Today’s blog post is of vital importance if you utilize Google’s organic SERPs as a traffic source.
Even if you’re not an “affiliate”, per se, but your business model in some way involves acquiring organic traffic from Google, then drop everything you’re doing and read this – because things have changed. And you need to either adapt, or find a new business model…
Ranking in the current environment (Post-Penguin) is a different game. Recovering in the current environment is… well… more on that below. The bottom line is that now, more than ever, you need to be building your OWN network of traffic. Your own audience. Ideally, one that’s Google-proof.
But that doesn’t mean that SEO is dead, or that the game is up. It’s not. It’s simply changed (or more accurately, is changing). And in fact, right now is a crucial moment in which you can actually use Google to “Google-proof” yourself, ironically. Again, more on that further down…
What follows are my own opinions into what has happened, what is happening, what is going to happen – and what you can do about it to stay above water, and even thrive. I am not an all-knowing demigod when it comes to SEO, but it has been my playground for several years, and I have enough sites that I can at least draw a few conclusions, or at the very least, make some half-decent guesses.
If for no other reason, you should really pay attention here, because I’m not some “in-Google’s-pocket” WhiteHat SEO douchebag who will simply parrot whatever Matt Cutts is saying on any given weekday. I play both sides, and I don’t have, or need, SEO clients. My advice is based solely on what I have done, and am going to do, to extract as much profit from Google’s organic listings as I possibly can. Take that for what it’s worth.
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So let’s begin:
First Things First – The Fat Lady Has Not Sung
Anyone with half a brain can plainly see that Google’s current SERPs, spanning almost every vertical, are some of the lowest quality results that we’ve seen in years. Decades, even. There are literally forum profiles and empty blogspot/web 2.0 pages ranking for some of the web’s most competitive keywords in every major commercial market. (Don’t believe me? Take 20 minutes right now and run searches for every competitive keyword you can think of – make sure to turn off personalized results, and make sure you’re on Google.com)
I’ve spent the past week pouring over hundreds SERPs, and I’m consistently seeing low-quality, and in many cases outright nonsense, ranking on Page 1 for basically any high-comp keyword. Of course, there’s the nearly-guaranteed presence of WikiPedia/Squidoo/eHow/YouTube/BlogSpot (and equvalents) across the gamut – irrespective of quality or even relevance. Clearly, the domain-authority filter has been jacked up, way too much.
Maybe that’s the “3%” that Matt Cutts had mentioned was affected by Penguin. Perhaps the other 97% of Google’s results comprise searches like “Why do hippies smell?”, “Who would win in a fight Chuck Norris or Moby?” and other completely unprofitable keywords that simply don’t matter, to anyone.
But as it stands, Penguin 1.0 is pretty atrocious. It wasn’t just “web-spam” that got hit in this update. Some did, but it was just as quickly replaced with more spam – much of it being worse than that which it replaced. In fact, something we’re seeing again and again is that scraper blogs are outranking the source sites, more than ever. This is insane.
More troubling is that many salt-of-the-earth publishers (like AskTheBuilder.com, DaniWeb, and countless others) were severely affected by Penguin. Sites that are in some cases over a decade old, comprised of thousands of pages of quality, unique content, and plenty of social/brand signals – and they’re tanking, hard. These are sites that provide an awesome user experience.
Google claims that they are rewarding high quality sites. Their SERPs make it clear that they are rewarding scrapers, irrelevant, outdated web 2.0 pages, generic “slightly relevant” domains, and YouTube.
Obviously, they haven’t got it right. So if Google has any intention of maintaining dominance with it’s only profitable space (search), this is far from over…
Will Google roll back Penguin? Not a chance. This is Panda all over again. They’ll just keep on making updates, tweaks, etc. So take heart!
We’re not out of the woods yet… and in this case, that’s most definitely a good thing.
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Second – Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid…
Right now, much of the White-Hat community (SearchEngineWatch, WebProNews etc.) is simply parroting Cutts and talking about things like “keyword stuffing” and “link schemes”.
Obviously, what’s happened here with Penguin is a combination of corporate agenda (discouraging SEO, pushing more into Adwords out of necessity), a monumental screwup on the engineering front based on altruistic notions about ranking sites that “haven’t tried to manipulate their rankings”, and a giant can of worms known as “Negative SEO”.
So I have to laugh at some of the moronic advice I see being handed out by some of the industry’s most “respected” authorities. Particularly amusing are the glaring contradictions that these experts spout forth – seemingly without stopping to really consider them, first.
Perhaps the most annoying example is when [insert basically any WhiteHat blogger here] talks about how “Negative SEO” is a myth – and in the next breath, advises against building low-quality links, since Google might penalize that activity. (Hmmm…)
Some random examples of questionable logic from White-Hat “experts”, in no particular order:
“We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites. As always, we’ll keep our ears open for feedback on ways to iterate and improve our ranking algorithms toward that goal.” ~ Matt Cutts
Here’s some feedback, Matt: If that’s what you want people to do, then how about actually rewarding them as a result? Instead of rewarding brands with thin content, scrapers/splogs, and YouTube videos?
”Don’t allow links from low-quality sites and networks” ~ Rosalind Gardner
That’s a nice delusion, Rosalind. You do realize, that people can go on Fiverr.com and spend literally $5 to blast thousands of crap links at their competition, right? This is a serious issue, and it’s one that is currently unresolved. Yes, I believe that Google will eventually do something about it. But not until it starts to affect big brands. And that could take quite a while. Till then… good luck convincing Google’s pious spam team that a competitor is orchestrating a Neg SEO campaign against you.
“The guidelines have been around for a long time, and Google has enforced them for just as long. In that regard, the Penguin update is nothing new. It’s just that Google thinks it has a new way to better enforce the guidelines. You should expect that Google will only continue to improve, so your best bet is to simply abide. That is, if you care about your Google rankings.” ~Chris Crum
Right… Because penguin was definitely all about “hidden text”. I’ll have to re-read those at some point, but apparently Google’s Guidelines must strongly endorse creating empty blogspot pages and scraping competitors…
Anyway.
Those are some examples of why you need to carefully draw your own conclusions, and not just blindly trust people who might seem like a “trusted authority”. Many of the so-called experts in this industry are either just some jackass who’s built a large following via JVs/product launches, salaried writers for publications, or people under too much political pressure to do anything aside from singing the party line (ex. well-known SEO firms, high-profile career WhiteHat bloggers, etc.)
Who should you be listening to?
People who either own or directly monitor hundreds of sites, and that’s it. Everyone else is just speculating and blowing smoke.
Speaking of which, there’s a few people like this who I do recommend that you listen to, and for exactly that reason. They are: Jon Leger, Aaron Wall, Jerry West and the good folks over at MicroSite Masters.
Let’s move on, and start digging into the really important stuff…
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Assessing the Damage – What Did Penguin Really Target?
It’s hard to say for sure (yet), but there’s definitely some consistencies that we see across the board. Also, aside from being able to definitively see ranking drops on Apr 24th (Penguin’s confirmed rollout), it’s a bit mudded over, seeing as how there were substantial Panda updates on April 19th and April 27th as well.
But here’s what I can tell you…
My Own Data:
1) BlogNet & Obvious Link Buys From “Outed” Sites = Penalty. We only had a few sites get the “unnatural links” notice in WMT, and they were all (eventually) negatively affected. This was mostly predictable, as we’d heavily used blog network links and obvious site-wide link buys for these sites, from blogs that were clearly selling their PageRank. In cases when a WMT message was present, the penalty seems to have affected the whole domain, and it isn’t just a “discounting” of said links. It is actually a negative effect. Bad links, obviously, can outweigh good ones.
Therefore, Penguin/Panda/Whatever has opened a can of worms. Because it now means you can play “Duck Hunt” with Google’s SERPs.
2) Unexplainable Collateral Damage. This is really frustrating – the only sites that really got hammered were 2 of my true authority sites. Sites with linking profiles cleaner than Mother Theresa, and whose content is stellar. I think things are still in flux, and it’s too early to throw in the towel with them… but still. It’s pretty amazing, in a bad way. I truly and honestly have no idea why these sites are pushed in the background.
All I know is that I’m in good company… with several other legitimate publishers. Folks, I have no reason to embellish this at all. Remember that I’m proudly GrayHat and openly buy my rankings with smaller, disconnected sites. (And yet very few of them were seemingly punished… while my “real” sites are buried, at the moment. Insanity.)
3) Nonsensical (and Likely Temporary) Black Hat Rewards. I have sites from years ago that have SO much blackhat stuff going on (externally) that not only weren’t affected by Penguin, but which also shot up in the rankings. Although, admittedly, these rankings are volatile and change every day. Nevertheless, they’re getting tons of traffic right now. And from a “WebSpam” perspective, these should be nuked. Gone. Buried.
(Nope – that’s just the quality sites, I guess…)
4) Over-Eager Title Tags = Less Eager SERP Placements. We’re also seeing that sites with title tags directly targeting our primary keywords are not holding position. They’re losing rank to more “generic” or “loosely relevant” pages (in terms of evaluating their title tags).
5) Who Knew That Dropping an Anchor Could Sink a Ship? I’ve always varied my anchor text when backlinking, quite a lot actually. However, in the few cases where I didn’t (usually with throwaways or mini-sites), these have all taken hits. It seems like the affected pages have been relegated back in the SERPs anywhere from 1-5 pages. It’s not consistent. At least not with my relatively small pool of sites with heavily-similar anchored backlinks.
Also, it’s not clear whether this is a sitewide effect, or only something that only affects the page where the offending anchored-links point. In my limited test group, I see both of those results (page penalty only, sitewide penalty). Of course, the sitewide issues on these sites could be caused by the other factors mentioned here.
That’s what I’m seeing on my end, for what it’s worth.
Other People’s Data:
These are well worth looking at – after you finish reading this post. Here they are for your reference…
1) Jerry West’s Quick Analysis. 10 Second Summary: Sites that got hit consistently have uneven anchor text, too much keyword density onsite, low quality backlinks, internal dupe content/title tags, too many 404s
2)Jon Leger’s Take on Ranking Post-Penguin. 10 Second Summary: Authority (Web 2′s like blogspot) domains unfairly favored, uneven anchor-text is a problem, exact-match domains NOT targeted in/of themselves – only if overly anchored, “spam” links still working, ranking varies by keyword niche – do SERP research to determine winning profile for your niche.
3) MicroSite Masters In-Depth Analysis. This is probably the best data so far to surface Post-Penguin. 10 Second Summary: “Google is trying to replace or devalue “anchor text” use with “niche/content relevancy of linking sites” as a primary link relevancy, (or “quality”) signal.”
Basically folks – the big takeaway is that Google is currently seems to be rewarding brands, authority domains, sites with links from “relevant” sources, and sites that are only “somewhat” gunning for a given keyword.
Will it hold? Not in its current form – the SERPs will eventually start to piss off even the average joe surfer. (Which is already happening, to an extent). But I believe the overall principle is one that won’t be going anywhere…
Google is obviously, desperately trying to use other signals apart from backlinks/anchors to determine relevance. They didn’t get it right this time. However – this direction is one they won’t stop pursuing. In other words – now would be a good time to stop ordering 10,000 anchored link blasts to your mini-sites…
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So… What Now?
How the Hell Do I Rank in Google, Post-Penguin?
(And How Can I Rescue Sites That Got Whacked?)
Even though the dust hasn’t yet settled – and it’s almost as certain as death, taxes and Dolph Lundgren starring in another B flick that Google will be rolling out a plethora of Penguin updates…
…what’s clear is that, if anything, right now Google seems to be rewarding a degree of “restraint”. Less appears to be “more”, in the SERPs.
