On January 8th, my business partner and I jumped into a new market by building a ‘test scraper site’. I may write about this concept in a future post.
We like to know for ourselves if the research is right (as it’s often not) by building something fast and getting it ranked. There’s nothing like getting excited over numbers only to find out that those numbers were wrong AFTER you spent months building a business around that.
So yesterday, I notice that we hit the #7 position on page 1 in Google for a term that get’s 450,000 searches per month.
You would think that would be pretty good, but considering our best day yet only attracted 30 visitors, I would say that something isn’t right.
My hypothesis is that the numbers we used in our research did not take into account a possible new product being launched by the company or seasonal factors. We used a new research method that didn’t include any seasonal trends or 6 months of news blurbs.
Shame on us… lol.
Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.
When I viewed our listing via that search term, I noticed that the site in the #6 position was the .net version of our domain and that it was a Mage site.
So I fired up Web Comp Analyst and ran that URL through the system.
Come to find out that they had just 1 more inbound link with the anchor text we were shooting for than we did.
Mind you, our site had better content, was better organized, and was a .com with the keyword in the domain.
They had one more inbound link, that’s it.
But what was interesting was where the inbound links were from.
They were from a popular linking service.
I didn’t realize this at first, but I decided to visit a couple of the links found.
Sure enough, it was able to spot a link farm quickly.
Being that this service is a multi-million dollar company, I wanted to follow the rabbit trail to see where it led.
So I used Web Comp Analyst on that URL.
Come to find out, ALL of the links coming into these blogs were from software directories! 100%!!!!!!
I made a video YEARS ago on how to do this. Heck, the 30 minute backlinks course is ALL about this.
I also opened up whois.sc to see how old the domain was.
The domain was registered first in 2006 AND had whois protection.
There’s a lot of rumors that whois protection will hurt rankings, let me tell you that I believe that’s 100% false.
The domain was also non-sensicle. It was just a bunch of letters mashed together.
But the GOLD was then scraping the site for all huperlinked terms.
These are the terms people are PAYING to rank for.
Chances are we can build a crap load of scraper sites for these terms too.
The point here is that:
1. Just 1 inbound link can beat your competition even if their onsite SEO rocks (in many cases anyway).
2. If you follow the research, you will be surprised at what you can often discover.
For example, I found that aged domains with unique content, can make for a good link base. I found that shareware site links still rock, and I also found a bunch of keywords that I should look further into as people have paid good money to get links from these terms.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Keith,,
I know you always provide great information. what is the difference between the 30 minute backlinks course and SEO trackback? Do i need both.? I am studying your wordpress project and i am ready to take more action in 2010
[Reply]
Hi Keith:
Very interesting post.
Thanks for sharing!
Wayne
[Reply]
So Keith, what are saying? That we SHOULD be hitting up the shareware sites for backlinks for the sites we want to rank? or are these shareware site backlinks good for linking to the sites that link to our money sites?
Thanks
[Reply]
Very interesting post. I take it you are in favor of using whois protection for your websites. What are the advantages vs disadvantages?
[Reply]
“I know you always provide great information. what is the difference between the 30 minute backlinks course and SEO trackback? Do i need both.? I am studying your wordpress project and i am ready to take more action in 2010″
The difference between the 2 is night and day. One takes advantage of shareware directories while the other takes advantage of Wordpress blogs.
Do you need both? Well, the more you have at your disposal is how I look at it.
The Wordpress Project concept is solid, but a lot of the tactics may be outdated at this point.
Keith
[Reply]
“So Keith, what are saying? That we SHOULD be hitting up the shareware sites for backlinks for the sites we want to rank? or are these shareware site backlinks good for linking to the sites that link to our money sites?”
I all but eliminated shareware directories from my system, but am rethinking that.
I would say use them on your site, unless they make you nervous, and in that case, just use them on feeders.
Keith
[Reply]
“Very interesting post. I take it you are in favor of using whois protection for your websites. What are the advantages vs disadvantages?”
No, I never said I was in favor of whois protection.
I suppose that if you want to hide your details, use it… if you don’t care, then don’t.
Keith
[Reply]
so can this be the update for the wordpress project or is there a more complete course i would need?
[Reply]
AAAHHHH!!!!!! Overload…breakdown…..Overload….breakdown……..
I need to be put on an IV drip feed at the lowest settings…and it needs to be locked!!
After spending so much time in the hospitals I learned how to crank up the speed of my IV’s so I had my share of morphine, demerol and dilaudid rides, the nurses caught on after a while and my free highs turned into horrible withdrawals and my medical records are permanently flagged.
Now you control my IV’s so your gonna have to crank down my settings……I should be learning all about ping.fm right now but I opened your email and now I am obsessing about what I need to do for links.
I am going to have to archive your emails and just consume them one at a time, not opening the next until I have mastered the previous.
That’s it, I just rearranged my daily goals board and my confidence just got a B12 shot! So if you notice a lapse in my comments it just means that you can expect them….oohh…probably about two weeks after your post it all really depends on how long it takes me to thoroughly absorb your instructions.
Although I am very interested in outsourcing many of the time consuming necessities so if you offer any service like that or if you have a product that would teach me the proper way to outsource I would be way interested.
[Reply]