well that's about it. That's my exact process to ranking affiliate websites and method I use to rank sites. You should be able to get your site in the top positions within 2-3 months, given you dont choose to target highly competitive keywords.

REMEMBER, looking natural and getting every piece of the puzzle is the key. Questions like, "what type of backlink is best" is irrelavant. You need to do them all, and you need to do them consistently.

Ok Well thats everything I got. I really hope this helps those out there struggling like I originally was, and helps them get into the right SEO mindset.



Thats it for my SEO process - if you want to read a success story read on:

My Initial Success Story:

Last year in May, when I knew nothing about SEO and very little web design, I created 101cheesecakerecipes.com (brand new domain - no age - purchased from Godaddy). Actually it was a project for an Online Marketing course I was taking. I spent a couple weeks learning about SEO and learned some backlink building methods. To cut to the chase, 1.5 months later in June, at the end of the course, the website was ranking on the 1st page (position 8-10) for the competitive keywords "cheesecake recipes" (110k monthly exact searches) and "cheesecake recipe" (40k monthly exact searches).

I had heard about adsense and as an experiment I put some ad blocks on the site. With the site being in the lower positions on the first page of those keywords, it was bringing in decent traffic and decent adsense, $3/day. So I dove in deeper, studied SEO, and build more backlinks.

About 5 months down the line from the start of the project (Augustish), the website was in the top ranking for those keywords, and at this point I started getting alot of traffic. Averaging 600-1000 visitors per day(compete.com is wrong) and making $5-$15 daily off adsense. I ended up selling the site right after Christmas, at that point it has made roughly $1000 (since May). The holidays were nice as the site got massive traffic and revenue.

Traffic building as rankings increase:


Recent data on traffic:


I had a sample of my Adsense report here, but apparently it's against their terms of service so I've removed it.


My Failure (sort of) Story:

After I saw the potential of making money by SEO - and at that time I didnt even know about affiliate marketing and CPA-, I jumped all in and started learning as much as I could about SEO (mostly learned from forums, warrior being my favorite) to improve my techniques and get sites ranking faster. I quickly hit INFORMATION OVERLOAD, and not only that, but most of it was bad information (here comes the rant). Dont get me wrong, I love warrior and there is a lot of great information on here about SEO for affiliate marketing, however, most of it is complete crap.

I started doing stuff like:
- Press release submissions (what?? for an affiliate site??)
- All the "gurus" claimed profile backlinking was the stuff, and I believed that I should focus all my efforts on profile backlinking only. That got my sites no where
- Working to get my backlinks indexed
- RSS feed mashing and submitting
- ect.
- ignoring blog commenting as "gurus" claimed it didnt work any more
- building linkwheels

Ok, let me make something clear really quick. I'm not saying the above methods 100% dont work. They work well for some. But the key to everything in SEO is... you gotta have all the pieces to the puzzled lined up so as to look as natural to Google as possible.

Because of the information overload, and bad information, I was sporadically trying new methods every week and building links to my sites that must have looks so unnatural to Google. Even though I built massive links, I didnt have nearly the results I had with 101cheesecakerecipes, in fact, most my sites I had at the time I could barely get to the 2nd page. I was so frustrated at that time because I had had such great success with 101cheesecakerecipes and couldn't get anywhere with my nearer sites.

Anyway, I got back to the stuff that works and over the course of a year developed the process above.


HAPPY SEOING, I'll try to answer any questions you have. Please post questions here instead of PMing me so everyone can see.