However, you can’t paint every vertical with the same brush. There’s still plenty of stuff ranking based on nothing more than mass spamming, obvious paid links, and even some other variation of BlogNet links/spun content. Sure, it could be temporary fodder that’s simply been propped as a default effect of its previous, better-ranking competitors being condemned to oblivion. But it also shows us that Google is far from catching “webspam” universally.
It almost seems to be a different set of rules for each market. (Maybe it is?)
So what’s the way forward with ranking new sites?
I think the key to success right now is twofold:
1) Tread Lightly. What’s obvious is that Google is attempting to discourage “obvious manipulation” through the use of heavy-handed penalties. This includes things like uneven anchor text, over-optimization (onpage), unnatural backlinks, uneven backlink relevance. It could also possibly include things like uneven NoFollow/DoFollow ratios, having too many of the same types of links, and so on. I have no data to back that up, but it does follow the logic.
Therefore, I strongly recommend “keeping it natural”, and building a few good links rather than several “so-so” links. Diversity is also key. Spread the net, and don’t just build one type of backlink. (I’ll get into specifics further down.)
2) Copy Success & Run Low-Risk Experiments. The truth is that right now your guess is probably just as good as mine! Low-risk, research-based experimentation is going to be the key to finding your way (up) in any given market right now. Take a look at who’s ranking. Use ahrefs and OSE to find out what they’ve got for backlinks. Look at their title tags, their site structure, and their content. And go from there.
(By the way folks, the above is the foolproof, never-fail formula to SEO, by the way. And it’s hiding in plain sight.)
Now – I’m going to talk about some “traffic band-aids” just below this (for established sites that have been sucker-punched by the Penguin), but for now, here’s the extent of my knowledge as it pertains to recovering from Penguin…
So… how can I get my rankings back?
The first thing to do is to honestly assess your link profile. Onsite and onpage factors really don’t matter. Those things are easily remedied. It’s your backlinks that determine your options, right now.
We know, for sure, that Penguin (or something – Penguin, Panda, April’s 50 updates – whatever) is slamming sites that have too many anchored backlinks, too many links from bad neighborhoods, BlogNet links, obvious link-buys, etc. Keep in mind that not every site that’s been hit has received an “unnatural links” notice in WMT…
So, for this reason, if you reasonably believe that you can feasibly “clean up” your backlink profile by removing or pulling down your potentially “offensive” backlinks, then your site is likely salvageable.
On the other hand, if you fall into the unfortunate category of people who built backlinks very aggressively in the past, pointed directly at your money site (or – gasp – your authority site), then it may not be so simple, but there are still some options, which I cover below…
Finally, if you’re one of the many totally-above-board publishers (like AskTheBuilder.com) that have been slammed by Penguin for truly no apparent reason – and have nothing to hide – then you should file a reconsideration request, submit this “I was unfairly affected by Penguin” form, and consider publicizing your case on Google’s webmaster forums. And then wait patiently – while at the same time, taking some of the advice I’ve dispensed further down…
At the very least – regardless of whatever category of victim you fall under – the good news is that you certainly aren’t alone. This is far from an isolated case, and for what it’s worth, “we’re all in this together”.
Okay.
Your patience and loyal readership has paid off, friend. In addition to receiving a cookie (literally), you’ve also finally reached the part where I start to dole out actionable shit…
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Here’s Exactly What I’m Doing
Take it With a Boulder of Salt…
Again, I have to make it very clear that I’m not an SEO wizard. Nobody is, right now. Even the people who think they’re real smart for not getting taken out in these last few updates, will likely be swallowing their words a few weeks from now, whilst shitting bricks, sewing together a Google Voodoo Doll, and popping valium.
So, what that means is that just because what follows is my own plan… that doesn’t mean it’s the answer to all of our prayers, or that it is guaranteed to do anything. I generally have a pretty good track-record in terms of success with organic strategy, but hey – I sure didn’t see the Penguin coming…
Therefore, don’t just follow me blindly – we could both very well end up falling into a pit. Do your research, and make your own decisions (and take responsibility for them).
With all that said – here’s what I’m doing:
I want to first begin with my recovery strategies, as I actually fall into each of the three “victim classes” that I itemized above. I will lay out my recovery plan for each victim profile…
* My Recovery Plan for Salvageable Sites
For these sites, obviously, the first move is to go and axe backlinks that are either a potential cause of the ranking loss – OR – could become a liability, even if they aren’t the current cause. Essentially, I’m going to pretend that I’m working through a reconsideration request, and doing “good-faith” efforts.
Then, I’m going to audit the site itself thoroughly. Look for crawling errors, potential internal dupe content/tags, jack up the site loading speed as much as possible, look at any potential keyword density issues, over-use of internal anchors, sitewide or footer links out to other websites – and so on.
Then, with my remaining backlink profile, I’m going to use Ahrefs, Majestic, or OSE (possibly all 3) to take a close look at my anchors. I may have to work on diluting my overall % of anchored links by building/adding naked links or d0main-brand links (which I would do with press releases and submission to relevant directories in my actual niche – not the typical dir submits… I’ll have to train someone).
My ideal “anchor ratio” (both for salvaging sites, and going forward for any new authority site) is as follows:
–> 30% naked links
–> 30% brand-anchor links
–> 30% is a DIVERSE MIX of keyword anchor links. At least 10 variations per target (site, page, etc.)
–> 10% Misc/random (images, “click here”, etc.)
When I have roughly attained that type of BL profile, then I go into “slow burn mode”, which I’ve detailed further down. If I don’t see an improvement (after I’ve axed bad links, drastically improved anchor ratios, etc.), then I take the steps mentioned above for attempting to rescue a site that’s actually innocent.
* My Plan for Sites That I CANNOT Feasibly “Clean Up”
It’s basically a rite of passage as any SEO-driven affiliate worth his or her salt… Most of us have dabbled in Gray-Hat or Black-Hat stuff. If you haven’t, you’re probably a boring person, and stop at intersections if the lights so much as hint at turning yellow.
Anyway, the day of reckoning is upon us, and the deeds done in darkness are now exposed to the light. Even if these “deeds” are done by competitors, disgruntled employees, unwitting customers, etc. It doesn’t matter. The price is paid by the root domain, and its owner (you).
So you have 156,000 backlinks comprised of forum profiles, mass-comments, wiki posts, and spammy bookmarks? Unfortunately, with these sites – the fat lady has indeed sung. And your site is the proverbial champagne glass – shattering to the floor…
If you feel like tossing the dice, you can try to see how far you get with a re-consideration request. You have nothing to lose, and at the very least it’s worth a try. (Now – I should make it clear that I’m talking about sites with horrible BL profiles that have already been negatively affected. If you have NOT been penalized or kicked out the SERPs – then do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ride the wave, my friend, for as long as it lasts, and stay under the radar as long as possible.)
If a re-con request doesn’t work (and it probably won’t), then here’s what I recommend, and what I myself will be doing in these cases…
–> Locate every scraper site and otherwise website that has copied any of your unique content and initiate a takedown campaign. Contact them with a Cease & Desist first. They will likely ignore it. When they do, send in a DMCA takedown order to their hosting company, and also file a DMCA with Google for that page.
Why? Because you’re going to be relocating your site’s content to a new domain, with no pre-existing authority or “claim” to the content. If you don’t wipe out as much of the scraped/copied content from around the web as possible, then Google will simply see your new domain as yet another scraper joining the party.
Anyway, after you’ve done all you can…
–> Turn your existing site into a one-page wonder, and remove all content, including your homepage content. Just have a notice like “this site is moving” or something. Let it sit like that for at least one month. Make sure your old pages are good and de-indexed (by using the site:whatever.com command in Google’s search field), before proceeding.
–> Then, roll out your old content onto a new, fresh domain (or an aged one, whatever – just make sure it doesn’t have a “checkered past”), and then start fresh. I outline what I’ll be doing to “tread lightly” for new sites further down…
–> “To 301 redirect, or not to 301… that is the question”. Yeah. I don’t have an answer. I have a feeling that a 301 will pass the bad stuff just as easily as the good when it comes to transferring authority. My gut tells me to start completely fresh. But maybe I’m wrong. (If you have true data on this, please leave a comment).
Keep in mind that even with this “worst case scenario” for sites too far gone – ironically – you could quite plausibly fare better with this fresh-start-strategy than you might with orchestrating a full-recovery for sites that are salvageable. It remains to be seen, but if Google’s really and truly going to enforce the “less is more” mentality – it could very well be the case.
It’s something to consider.
Well, that about covers my plans for recovering some of my sites (the ones worth recovering).
Now – let me share with you how I’m planning on building links in the Post-Penguin-Apocalypse, as well as some other cool stuff that you might like if generating shitloads of traffic tickles your fancy…
In fact, let’s turn this into a new section. Just for fun.
A Fancy New Section:
My Primary Strategy, Post-Penguin?
“Churn and Earn, Baby!”
If there’s one thing Google has communicated loud and clear through all of this insanity – it’s that they’re not afraid to sacrifice quality SERPs to make a point.
The problem is, though – those “points” keep on changing. Remember when directory submission was kosher? Remember when article marketing was considered White Hat? Remember when rel=”nofollow” didn’t exist? Remember when PageRank sculpting was actually encouraged?
Now, all of those things are “bad”. And they’re incurring penalties – retroactively! It’s madness. (It’s stupid.) And it’s putting people out of business, overnight. Now – before the “Google doesn’t owe you anything” comments start spouting forth – keep in mind that the vast majority of sites out there are legitimately trying to do everything right. And a lot of them just got hammered – either because what was “right” 5 years ago is “evil” now. Or even just for no apparent reason.
Regardless, I guess what I’m trying to say – is that Penguin has shown us that nothing can save you. Not “great content”, not a “good user experience” – nothing. And nobody is safe. Except for brands, Google Properties (YouTube, Blogger) and Wikipedia.
So where does that leave us?
It’s simple. It means that SEO is now a numbers game, and your safety is earned by way of diversity at every level. And when I say “diversity”, I’m especially talking about domains, and the backlink profiles thereof.
This means that instead of walking into a niche with 1 domain and building a nice 100 page site, it means that you walk into that market with 10 domains, with 10 pages per site – and where you build 10 different backlink profiles for each site. (Even if only slightly different).
This gives you the ability to switch it up – and you’ll likely end up netting far more traffic as a result, anyway. Myself, what I’ll be doing is as follows…
Especially at first, I’m going to be treating these new rollouts as tests. Experiments. For one site, I’ll basically only build links using press releases. For another, only article marketing. For another, only blog nets. For another, only niche directories. For another, only guest posting. For another, only Web 2.0′s. And so on/so forth.
I might even try doing ONLY social signals, and see what happens…
I still think EMD’s (exact match domains) are very powerful, and we will continue to buy/use them, because ranking them is much easier. Even if it’s not exact-match, having at least part of the KW in the domain is still going to help.
Bottom line – right now, it’s important to find out what the Penguin “likes”. And my guess is, this probably varies a little bit from one market to another. But still, there will be universal consistencies – and those are the things we can then focus on as a primary source of links in our future BL profiles.
Again, guys – I can’t stress it enough – spread out your risk. Both in terms of sites, and tactics. The only reason I’m still sitting pretty is because I have enough crap out there that, purely by way of chance/odds, only some of it tanked. If I’d only had one or two major sites or sources of income, things would not be too rosy right now…
So let’s take a moment and get specific about backlinks, Post-Penguin.
Here’s how I’m going to be building my links from this point forward…
“Safe” Links:
This is the stuff that’s safe for virtually any site, including authority sites. The key is to slow-burn. Don’t go crazy. A few links a day is all you need.
1) Press Releases. Still effective, and totally defensible. We use PRLog (free, meh), PRLeap ($69, not bad), Press Release Monkey ($100ish, pretty solid) and eReleases ($399, tons of exposure and authority linkjuice). Use each service according to your budget and objectives. For micro sites or niches that aren’t really that competitive, you don’t need to pull out the big guns.
2) Guest-Posting: This is the next big thing. It will likely become abused fairly soon. My suggestion is to ride the wave right now, and if you can, try to stick to the bigger/better sites. To find blogs to post on, do some Googling for “your niche + guest blogger”, and variations thereof. There’s sites everywhere, in most niches.
Also, there’s some really awesome networking resources for guest posting that have popped up. The most popular by far is Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest. Another up-and-comer showing a lot of promise is Duncan Carver’s Content Facilitator (say that one ten times)…
3) Real, Conversational Commenting. It’s still very effective, and these are natural as can be. Only post a few comments per day. Don’t use anchors as, or in, your posting name. Only link to your root domain, or else your comments will go straight to akismet’s spam box. Switch your “name” up a bunch, if you’re in a niche where you don’t have to be “you”. And honestly, post as many NoFollow comments as you do “live” links. Link Diversity is paramount. Of course, you can use my service, ActuallyRank, to locate DoFollow commenting opps.
4) Niche Directories. These are real sites in your industry/market that have a directory or profile page for other sites, like yours. An example is CrunchBase.com, which is a directory of tech companies. Another example is KillerStartups.com. You can’t go and outsource this on Fiverr. You need to do it yourself or train someone to find good, quality sites like this and get your site listed. As a side note, the only generic directories I would bother with for an authority site are BOTW.org and Yahoo DIR.
5) Real, Actual Press (Authority Sites Only). This means emailing big sites, editors, journalists, etc. Maybe using HARO, etc. You need to actually have something, though. I don’t think MFA sites will cut it…
“Experimental” Links:
This is the kind of stuff that you ONLY use on mini-sites. And this can also include YouTube videos, Web 2.0 pages and Free Blogs (Blogspot, etc.). And I suggest that you run these as isolated tests, so as to not compromise time or $$ spent on any of the above “Safe” linkbuilding.
Myself, I actually put my authority sites on totally different servers as well (not just IPs) – just to keep them far removed from this stuff…
1) True, Private Blog and Homepage Networks. I’m not going to recommend any, or tell you which ones I use, thus defeating the purpose. Don’t go and join the most popular thing you see all over the various IM/SEO forums out there. Instead, seek out the really exclusive stuff. The more obscure, the better. Heavily vary your anchor text, and use naked/brand links as well on BlogNets.
2) Direct Link-Buys. There are many ways to buy links “naturally” from other sites. Lots of sites in most niches sell banners and text ads, and you’d be surprised how many people still don’t even know what “nofollow” is. Also, money is the great motivator when it comes to making exceptions. I would strongly suggest, at this point, that you only buy links from sites that are at least partly relevant. It only takes a handful to make a huge impact.
3) Tiered Linking Structures. This is where you go and put up, say, 10 very high quality, in-depth Web 2.0 pages (that both promote affiliate offers AND link to your minisite), and then aggressively hammer them with links to inflate the importance of the page. In general, pointing hundreds, or even thousands of backlinks at a hosted page on an very established Web 2.0 or Wiki site isn’t going to raise any flags, and you’re essentially multiplying the power of each backlink you’ve built to your own site.
In this example, you’ll have netted 10 very strong links, as well as built 10 additional traffic sources. It’s risky because your content can be pulled down at any time by the host site (especially if you get overly aggressive with links/traffic). Also, be sure to carefully read each site’s TOS to make sure you’re not in violation or potential hot water…
4) Article Marketing. What!!?? Articles are “sketchy” now? I honestly don’t know one way or the other. Back in the day – it was literally magical. You could rank sites with articles all day long. These days, mass article marketing (especially with spun content) is seen as gray area, at best. I don’t have enough data, Post-Penguin, to know if it’s still remotely viable. Hence – it’s now experimental, in my books.
5) Mass/Generic Directory Submission. Basically, see my explanation of Article Marketing, above, and apply it to this in kind. The only thing I’d add is this – only use services that submit manually, and can post several anchor variations.
6) Mass Links. I’m going to lump a whole bunch of stuff into this one – it includes, but is not limited to – mass profiles, scrapebox blasts, mass bookmarks, trackbacks, shareware subs… you name it. Typically, I’ll only use these links to “boost” tiered linking structures. Even then, I do it pretty sparingly.
Ironically, you actually can still see phenomenal rankings (for a very short period of time) using masslinks. And then they will drop like a rock, likely never to return. (Just pray that your competitors don’t do this for you… yet another good reason to diversify, and rollout an army of small sites!)
7) Simulated Social Signals. You can use services like Synnd.com and EmpireAvenue to artificially inflate stuff like FB likes, Twitter activity, etc. Synnd is definitely the “grayer” of the two, and used correctly, EmpireAve could actually be pretty whitehat.
And that’s about it.
Again – the experimental stuff that I just mentioned – only use this on throwaways right now. Don’t let it touch anything you care about. This is the kind of stuff you do with mini-sites you’re rolling out in uber-competitive markets, where even one day on page 1 for any decent keyword will earn you 10X what you spent getting there.
For everthing else, I recommend lightly treading with above-board links.
Let’s wrap this all up in a few sentences for the sake of the scanners among us:
* Build up an “income safety net” by rolling out tons of small sites. As many as you can. With as much backlink diversity between them as possible. Right now, this is far safer than relying on one main site – even though that should be part of your overall plan, eventually.
* Less is more. Tread lightly with your new site rollouts. Don’t be aggressive. Just aim for a few links a day.
* Experiment. Nobody *really* knows what’s up right now. It’s too early on. The best thing you can do right now is to experiment with a bunch of different linkbuilding methods (low risk, low cost), and find out!
* Churn and Earn, Baby! Once again – roll out as many sites as you can, using different methods (or focusing on different things) for each one. That is your only safety-net. “Great content” obviously isn’t enough.
And lastly…
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Here’s How to Actually Leverage Penguin’s Weaknesses to Generate Traffic FAST…
…While Simultaneously Diversifying Your Traffic Channels
(So You Can Eventually Tell Google to Go Get Stuffed)
My guess is your eyes are probably as sore as my fingers are at this point. So I’m going to do both of us a favor, and communicate in bullet points.
* Penguin LOVES Blogspot, YouTube, Squidoo, HubPages, Tumblr and WordPress.com Right Now. Along with a bunch of other sites like them. Seriously – this crap is ranking everywhere, and seemingly without any supportive links, quality or effort. My suggestion? Start publishing high-profit product reviews, and pages/videos targeting specific, but high-traffic keywords in hot markets. Hire someone to do this, all day long, if you can.
No, you might not “own” it – but hell! At least it’s freakin’ ranking...
* PRESS RELEASES – WHAT THE HELL!!?? These damn things are ranking for everything, right now. I’ve lost track of how many PRWeb, SBWire, PRNewsWire, and even PRLog (the free service!) press releases are ranking for insane keywords. Probably worth doing for some high-traffic keywords, IMO…
* Power Tip (Especially For Sites That Got Hit) – Why not craft a short YouTube video, press release or Web 2.0 page around each of your important pages on your most profitable sites? Especially if they recently got hit. Not only will this have some possible ranking boosts down the road – it will drastically bring up your traffic levels and get the revenue pumping again. (In fact, you may even find this is more profitable, in some cases)…
Note: Well-made YouTube vids in particular have an awesome sales conversion rate. Followed by Web2′s, and the distant third is press releases (although, PRs often rank on page #1 the day they go live).
And finally…
* Stop Throwing Away Your Visitors. Build lists, if it makes sense in your market. Build an audience you can continually reach with re-targeting technology (this is going to be massive – I strongly suggest joining the waiting list for ClickCertain, and checking out existing services like AdRoll). Build a fan base using Facebook, Twitter – whatever. However it makes sense for you in your market – set shit up so that you eventually own your own network of traffic. Build something you can really count on. And one day, sell.
In the meantime, you can use the above strategies to do so, while you wait to see what ends up happening with Penguin.
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Has the Sky Fallen?
No. It hasn’t.
Google is making some really stupid moves right now – especially considering that they’re under Federal investigation for favoring their own sites in their SERPs – and their obsession with products that are quite obviously destined to fail (ahem.. *Google Plus*) seems absurd. But they are still the only real search game in town.
And it’s still THE traffic source to conquer. The great equalizer.
It might not always be that way. But for right now – it still is.
My advice?
MILK IT. MILK IT. MILK IT.
Screw playing by “the rules”. (There is no golden bucket at the end of the “quality content” rainbow, as Penguin has just made painfully clear).
Sure, play it straight with your branded authority site(s). That’s definitely something that should be part of your longterm picture.
But as much as you can – right now – start rolling out all the mini-sites as you can, and let them ride.
Ironically, it’s honestly the safest thing you could do right now.
Maybe one day, in the distant future, quality content – and investing years of blood, sweat and tears into a site really will be rewarded.
Till then….
Cheers,
——————–
~ Chris Rempel AKA: “The Lazy Marketer”
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P.S. Oh, yeah – I forgot to mention. In a couple days my friend John Ozjaca will be explaining how he’s (so far) made $1.8 Million with two small WordPress blogs, organically. $0 has been spent on ads or PPC.
John and I have actually been talking shop and stuff for a couple years now. He’s a great guy – and he’s got a pretty cool story, too (he was literally a rock star before getting into aff marketing).
If that sounds interesting, then stay tuned and keep an eye on the blog…
Well, apparently Google’s latest “step forward” against WebSPam is being coined as the Penguin update.
Evidently, Google’s goal was to downgrade their SERPs and start ranking profile pages and literal spam on the first page of their results in most of their competitive verticals.
(Strangely, basically all of my grayhat properties saw a great big jump in traffic recently). Which sites of mine have lost? Well, only the ones with a nearly-poster-perfect whitehat backlink profile, and where the sites themselves contain top-shelf, totally unique content. Yep.
I won’t say too much in this blog post.
Instead, I just want to ask a question, and then provide some “study material” that you might want to use in forming your own opinion:
Or Would You Call It a Complete and Utter Failure, an Insult to WhiteHat SEO, and an Monolithic Embarrassment?
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Here are some resources and “study material” you may find enlightening…
Hilarious Irony:
First, let me just quickly point out something more than a little ironic in Matt’s little blogpost. In the post, he calls out a spun article posted on a splog, with an obvious link drop for a payday loan site. (It’s a screenshot, but if you run an exact match search in Bing for a sentence from that article snippet, you’ll find it).
In actual fact, the money-site that the splog links to is a 301-redirected domain, pointing at one of the larger players in the payday niche. And guess what, folks?
This offending site is currently ranking #1 for the target anchor, “pay day loan”.
Bang up job, Google. Your own public shaming example seems to have backfired. (Check it out for yourself, and prepare your stomach muscles for a good laugh)
The Worst SERPS in the History of the Universe:
There’s thousands of examples, and you’ll find plenty of references for starters on the comments of Google’s Webmaster blog in the most recent post there, but here’s one particularly amazing example…
SERP: payday loans online – Page 1 contains FIVE listings that are profile pages for someone named “Rebecca Carmack”. So half of the 1st page is literally worse than spam. It is part of the tier-network from a BH linkwheel. Nice.
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I want to believe. I truly want to believe that WhiteHat, good content, real links – the whole spiel – will win in the end. I think it eventually does.
But why is Google consistently getting, well, worse?
And why is spam winning, while the good sites suffer?
I feel like a sucker for even trying, sometimes. It’s easier just to buy my rankings with throwaway sites.
Matt Cutts – feel free to chime in here, if you think I’m missing the big picture. But the fact is that WhiteHat is just increasingly becoming more and more of a risk. As evidenced by the 500+ comments from desperate, real-life, WH webmasters on your blog.
GrayHat and even full-out BlackHat makes more fiscal sense, without the fear of losing it all the next time an “improvement” rolls out.
THIS PENGUIN NEEDS TO DROWN, AND DIE AN ICY COLD DEATH.
If you want to be totally safe from your competitors knocking you out of the SERPs with a dirt cheap Negative SEO blast on Fiverr, all you have to do is become a Fortune 500 Brand.
Or use Adwords. (Oh, but then there’s click fraud…)
Good going, Google.
And you wonder why anyone would “waste their time” with GrayHat campaigns and buying links?
How about because in the end, there’s less to lose? If all it takes is for some jealous/ambitious competitor 5 minutes and $20 to permanently damage my link profile or possibly even deindex my site (which I’ve spent possibly years of my life carefully building) – doesn’t that completely remove any incentive for me to invest time in WhiteHat SEO?
Why SHOULDN’T we all just become skilled with artificial linking (GrayHat), promoting quick-build sites?
So what if your site gets whacked, reported or devalued? It took 3 days to create and market.
Plus, now when we’re stuck in position #3 for a high-comp keyword, all we have to do is go out and blast the crap out of the sites sitting at #1 and #2… and voila! We reap the benefits until someone returns the favor, or the Spam Team comes to the rescue.
In either case, we’ll have made bank for likely the better part of a year, at a ridiculous ROI.
And why not scale, then? Spanning hundreds of markets with this strategy is completely feasible.
Of course – in saying this, I’m not recommending all of the above (but definitely some of it – especially when it comes to keeping one’s investment of time/money to a minimum when building out new sites) . What I’m trying to do, though, is paint a picture of where this industry is headed.
Far as I can tell, the only “true” WhiteHats out there are big political companies with millions of dollars to spend on “natural buzz”, or the self-righteous group of SEO service providers who like to trumpet their ethical escapades to the masses on certain blogs (SEOMoz leaps to mind), and who likely on average earn about as much as your average garbage man.
Make no mistake. The people making millions with organic SEO are buying links and artificially increasing their rankings – though usually their money sites themselves are totally above-board and white hat. But how they get to page 1 without being a “brand”?
Well – you know the scoop on that.
So, friends…
My challenge to you is to really think about it – and realize where Google stands. In this video, they are outright telling you that they don’t give a shit about the little guy. In their eyes, to “play ball” you either become a brand, or buy adwords. Their shareholders don’t win if you succeed with organic SEO.
Decide whose good books you really want to be in.
Google’s? The self-righteous pricks on WhiteHat SEO blogs?
Or your Accountant’s?
Once again – thanks Google, for welcoming Negative SEO practitioners with arms wide open. Now we can all look forward to a global degradation of SERP results. (But who cares, the future is Google Plus, right? Screw your primary userbase who still sees Google as a search engine…)
Yes, I said White Hat is far more risky. Not less.
And by the way, I’m actually entirely pro-whitehat. I just wish it worked consistently, and didn’t leave gaping holes for the true villains (infringing scraper sites, reverse SEO practitioners, mass comment spammers, etc.) to have their way with my site and its rankings…
This blog post should be considered an open letter to Google, from yours truly. Because I actually still do invest pretty much all of my substantial time & energy into building truly awesome content, and building links the “right” way.
(But it’s a shame that I have to hedge against that by simultaneously running GrayHat campaigns – on different sites / different servers – as a sort of income insurance policy…)
Basically, as a publisher, I want to K-N-O-W beyond a doubt that hard work, creating an awesome user experience and really going to great lengths to add value to the web will pay off. The fact is that in the current Google playground, the only people who can’t sleep at night are White Hat webmasters. The GH and BH crowd are laughing all the way to the bank.
So let’s dig right into it.
Starting from the top…
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Reason #3: “Quality Original Content” Only Means Something if it’s Secured by Domain Authority.
So you’ve invested all this time into building your first round of initial content. You’re paying writers handsomely because you want your users to love their time on your site, and you want to be earning “editorial backlinks” (people liking your stuff and hence linking to it).
That’s nice. Too bad it can all be thrown in the garbage overnight by some asshole with an autoblog that has just a little (or a lot) more domain authority than you can just OUTRIGHT STEAL your content and be recognized by GoogleBot as the “original owner”.
All it takes is monitoring any popular SEO/webmaster forum to see the widespread number of victims of “source of content” theft accumulating in droves.
Now, this is a lot more preventable if you could really get some solid domain authority out of the gate, in completely WhiteHat ways.
But you can’t. Because…
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Reason #2: WhiteHat Link Building (For New Sites) is a Joke.
You know, even though I’ve been active as an affiliate publisher for the last several years, I’m still fairly “new” to the SEO world in any measurable sense. But even I’ve seen the so-called White Hat industry increasingly become an incestuous little cesspool of self-righteous bastards.
Article marketing used to be completely white hat. Now it’s “bad”.
Mass directory submission PRECEDED the search engines. But now – of course – it’s “evil”.
Even press releases, to an extent and in some cases, are viewed as a questionable form of linkbuilding, because “anyone” can distribute them for a fee.
Instead, what today’s White Hat “authorities” are telling us to do, is to just create “great content”, submit our Google sitemaps, and engage is relevant social media discussion to “let the world know” about our site, which will magically make those casual social users link to our new sites from their… profiles?
Maybe 1% of them have blogs/sites? Or less?
You know – this works (sort of) in niches where there’s a lot of blogging activity. But what if you’re a commercial pipe fitter? Or an insurance broker specializing in international shipping?
Should you go and “get involved” in the thriving social scene that exists online for international shipping insurance? Maybe send a few tweets or Facebook posts out about some incredibly boring “infographic” that visually outlines the importance of insuring goods in transit?
Obviously, you won’t get any traction. In that position and industry, there IS NO “White Hat” pathway for sites trying to gain their initial footing. None.
And this applies to less extreme niches / industries as well. (But the d-bag who’s ripping off your content so they can cash in on some easy AdSense rev is having a heyday, since you can’t build domain authority, but he can).
Fun stuff.
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Reason #1: Because Your Competitors ABSOLUTELY CAN Harm Your Rankings.
It’s now 100% confirmed.
External, “unnatural links” will trigger a Google penalty. Even if it’s not something that you did, yourself.
I’m sure you’ve already seen several examples of this in living color. Maybe you’ve had the great fortune of experiencing this first hand.
And if you don’t believe me, then maybe this guy, this guy or this guy can persuade you otherwise.
Sites are getting wiped out left and right. All it takes is for someone to fire up their copy of (the aptly named) SENUKE software or equivalent, and start lambasting your site with thousands of crap links.
But don’t worry. According to Google’s warning notification that’s sent to webmasters who have acquired (voluntarily or involuntarily) these “unnatural links”, all you have to do is somehow bring your site back into compliance with their webmaster guidelines, and then you can resubmit your site for re-inclusion.
I’m sure that the tens of thousands of splogs, inactive / abandoned forums, neglected web communities and every other shitty link source is going to be more than happy to accomodate your request.
Translation from Sarcastic to English: Hopeless. Not going to happen. Ever.
Even if you were, oh, say, a Fortune 500 brand (that Google is more than happy to unfairly defer to in their SERPs) with the resources to send out DMCA’s and removal orders all day long – all that has to happen to trip another filter is for someone to fire up SENUKE once again, and go to town.
This is a complete travesty, and puts absolutely everything in the “White Hat” universe at risk.
Google – ask yourselves something… Why wouldn’t a black hat spammer just spend their days building “unnatural links” to their competition, and then report those sites from your handy “Spam Reporting” interface, inevitably slotting at least SOME of those sites into a penalty?
Even if it’s just a temporary penalty – it’s degrading the SERPs and hurting real business (including consumers, not just the vendors). And it’s also creating a dark business model (reverse SEO).
What the hell are you thinking?
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See folks – here’s the thing…
Online publishing is still where it’s at. And affiliate marketing it still the best revenue game in town, for online publishers. SEO is still a safer bet than “mastering” Adwords, in my opinion. Because at least you can always start a new site. With adwords, once you get slapped – that’s it. Game over.
And yes, the best pathway (in my opinion) as a publisher is still to build a defensible, highest-possible-quality authority site with awesome content and a diverse and powerful foundation of quality, natural backlinks. That is hard-built, hard-won and full of challenges. It takes a LOT of time and effort.
But it has the highest return, in the long run. Because if you’re smart, you’ll realize that an authority site is a form of real estate. And real estate can be sold. Depending on your tax code where you are – that can be classified as a capital gain. Not just income. (Which means that it’s a REAL pay-day. And you get to keep a lot more of that significant windfall).
It’s just that as a standalone, and singular business model – it’s VERY risky. At least in terms of montly income and consistency.
What if your site gets penalized as a result of someone else’s doing? What if your content gets ripped off and syndicated across someone’s vast spam network?
And what if this happens while you’re still in “growth stage”, and have no subscriber base or user base to lean on as a fallback if you drop out of the SERPs for months at a time?
These are serious considerations. These are holes in Google’s algorithm, and instead of burying their heads in the sand, or having Matt Cutts deliver sugar-coated ambiguity and tiptoe around REAL issues like this with a nice nerdy smile – they need to be addressed.
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Here’s some easy fixes and suggestions for Google that will never be implemented, but I offer them anyway:
* Allow webmasters to voluntarily discount inbound / external links from Webmaster Tools. Everyone wins if this is the case – and it directly contributes to helping the overall algorithm improve, since bad neighborhoods and low-level link sources will be indentified directly.
* Allow webmasters to claim ownership of their content as it’s published. This should be built into the dynamic sitemap reader, and also alternatively available as a manual submission.
Ah…. wishful thinking.
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But until they do address these things, as an affiliate publisher, you need to be realistic, and play both sides of the coin.
You still need to be building some primary, main authority sites (even if it’s just one), where you actually “have something” you’re proud of. This is essentially your retirement strategy. You need to build something worth selling for a small (or perhaps a large) fortune. This will not occur overnight.
At the same time, however, I advise that you hedge your bets (so to speak), and build out a network of small affiliate sites (mini-sites, conduit sites, etc.), completely separate from your “real” site(s).
Different IPs, different servers – different everything. Zero crosslinking. Zero determinable footprint to link them to eachother. This includes using different google accounts to monitor Wembaster Tools and Analytics! This also means using different Privacy / TOS content, and using images (instead of text) for things like mailing addresses or corporate information, such as a company name.
With these sites, you go GrayHat. They should still have good content, which shouldn’t be a problem for anyone, since you don’t want to be exceeding more than 10 pages or so per site. Keep them small, and automate as much of your external SEO as possible. (How? Read my previous blog post )
In simple terms, the only difference between “Gray Hat” and “White Hat” is that you simulate natural backlinks, rather than earning them sporadically and organically (and uncontrollably). There is no difference from an on-site perspective, other than my recommendation that you keep GrayHat properties small, and easily replicatable.
Some of them will probably get penalized or deindexed. That’s why you keep them small. Never build a gray hat site that you can’t replace in 2 days. Some may last indefinitely, though.
Usually, each site will have a nice run for 6+ months, or years, before anything happens. (Unless you’re being totally stupid with backlinking like building masses of profile links, etc.). And most commonly, they just fade off the SERPs due to competition or algo adjustments – not penalties.
In reality, a GrayHat site is completely within ethical and legal compliance so long as you’re simply buying links from willing site owners, or distributing content to willing publishers who want to post it, along with your byline/links. Google might not “like” this, but they can go to hell. They aren’t the internet police.
Note: While you can flip these sites, you should definitely disclose your backlink activities to prospective buyers (so they know what they’re getting). GrayHat sites aren’t really what I’d call a retirement strategy.
Target a variety of profitable markets as you build out your “Gray Hat” empire. Don’t just focus on one niche. This spreads your risk.
Treat the whole operation like a production line. Don’t become attached to these sites whatsoever. They serve a purpose, that is all. And that purpose is to hedge against the massive risks involved in facing temporary penalties and competitor-driven hurdles that Google currently allows to afflict WhiteHat publishers.
It’s as close as you’ll get to “affiliate marketing insurance”.
And unfortunately, because Google is actively facilitating reverse SEO, it’s a necessary evil if you want to (eventually) establish a completely WhiteHat authority site.
Perhaps a better title for this post would’ve been… “Succeeding With Google – And Why You Have to Break the Rules in Order to Survive Long Enough to Follow Them…”
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Well guys – you’ve heard my $0.02
What are your thoughts on all this?
Have you had this happen to you first-hand? Do you think Google’s (retarded) algo-holes are temporary?
I think there’s some valuable discussion to be had here.
Who knows? Maybe someone on Google’s payroll will actually see this, and extract some form of logic from it.
Would love to hear your opinion in the comments below…
Cheers
~ Chris
P.S. Shameless plug time:
Affiliate Recon – which opens in just a few days now – is an awesome resource for Gray Hat niche targets and easily-rankable product keywords in (verifiable) 6 figure markets.
In a sentence, it’s basically SEMRush, but instead of just letting you “research stuff” – it shows you WHAT to research, and you can dig as deep as you like from there. A very profitable exercise. New niches and intel reports added monthly.
First – since it’s been so long, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas/New Year, and hopefully you avoided Italian cruise ships over the last couple months…
For the people who may have wondered why my newsletter and my blog have been a ghost town for several months – well, I’m going to cover all of that below, because it all nicely works into my little message for today.
So let’s dive right in:
In Case You’re Wondering – Here’s What’s Actually “Dead” in 2012…
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To paint the picture clearly, we have to take a quick “tour” of 2011 – which was quite a year.
So Here’s the Year 2011 in Summary – from the Affiliate Perspective:
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* Mass-Deflation: We witnessed Google unleash its Panda / Farmer arsenal on the majority of commercially-intent websites across the web, and even in the aftermath… there’s still a lot more losers than winners. (Although in the short-term, Google is definitely one of the winners). But more on that below.
* TrickBank No More: We watched as Clickbank (finally) cracked down on many of the BS-peddlers in the IM and BizOpp category. Likely the result of pressure from government, its payment processors, or both.
* Data Wars: Again from Google, the webmaster community (particularly the organic marketer) received a “loud and clear” message from the Big G when it decided to withhold its referring keyword data for any search conducted by a searcher who’s logged into his/her Google account while searching – under the guise of “privacy”.
(Amazingly, this restriction on keyword referral data doesn’t apply to PPC advertisers. Hmmm…)
* Stepping on Dollars to Pick up Dimes: We watched even more clueless, short-sighted politicians trying to “cash in” on affiliate marketing by adding a State sales tax that affects online transactions. The cash-grab has simply been avoided by most of the larger players (like Amazon) who instead decide not to support affiliates in those states. And my guess would be that collecting from the smaller merchants would be like pulling hens’ teeth. Result = Everyone loses.
Once again, politicians shooting themselves in the foot. In response, some of the larger ecommerce operations like Overstock are proposing a much-needed fairness bill. Let’s cross our fingers…
* The New World: On a brighter note – 2011 was likely the strongest year yet for Mobile Apps and the entirely newfound “Kindle” ebook market. Though this is eventually going to become a saturated race to the bottom, in certain top-line categories, it’s largely untapped. (Example – there is only ONE keyword research tool that I could find last night in the iPhone App Store. Well, at least one that’s properly tagged as “keyword research” in the App search engine). Lots of opportunity there, across hundreds of markets. Think: List-building.
* The Tough Guys Tumble: Organically speaking, 2011 saw some of the long-standing big fish take a beating (EzineArticles, Technorati, PRNewsWire, etc.) in Google’s Farmer/Panda rollouts.
By pure coincedence, amazingly, Google-owned properties like YouTube, Blogger/Blogspot and its indirectly-associated “partners” like Android.com and others have seen significant gains since the implementation of all these unbiased algorithm changes. What luck.
And finally…
* The Censorship Cronies Strike Again. Well, I guess technically this was resolved just recently in 2012, as SOPA was taken off the table (for now) due to all the outcry about it. Essentially it was a corporate censorship agenda gift-wrapped as being an anti-piracy bill. It was initiated by a draconian and dying industry and drafted by people (with obligations to the cronies) who simply don’t understand the internet, and how much collateral abuse SOPA would have incurred.
So What Was 2011 in a Nutshell?
It was the year of the divide.
The “middle” is now rapidly shrinking, and basically it’s dead.
RIP: Long-Term Success for the Middle-Sized Affiliate Relying on SEO.
You are now either winning, or losing. Period. And as we all discovered, the tables can turn overnight.
So let’s look at this in detail. (In particular, how to win in 2012).
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Succeeding in 2012:
Make No Mistake – It’s a Different Game Now…
(And There’s 2 Main Pathways to Success… One of Which Probably Isn’t What You Expect)
You probably noticed a bit of a theme going on in my “year in review” bullet points above. And if you’ve got any kind of dependance or semi-dependance on organic search-driven traffic, then you’re probably also feeling it firsthand right now, too.
That’s right folks – 2011 was basically the year when Google showed us all their true colors. Especially for affiliates, AdSense publishers and the eComm crowd. The destruction was widespread. Pretty much anybody with a commercially-inclined site of any kind was negatively affected by G’s rounds of Panda updates. There were very few winners.
And it wasn’t just the thin-content guys and scrapers going down (if anything, they’re the ones thriving right now!)
It was totally legit sites. Sites with tons of awesome, original content, and thousands of real and legitimate backlinks. Sure, there were a few understandable adjustments (such as dialing back the visibility on some of the content mills and article farms), but even then it was inconsistent at best.
For example, the great disparity between EzineArticles.com’s massive decline in the SERPs, as compared to eHow’s unexplainable staying power. (eHow is far from being a “premium” content source. Other search engines such as DuckDuckGo have even gone so far as to block the domain entirely from their results, due to overwhelming user complaints).
But the bottom line was that “Panda”, at least from everything I’ve seen (and I’m far from being the only commentator on this), has only degraded Google’s own search results. It’s as if Google is trying to adapt to the social-scene far too early in the game, and “force” their algo to weigh unproven metrics (like social factors, Plus One’s, etc), as opposed to the long-standing factors like age, natural backlinks and user beahavior.
One thing did happen in 2011, however, that directly benefited Google whilst Panda was wreaking havoc on their own user experience and overall search result quality…
…PPC clicks increased by 28% in Q3/2011 over the same quarter in 2010, and just a few months later into Googles 4th quarter (in 2012), Paid Clicks increased yet again by 17% over and above Q3!
(Umm… What?!)
Maybe I’m going out on a limb folks – but something tells me that lately, Google just might be pandering to Wall Street moreso than it is to its actual userbase. And they might kid themselves into thinking that they’re a multi-tiered company, but really and truly all Google REALLY offers us is their search engine. Without that, they’re nothing.
This might sound crazy.. but is it possible that Google is skewing it’s own organic results (call it “Farmer”, “Panda”, whatever) so that its PPC results are actually more helpful? And receive more clicks?
In the past I would’ve thought “no way”. No company is that stupid, or arrogant. But after watching a clear and obvious degradation of Google’s own SERPs this past year, all under the guise of algorithm improvement, I really have to wonder if this is nothing more than a strategic cash-grab.
Conspiracy Theory? Definitely. (But then, every conspiracy tends to contain seeds of truth…)
The other thing that all of these “improvements” have done is left gaping holes in their ranking process, particularly regarding duplicate content. You’re probably already aware of this, but at the moment it’s possible to essentially just go and steal content from almost any site (aka. scraping), post it on some crappy splog – and if you “play to the Panda”, you will actually de-throne the original site in the SERPs.
No, really – that is happening right now, as we speak. And all the blackhatting scrapers are having themselves a little gangsta party. (Many of the people reading this, including myself, are victims of exactly this issue). Thanks Google, what a huge improvement.
Conspiracy, Wall Street butt-kissing, stupid ideas, releasing algo changes prematurely – whatever the truth really is – the bottom line for you and me is that these days there’s a new set of rules.
And you either gotta play along with them – or break them.
Me?
I’m doing both…
Method #1:
Success with “Modern WhiteHat” SEO in 2012
I’m a little wary of guaranteeing the long-term effectiveness of anything SEO-related these days, but watching one of my most established authority sites take a nose-dive last year did result in about 6 months of feverish, intense investigation into Google’s new ranking patterns, and what exactly made someone a “Panda Winner” or a “Panda Loser”…
Anyway, it’s still a crapshoot, it’s inconsistent and the dust is far from settled – but here’s what I was able to determine after intensely scrutinizing my own sites, and literally about 400+ others using traffic trending tools like Compete.com and looking at their backlinks base VS ranking (identifying sites that should be far outranking most everything, but aren’t).
And keep in mind, for this section I’m basically talking about succeeding with authority sites (portals, 100+ page HQ content sites, etc). I’m not talking about ranking up little conduit sites or mini-sites.
In a word – the “formula” for your best shot at success with white-hat SEO this year is summarized in one word:
OVERKILL
And I’m not talking about being aggressive, or building “thousands” of backlinks. No.
I’m talking about building multiple layers of legitimacy.
Making sure your sites not only have great content, but also LOOK like an authority. Embracing the new ranking factors that Google seems to be in love with lately – sitewide content standards, social factors, user behavior statistics (like bounce rate) and passing the manual human reviews by conducted by Google staff/contractors.
Offering valid contact information, full legal docs (privacy, disclaimers, etc), professional graphics, and in general an “implied trustworthiness” that would make a human reviewer comfortable.
As far as promotion goes – focusing almost entirely on natural, “hard to get” backlinks, well-chosen commenting and social participation (quality means way more than quantity here), and spreading out a base of diverse supportive links with legitimate stuff like press releases, syndicated content/media, and so on.
Also, after charting winner/loser trends this past year, I am now fully convinced that “NoFollow” backlinks and otherwise exposure from the major social networks like Facebook (likes, wall posts), Twitter and so on are absolutely counted when it comes to affecting SERP positions.
Let’s get specific about what I believe are the 3 biggest WhiteHat success factors in 2012:
1) Every page you want indexed needs to be 100% unique and long-content.
Maybe it’s a bit excessive, but for my largest authority site yet (which I’ve been building for over a year now), my minimum word count per page is 550 words, and usually 600+. And we’re talking top-shelf content. This is definitely NOT $5/article drivel.
The first wave of Panda updates seemed to really hammer the thin-content side of things. This really hit a lot of Ecommerce sites hard. Also, a major factor here with Panda is that – seemingly – even a single “thin” page on your site has the potential to UNIVERSALLY penalize every other page of the site.
So what I’m doing is simply telling the spiders not to index any page that could be construed as thin (such as search tag pages, contact pages, image galleries in some cases, etc.). What little gain I might realize by leaving them visible to the spiders is just not worth it, in my opinion.
Forget about RSS-feed content, dupe content, “spontent”, etc. That stuff has it’s place when it comes to throwaway domains and Black/Grey Hat stuff – but get it off your authority sites immediately. It’s like inviting an audit.
2) Freshness Factors Actually Matter Now.
I still hate blogs (ironically), but I have fully embraced the need for using purpose-built CMS systems for publishing and serving up content, over an above what I’ve done for so many years until recently, which was just to build static HTML sites.
Why? Because these days, more than ever, the “newness” factor based on things like POST DATE and RSS FEEDS (your site’s) is directly contributing to SERP placement. Most of you have probably already noticed this.
We’re all seeing recent blog posts starting to occupy much of the first page on a higher percentage of SERPS, and it’s only increasing in frequency. In fact – many of the blogposts (or otherwise time-stamped content) I’m seeing ranking in the top 5 spots is outranking results from majorly established sites with backlink volumes in the 6-figure range.
What this also means (as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now) is that to consistently rank for a certain keyword set… you need to be adding content frequently. For the longest time, this really wasn’t a factor, aside from what the pundits were telling us.
But these days… it seems it finally is.
3) “Social Media” is (Unfortunately) Now a Part of Essential Linkbuilding.
Getting “likes”, “tweets” and all the rest of it is now a very real ranking factor. Additionally, so is your author tag (rel=”author” and rel=”me”). We knew this day was coming, and its arrival has been tumultuous, simply because it’s far from being a refined science like traditional backlinking (and it’s easier to exploit).
Since this is still fairly new and largely unscientific at this point, I’ll just leave it there. But it definitely matters – that much is undeniable. And you need to be encouraging or even incentivizing users to “share” your content as much as feasibly and tastefully possible.
Again, today it’s all about the layers of legitimacy, if you’re going to be investing months of time and/or serious investment to get an authority site rolling in 2012 and beyond…
However – what if you’re still just at the “I need traffic” stage, and building out a large authority site is out of the question?
Well, a few years ago, you could rely on a nice, steady stream of traffic from medium-sized static sites. For several months, if not years.
These days – you can to a point, but the payoff ratio of building a “medium” site compared to either going all the way with a fully-legit authority/news site – OR – just going the quick route with ultra targeted mini-sites or conduit sites, simply doesn’t add up.
It makes more sense to either go big – or to go under the radar, so to speak.
And that brings us to the 2nd pathway for SEO success in the Post-Panda era…
Method #2:
Playing Dirty
When you’re a big, well-funded country, your military uses sheer quantities of manpower, firepower and defensive infrastructure for its dominance. You can afford to have giant aircraft carriers, warships, numerous tank divisions and so on.
Campaigns are slow-moving, but widescale. You can do big things, but there’s a lot that goes into it. Thousands of moving parts. And it takes massive budgets, too.
But what if you’re some dinky little country with GDP revenues smaller than those of the average Silicon Valley software company?
You can still be deadly effective – but it’s all about stealth, mobility and adaptation.
You don’t have tank divisions or aircraft carriers. Instead, you use things like special-ops commandos, guerrilla warfare, cruise missiles and political assassins. Your strengths are that you’re small. You can move quickly, strike from the darkness, and take out key defences – all without a trace.
You also have much less to risk, much less to lose. (Although the spoils of war can still be substantial).
It’s the same with SEO.
You can become a “super-power” in your market, build a site hundreds – or thousands – of pages deep. It takes a lot of effort to get things rolling, but the results can be massive. However, the “catch” is that you have a lot to lose. (Just ask EzineArticles). And if things go bad… you’re basically SOL.
You can’t just “throw up a new site” in its place. It’s back to the drawing board, with another year’s worth of effort just to build up some momentum again.
But if you’re small… You can rebound in a matter of days.
It’s all about striking fast, hard and letting your sites run their course. If they get de-indexed, penalized or smothered by competitors – who cares? Just throw up another, and turn the site into linking inventory or just sell the domain.
The key to making it work, though, is knowing exactly what to sell, and then blasting that offer with as many mini-sites, exact-match-domains, database-driven sites and whatever other tactics you feel comfortable with.
The beauty of this is that it’s repeatable & scalable. I wouldn’t call it “BlackHat”, necessarily (that more or less depends on how you promote your sites). But it’s not WhiteHat, either. That much is sure.
Anyway – since this is quite an extensive topic – here’s a few starting pointers, if you’re going to go down this road…
Starting Points for GrayHat Success in 2012:
1) Become a Wizard at Keyword Research – Since you want to be focusing mostly on a single keyword target for each minisite, you REALLY want to know your keywords. Aim for high-traffic 3 word and 4 word phrases in HOT markets.
2) Focus on Markets You Know Inside & Out – Most of the really hot niches I’ve stumbled into or researched over the years typically have hundreds of viable primary-target keywords, especially if you can geo-target. You’re far better off scaling and spreading into proven markets with proven offers.
3) Buy Up Aged Domains Like a Mother – Doesn’t really matter if they’re EMD’s (exact match domains), although if you can do both – awesome. Why aged domains? Because they’ll rank up quickly, and Google still doesn’t seem to be applying the “sandbox effect” if you build links quickly to an aged domain (that hasn’t been dropped). Speaking of EMDs…
4) And Exact-Match Domains If Possible – While aged domains will rank fast, EMD’s will rank strong, though it may take a bit of time. And usually they’re… well… eyesores. S0metimes your spot at the top will end abruptly, but, hey – sometimes its better to have ranked and lost, than not ranked at all
5) Play with Google’s Panda Strings – This means buying (yes, buying) social factors, using a CMS like WordPress with time-stamped content (and being creative in regards to how often these sites are “updated”), making sure the few pages your site contains are deep, long and 100% unique. Including phone numbers (think: SkypeIn), contact pages, obviously make sure there’s a privacy policy, etc. Look the part.
6) Spread Your Risk – Learn about how to spread your sites across multiple IP addresses. Especially if you’re rolling out multiple sites in the same niche. You don’t need to put each site on its own IP, but at least spreading them across a few IPs is a prudent measure. It’s sort of like the whole egg/basket thing.
7) What About Backlinks? It’s All About Magnitude. Not Volume – Get good at buying backlinks (home page links in particular), and quality blog commenting (for example, using tools like ActuallyRank). Those are the two strongest types of links you can build for GrayHat campaigns.
A close third would be 2-tier links (boosted Web 2.0 links). In a nutshell, this means building pages linking to your money site on Authority sites, like Squidoo/HubPages/InfoBarrel/Blogger/WordPress, etc. and then blasting the crap out of those with masslink tactics (but don’t aim masslinks at your actual moneysite).
Please note: I absolutely do not endorse or recommend the use of mass blog commenting to build up a 2-tier structure or linkwheel. There are other ways to build mass numbers of backlinks without spamming someone’s blog.
However…
Link Diversity Matters Too - In Addition to the real backlinks (see #7), you’ll need to essentially “camouflage” them with a diverse base of supportive links. Things like directory subs, bookmarks, press releases/articles, and perhaps any of your preferred private networks, such as LinkVana or BuildMyRank. This is the usual stuff, but you’ll want to really get strategic here, since you’ll need to watch your bottom line closely.
(You’re not promoting authority sites – the key is automation and keeping it economical).
And finally…
9) This is “Freight Train SEO”. Literally. I remember as a kid, counting how many boxcars a train would have as we waited at the railroad-crossing in the car. It was just one after the next. And if you want to hit the search engines “like a freight train”, that has to be your strategy as well.
To succeed at grey-hat, you need to just keep it coming, all the time. One site after the next, one keyword target after the next. The more you can automate and/or team-build to make this happen, the better.
The same goes for sites that might fade off the SERPs, get deindexed or just otherwise lose their steam. Since this is a mass production, you need to have a plan for those. To some extent (and with a careful watch on your IPs), you can use them as linksources for new sites you’re putting into production – or sell them for their content or remaining revenue.
But regardless, you need to have a plan, and you need to be methodical. Because with very few exceptions, every GreyHat site has a shelf-life. And the idea is to basically establish a comfortable “throughput ratio”, where your sites that see growth or steady traffic on a given month exceed the sites that fade or completely fall off.
It could be rolling out just one money-site per month, or it could be 100. It really depends on your own capacity, the niche, your budget, etc. But regardless, make a logical & consistent system – and stick to it.
————————————————————-
Anyway, folks…
I know I’ve only scratched the surface here, but hopefully you found some value, somewhere in that big mass of drivel I just posted.
For 2012, it may not be the end of the world – but it is the end of “comfortable SEO”.
You either have to go all the way (Overkill WhiteHat), or you have to get really clever and systematic (GrayHat). If you can do both, that’s even better. But regardless, hopefully I was able to summarize things for you, and paint a clear picture of how to make upward progress this year.
————————————————————-
For those who might care – here’s what I’m doing these days:
* This year, basically my “Overkill” project is a massive, massive review site. It’s been in development for about a year now, we have usually around 4-5 writers going steadily with it at any given time – and it’s not even public yet (that’s still a few months out). It is by far the largest-scale affiliate site I have ever attempted to roll out (albeit with a web 2.0, user-driven twist). And we even have our own fancy publicist person. (Go big or go home, right?)
When it’s ready… I might even share this one publicly on the blog. Maybe it will be my first, celebratory backlink
* My “GrayHat” projects are still largely in the lead-gen front, and they’re picking up steam, lately. It’s actually quite exciting. We’re finding that press releases, especially with eReleases.com, have a lot of traction with them.\
* ActuallyRank is still going strong, and members are seeing awesome results (one guy is now reportedly making about $150K/yr from sites promoted just from commenting alone – awesome!), although I’ve refrained from re-promoting it until we have our new platform completed. Which adds a whole other service, that has nothing to do with blog commenting, into what AR already offers.
In fact, here’s what another customer emailed me recently:
Hi Chris
You said, “(mind if i maybe use as a testimonial?)” With regards to what I said, “I’m using Actually rank at the moment – works quite well… One of my sites (about 2 weeks old) shot from not in top 1000 to number 10 with 6 links.” Not a problem. Just please don’t use my full name.
Also, here are my results with my other AR test websites (new rankings since I sent first email 5 days ago):
So far, In just over 2 weeks of using ActuallyRank every 2nd day making about 15 comments each session (less than an hours work every 2nd day) with the comment url field pointing back to 3 different websites of mine, I have made the following Google SERP improvements (Nov 27 – Dec 12):
Website 1 (6 months old): From position 8 to position 2 with 14 “live” links.
Website 2 (2 months old): From position 52 to position 19 with 11 “live” links.
Website 3 (2 weeks old): From not even in top 1000 to position 9 with 9 “live” links.
Notes:
(1) I use Market Samurai Rank Tracker.
(2) I did absolutely no other SEO or link building during testing out AR on these 3 websites of mine.
(3) I make worthwhile and value adding comments on the links AR provides and never once left my keywords inside the comment.
(4) I don’t focus on PR – I focus on commenting on the green AR rating links.
Loving this shit,
J. K. [Full name withheld]
———————–
AR certainly had its hiccups initially, but at this stage it’s smooth-sailing. However, we are finding that quality DoFollow inventory on the entire internet itself is simply shrinking each day. This presents a real challenge for us in about an estimated 1-2 years from now.
(Which is why we’re slowly going to be transitioning AR into a service that offers much more than just DF blog prospects, over the next several months…)
Anyway guys…
That’s what’s new in ChrisLand and PandaVille.
I hope you’re doing awesome.
Talk soon
-Chris
P.S. Oh – I think I forgot to mention something…
Yes, I did. Affiliate Recon launches in about a week from now. What’s that? Well, you’ll find out shortly
Let’s just say it would be really handy if you wanted to have, oh – I dunno – a repository of niches, offers and specific keyphrases, but only in markets where several affiliates are verifiably doing 6+ figures in profit, right now.
(For example, did you hear about “MT __________”? It’s a trade analysis program that costs about $2,000 and gets roughly 3600 searches per month. And you could rank on page one for the product term itself in about a week, because aside from the vendor’s site, there are no other true contenders).
And that’s one of hundreds of opportunities that Aff Recon just hands out on a silver platter. Oh, and just for fun, it’s fully integrated with SEMRush, too. So you can dig as deep as you’d like into keyword possibilities, using 6-figure niches and products as your “idea launchpad”. I think it’s pretty effin cool, myself
(And yes, before I get lambasted with emails – Aff Intel members get the first data set on the house).
We are re-opening ActuallyRank early next week. Currently, our capacity is about 60% filled, so we can take on enough members to fill the other 40%.
However – and this is important – there’s been some changes to the way that ActuallyRank delivers DoFollow inventory, as well as how we handle PageRank. (I’ve copied a recent announcement that went out to our members a short while ago, below).
Also – immediately following this relaunch (within a few days), we will be raising membership prices for new incoming members. So if you want to make sure you get a spot, AND lock in the current monthly rates, you’ll need to join basically as soon as you can, when the order form is live next week.
(Remember that our order form was only live for about 24 hours when we launched initially – we’d filled to capacity in a single day. It wouldn’t surprise me if that happens again).
Stay tuned…
Cheers
~ Chris
P.S. Note that the ActuallyRank Website will be adjusted to reflect the new inventory quotas and service changes before we start taking new members – which is currently in progress as we speak.
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Here’s the Major Change announcement that members received recently:
Subject: A Major Change, re: ActuallyRank & PageRank
Hi {!name}
This is a very important email that directly affects what you receive as an ActuallyRank member.
I know it’s on the long side, but please read it carefully…
First – we sincerely apologize for the wait as we propagate everything over to our new server (and interface).
It’s taken a bit longer than expected, but rest assured we are scrambling and busting our asses in the background to get this back up and running (and keep in mind this is a one-time annoyance, we only have to do this one time)…
Second – and this is very important:
————————————
For three unavoidable reasons (explained in detail below), we are shifting our focus away from PageRank (for the % of monthly inventory quotas) and focusing on metrics that actually matter.
For months we’ve been telling members not just to focus on their high PR URLs, and yet at the same time, it seems hypocritical since when we launched, the core focus was “you’ll get X amount of PR2+ inventory”.
The bottom line is that we’ve learned so, so much from the initial growing pains and harvesting/filtering literally millions of URLs (as well as watching hundreds of members interact with thousands of blogs), that what we NOW know about blog commenting, DF URLs, PageRank and a whole host of other things paints a much different picture from when we first launched this service a few months back.
Here are the 3 main reasons why PageRank will no longer be the standard of ActuallyRank..
1) PageRank = Age.
Since Google only updates the PR ratings 2-3 times annually (and lately it’s only been about ONCE per year), that means that EVERY URL with a PR of 1+ is usually a year old, or more.
Furthermore, the high-PR pages are usually SEVERAL years old.
To put it bluntly:
BARRING VERY RARE CASES, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NEW URL (LESS THAN A YEAR OLD) WITH HIGH PAGERANK.
This might not have any bearing on a link-buying campaign, but when it comes to blog commenting, it means that high-PR inventory actually represents the WORST use of your time, because those sources are LEAST FRESH.
Next…
2) PageRank Simply Doesn’t Line Up With Real Rankings Anymore…
Ever noticed how what ranks these days in Google is the NEWER content from ESTABLISHED sites?
Those are the pages Google views as important. And yes, normally the root domains of the source sites have a high PR rating, but much of what you see ranking strong these days is NEW content (with very active cache dates) and 0 PR.
In terms of blog commenting, the cache date is a far more useful metric. It means that your link will be “noticed” and weighted frequently, and originates from a powerful base domain.
(For this very reason, cache date is one of the biggest factors – along with Domain Backlinks – in the PageJuice score that we display along with each URL).
If you don’t believe me, here’s what SEOMoz and Aaron Wall from SEOBook have to say about PR:
And there’s thousands of other experts/source who will all corroborate the same thing.
But the most pressing reason why we are replacing the PR quota is this…
3) We Cannot Promise a Number That Doesn’t Exist.
This is the big one – and it’s an issue that didn’t really rear it’s ugly head until yesterday when we finally had enough usable data (from when we started months ago until yesterday’s major export from our servers) to run some statistically reliable estimates…
You’ve all seen the “drama” of our first two months, as we scrambed to fix holes in the algorithm, etc.
What we now have is literally a DoFollow search engine scanning around 1.2MM URLs per day, of which anywhere from 7,000 – 9,000 will pass all of our filters as a legitimate, commentable DoFollow link (well under 1%).
This has provided us a very interesting perspective on just how “big” (and small) the web really is, as well as how things actually break down in terms of PageRank ratios.
We have found that approximately 4.5% of URLs originating from blogging platforms (WordPress, etc) have a PageRank of 2 or higher. This means that for every 100,000 DoFollow URLs we find, maybe 4,000 or a little more are PR2+
What this means is that if you want a list of 10,000 DF URLs, where 2,000 are PR2+, what you ACTUALLY need is about 50,000 DoFollow URLs.
And what THAT means, is that for every URL we can provide for our members we are tossing out FOUR perfectly valid, useable DoFollow URLs. Our “waste rate” is quite literally 5:1, or 500%.
Now, that might not be a problem at first glance.
Just generate a crap-load of inventory, right?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
You see, there is a limited number of blogs on the internet. Period.
We estimate roughly about 150 Million or so that use a commentable platform, perhaps a little more, and yes there are more added each day – but there’s attrition, too.
(For example, WordPress stated in 2010 that there were around 30 million sites using its platform.)
Now, given that estimated figure – and factoring in our own data on % of avg DF count from URLs in general, that means that there is likely somewhere in the range of 1 to 2 Million DoFollow URLs that would pass our filters and offer commenting, that exist in the world, period.
That means that at our current “throwaway” rate of 5:1, there are effectively only 200K – 400K URLs that we can possibly supply our members with, EVER, unless we padded “new” inventory with old data.
And guess what that means?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It means that unless we change the 20% quota from PR2+ to something that’s actually feasible -
August will be the last batch of URLs we deliver, even with just a few hundred members.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To further corroborate this, what we’ve seen in recent weeks is that our massive harvesting system is returning less and less inventory after comparing the freshlists to our previously-delivered data.
So unless we change the quota – there simply aren’t enough DoFollow URLs that exist on the web to burn through.
And – this is important – we are effectively “ignoring” (but still displaying) PageRank values as of TODAY.
We can no longer afford to waste what we now realize is a limited resource (DoFollow URLs).
Funny how much you learn when you build your own search engine.
Obviously, we wish we knew this before. But it would’ve been impossible to predict (or even know) until we’d harvested and filtered millions of blogs.
So here we are.
So…
Where to from here?
The “New” ActuallyRank: Quotas & the Future…
==============================================
URL Quotas:
———–
At this stage, it’s obvious that PR can no longer be the defining factor, unless we only promise a 4% PR2+ quota, which just doesn’t make sense for multiple reasons.
Especially since PageRank – for all the reasons I stated above – really doesn’t mean much anyway.
So going forward, what we will do is set a precedent using the scoring system (which heavily relies on Cache Dating & Domain Backlinks), where each member block receives an even ratio of scored URLs compared to our master database (which feeds the member blocks).
This means that if, say, our master DF database contains 1,000,000 URLs with scores ranging from 0 – 100, where 20% are 40+ (or whatever), then each member block will mirror that average.
This way it’s sustainable, and we are no longer just throwing out perfectly good backlink sources over the “PR Scramble”.
The focus from now on will be TRUE RANKING FACTORS. Not just the “perceived value” of PR.
This way, we can feasibly support about 600 – 800 members, without hitting the critical mass wall, since we estimate that each month there are roughly enough newly-discoverable DF URLs to support that amount.
Share Rates:
————
All member blocks will now be accessed by 15 members (14 other than you), across the board.
For members at the $69/mo level, this is already the case. For others, it will literally make zero difference, especially considering that mass-exports are now a thing of the past (and abuse will GREATLY drop).
Speaking of pricing…
CURRENT Members are Grandfathered, But…
—————————————–
Whatever you pay right now will always be your rate, but as you can likely guess based on the very real limitation on what can be harvested in terms of Quality DF inventory…
…ActuallyRank will no longer be the entry-level service it once was.
We’re not entirely decided on what the new membership fees will be (for INCOMING members, NOT existing ones), but it will be quite a bit higher than it is currently.
The bottom line is ActuallyRank cannot support thousands long-term. Only a few hundred.
And let’s face it – given how hard it really is to find THOUSANDS of DF URLs… it’s a bargain at the current rates.
And finally…
More Than DoFollow:
——————-
Soon – and in ADDITION to, NOT a part of – your regular monthly inventory of DoFollow URLs, we will ALSO be providing you with very choice backlink sources that aren’t explicitly DF.
In reality, and as many of you know good & well, the NoFollow tag only affects PageRank.
NOFOLLOW BACKLINKS GET CACHED, WEIGHTED, AND EFFECT YOUR SERP RANKINGS. IT’S BEEN PROVEN MANY, MANY TIMES.
There’s no sense hiding from that fact.
Especially these days, as Google is quickly adapting to social media, tweets, etc. (That’s where it’s all headed… like it or not).
Obviously, DF inventory will be the mainstay of ActuallyRank because it’s “zero risk” linkbuilding in terms of effect, but we can’t ignore the VALUE that we can provide by using the other half of our harvesting capabilities…
This way we can provide very large volumes of EXTREMELY High-Scoring URLs, in addition to your regular DF inventory.
We hope to have those modules in place by mid August (stay tuned).
Tracking Backlinks:
——————-
Real quick:
This has been our most-requested feature-add (especially since the news about exporting), and rest assured that it’s being developed and tested. Soon you’ll be able to track your live backlinks after commenting from within the ActuallyRank panel.
BOTTOM-LINE:
————
We now view ActuallyRank as an extremely valuable “vault” of DF inventory, which is continually being refreshed and re-filtered.
I have no doubts that, perhaps aside from massive marketing agencies or Google themselves, we have the single largest database of DoFollow backlink sources in the world.
I no longer view this inventory as some sort of intangible, endless resource. It’s not.
There is a FINITE amount, and we are only a few hundred thousand URLs away from what I believe is the international level of critical mass. (There will always be new URLs to bring in each month, but not *nearly* the 400K+ per month that we’d need if using the PR quotas…)
What does that mean?
1) What we have is extremely valuable, and can no longer be wasted for the sake of PR quotas. It also cannot be squandered by allowing mass-exporting.
2) We only have room for members who truly understand the value, and aren’t obsessed with PR or quantity-backlinking.
It’s pretty amazing to think, actually, that so far each month, our $299/mo. members have literally been receiving about 0.5% – 1% of the web’s ENTIRE dofollow inventory that exists, monthly.
If nothing else, this might just serve as a wake-up call for a few people who perhaps don’t appreciate what they have access to with ActuallyRank. (Just like it did for us. I don’t think any of us *truly* understood the value of what we’d built until we calculated just how rare DF URLs really are, as of yesterday)
Finally – and I want to make this very clear – this is one of those cases where I really wish life had a “rewind” function.
Ideally speaking, we wouldn’t have built an inventory-based service upon the assumption that the web was “big enough” to support a limitless potential volume.
But we did make assumptions. We had no idea there was literally only a couple million DF sources out there, at a growth rate of just 50 – 100K per month. (I don’t think anyone else did, either).
And for that, I truly apologize. It was a catch-22.
It’s been a learning experience to be sure – and I can only put forward my pledge that we will strive endlessly, as we have been from day one, to come through for our members and provide unprecedented value.
I’d like to thank everyone that has stuck with us so far.
I know that the road at the beginning was far from smooth.
But what you’ve seen the last couple months – and what you will continue to see – is a literal SEO treasure trove of linking sources.
And it will only get better as time goes on- as we add features, types of linking sources, and so on.
Thank you.
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Well folks…
That’s about it for today.
Keep an eye on the login page – it’s a matter of hours now until we’re back online with the new interface.
As you can imagine, I’ll have a lot more updates in regards to the new quota system, and particularly the new additions & features as they’re scaled out.
Talk very soon,
Chris Rempel &
The ActuallyRank Team
ActuallyRank.com
e: contact@actuallyrank.com
P.S. There’s probably going to be some cancellations today as a result of us replacing the PR quota. That’s totally OK with me, and here’s why:
1) That member is taking the spot of someone who will appreciate true ranking factors
2) They would’ve ceased to be a member come August anyway, since there wouldn’t be enough “PageRank” to go around.
3) It is what it is. I can’t “invent” more DoFollow inventory. If anything, I’m actually blown away at how much more valuable our service just became, considering that our members literally have a monopoly on the world’s entire DoFollow inventory. It’s incredible, and incredibly valuable.
So there’s no hard feelings or anything. If this isn’t the service for you… that’s okay. It makes room for others who can effectively utilize their inventory.
However, do keep in mind that subscription price points are going to be properly adjusted (for NEW members) to the value of the inventory.
In contrast to the previous post, I’ll keep this really short.
We’re calling this one “The Magnitude Method”.
Think “Conduit Method” – with a 7-figure twist.
The package includes a detailed blueprint, and our dedicated CMS (which we call GeoLeads Pro).
Here’s a breakdown of both the Magnitude Method blueprint, followed by a video which showcases a live, real-life “Magnitude” site going up using the GeoLeads CMS.
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The Magnitude Method – What’s Inside…
* How to methodically “sell” high-ticket items all day long
* 4 viable business models that will generate massive revenue – even from trickles of traffic. At least one or more of these biz models can be applied to any industry – even those that are highly regulated. In some industries, you can apply all four.
* Exactly how to sell a network of “Magnitude” sites using 2 different value equations (and you’ll be amazed at how much these sites are truly worth!)
* How to construct a brainless, “can’t-say-no” offer to sell a network generating active leadflow to a major business in a Magnitude market – as well as viable ways to do this even if you’re not a “go-getter”.
* How to protect yourself when you exit (sell off) to ensure you don’t get screwed.
* Big-Ticket deals and regulation – what you need to know, legitimate alternatives, and how to play in regulated markets legally.
* How to “make your own affiliate program” with local professionals. (This is a lot easier than you might think, and my single method has never failed to work).
* How to ensure you get paid from selling leads, contingency-based referrals, and so on. There is one simple setup you can use to completely eliminate even the temptation for your JV partners/clients to “hold back” a dime – and no, it has nothing to do with having a giant contract.
* Comprehensive list of Viable Markets/Niches. This one speaks for itself (and it will have your head spinning)
* How to get listed in Google Places legitimately and easily, regardless of where you live and your sites are.
* How to pull the easiest traffic in your life in local markets (not just from traditional geo-keywords) that will still convert like mad.
* And in general – how you really can (with some initial setup) become a dominant player within massively-profitable markets and sell your network of sites for an obscene figure.
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Now, here’s a glimpse of our CMS in action…
As well as a real-life example of one of my Magnitude sites, getting constructed as we speak:
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The Magnitude Method (including the CMS) goes live this coming Tuesday.
It’s limited to 300 copies, or 72 hours, whichever comes first.
We have no plans to sell this long-term or at any point in the future. This is largely because I’m busy enough with ActuallyRank, larger-scale projects, and in all honesty – I’m actually very busy with my own “Magnitude” campaigns, and I’d rather focus my efforts to that end.
Also – just so we’re all 100% clear on this – I won’t even see a dime from this launch. The only reason we’re releasing this at all is to cover Matt’s time spent coding it. (Matthew Chitty, who developed Affiliate Genie and MAKO as well).
Now, obviously, if you’re one of the few who gets in on this – yes, we’ll have ample support for you. But we can only handle 300 customers, maximum.
So that’s how the cookie crumbles folks.
Personally, I believe this is – as I’ve said – the Final Frontier of affiliate marketing.
You can either keep on pushing $29 products… or spend the exact same amount of effort and start playing with the “big boys” – and my previous blog post shows just how possible that is, even with the smallest influxes of traffic.
The difference being that a site selling $29 offers could maybe sell for, I dunno – a few grand on a place like Flippa? But if you’ve got a small network of sites pumping out leads consistently every week in markets where customers are worth a fortune…
As promised – here’s a look behind the curtain of my own campaigns in the “Final Frontier”…
I’ll start off by simply posting the screenshots with brief explanations, and then I’ll describe the mechanics – and “master plan” – below.
So take a look at how much we’re processing – and with how LITTLE traffic…
A Snapshot of My Results in the Final Frontier
Sample Campaign: Specialty Mortgage Leads, in Canada.
How much traffic, exactly? Well, we have a few sites that reach the Canadian market, with more on the way as we speak. One site (MAKO-driven) currently averages around 200 uniques a day, but that is far and away the highest traffic performer, due to the long-tail traffic (traffic currently comes in from about 2,600 unique keywords – the site is still building its foundation).
The average of our other sites though is more like 7 – 15 visitors a day.
One site in particular hits that range pretty much dead-on, and just because it’s a bit more of a “personal” site, it actually generates nearly as many leads as our leading MAKO (directory) site. From 1/20th the traffic. (Personalizing – which I’ll go over a bit further down – is huge.)
Anyway, here’s a bunch of screenshots, sampling lead-flow and some examples of above-average leads…
It’s Not Often Somebody’s as Proud of Traffic Like This:
(Traffic from our best-converting lead gen site, captures REFI & reverse mortgage leads in Canada) —————————————-
…But it Brings in Consistent, Quality Leadflow like Clockwork…
(And yes, I’m just using Aweber to handle/store leads. It works just fine, we simply set it up to email us notifications when new leads come in. My biz partner calls each lead within 20 minutes of coming in, unless it’s 3 AM, etc.)
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Sample REFI/Reverse Mortgage Lead #1:
($600K equity estimated, with no mortgage balance. There’s a lot to work with here, and credit is almost a non-factor, since it’s all secured by equity. If they want a reverse mortgage, they can get up to 40% of confirmed equity. If they want a REFI or line of credit, basically it’s whatever they’re comfortable with, and that’s when the credit rating matters since it effects interest rate.) —————————————-
Sample REFI/Reverse Mortgage Lead #2:
($1.2 Million Equity, $40K mortgage balance. This could just be a massive deal for all involved.)
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Sample REFI/Reverse Mortgage Lead #3:
(And here’s one for $2MM, and zero mortgage balance. It doesn’t get much bigger until you get into higher end commercial…)
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And Here’s Some Sample Lead-Flow From One of Our Other Canadian Mortgage Campaigns (Challenged-Credit, Self-Employed, Investors, Private Funding, etc.)…
(We use the Instant-Leads application to handle these ones, but we could just as easily use Aweber here also…)
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Sample Creative Finance/Commercial Lead #1:
(The screenshot obviously cuts out the personal identifiers, but in this case a commercial investor on Canada’s East Coast wants to pull $400K out in equity, secured against his $1.5MM commercial building.)
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Sample Creative Finance/Commercial Lead #2:
(This is a classic challenge-credit deal, where it will probably take some creative financing to make it fly. The guy has a solid income, likely self-employed or highly-paid in the oilfield would be my guess – since it’s an Alberta lead. But poor credit is going to be a problem with traditional lenders, and if he’s self-employed as well, income verification can be a tough hurdle if he’s reducing his income too much with aggressive accounting/tax filing.
This type of situation is one where there’s definitely options, but they won’t be cheap – and it’s the “creative” solutions that can yield serious draw as a broker.)
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So folks… that’s just a small snapshot of what we’ve got going on in the “Frontier”.
I’m more or less pulling back the curtain a bit for two reasons:
1) To show you what’s really possible in terms of quality leadflow, even from “nothing” traffic in many cases, and
2) To show you how much money changes hands in these industries every day – and that all it takes to “capture” a section of that market is to simply get visible.
So yes – this really is just like “regular” affiliate marketing, but we’re not dealing with $39.95 transactions. Some of these, as you’ve seen, can literally be in the millions.
It’s an entirely different playing-field.
Speaking of which…
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This is the REAL Reason I’m Now “Playing” in These Markets…
Here’s my endgame with all this stuff, folks. The master plan, if you will.
While the revenues can be pretty staggering in these kinds of markets, and you can certainly generate an absolute killing just by controlling the leadflow in high-magnitude markets – as with most businesses – you make the most money when you EXIT.
Selling the farm, as it were.
Not only from a numbers perspective, but also (at least where I’m from), a tax perspective. You see, when you sell a business as a Canadian, it’s treated as an asset. Therefore, that influx of cash is a capital gain. And only half of the sale amount is applied to your income bracket when you file taxes on it.
That means that if you sell something for $1MM, or whatever, $500K is absolutely tax free. Yours. And even if your tax rate on the other $500K is 50%, (which is insane, the top bracket where I live is about 44%) you still end up walking with 75% of the total. So in this example, $750K.
Do you know how long it takes to bank $750K, even if you’re personally earning, say, $500K a year?
After accounting for income tax (the big one), lifestyle/living costs, carrying costs, unforeseen crap, etc. – saving $150K or more a year at that level would be impressive. And that’s if you’re earning half a mill a year, consistently.
That’s 5 years of saving with a vengeance. And that’s assuming that things don’t change (and they do). And really, that’s still less than $1 Million in savings. Sounds great? Not when it takes earning $2.5 MM in pre-tax profit to get there…
Now…
What if you built and sold businesses, once every 2 years, for about 2.5 times the annual projected revenue – OR – otherwise an equivalent that will net the buyer a solid ROI?
Again, let’s use the 5 year time frame.
Let’s assume that, again, you can generate $500K a year in profit, pre-tax, with each business. I know I’m oversimplifying this, but in this case, you’d be looking at a combined “payday” from both sell-offs of around $2.5MM as a capital gain, if we assume that we can sell each biz for around the 2.5X annual multiplier.
Which means that at the very worst, you would keep, after tax, just shy of $2 Million. That is more than double what you’d have if you just “made a shitload of money online” and tried to save as much as you could. Trust me… I’m well acquainted with the horrible tax sting of just doing the latter.
And – that’s just using the revenue multiplier equation.
What if we shift this a little, and think about the buyer’s perspective…
Now, it’s one thing to sell some big-ass, cash-printing affiliate site in a popular market like fitness, consumer software, public records, etc. You can certainly bring in some nice capital gains by doing so, but your multiplier ALL depends on ROI.
And how much money is really on the table when you’re talking about $40 products, or even $400 lifetime customer values? Even if your site draws in 2,000 visitors a day, or you have an opt-in list of 50K subscribers – what’s that really worth if your niche is “Learn Guitar”, or “Lose Weight”?
Well, it’s probably worth a nice tidy sum – but it’s not worth a fortune. And NOT because of the traffic, or even your revenues. It’s because you’re probably pretty-much maxing out the possible ROI from your visitors to begin with. Your buyer can only expect to see slight gains ahead of what you’re already yielding. For them, it’s an equation of cash-flow vs. risk.
This is why the “12 month rule” is pretty standard when people sell affiliate-driven and AdSense sites on places like Flippa. Yes, some people can sell them off for 2 years rev, or more, but it’s not the norm.
BUT –
What about markets where each customer has an average lifetime value (for businesses at the direct-supply level) of say… $10K? Or $100K?
For example – what would an aggressive direct-lender pay for an entire network of sites generating active leadflow EVERY SINGLE DAY? What’s it worth to them to fund an additional $50 Million (or whatever) in mortgages every year?
Or what about a 5,000 strong opt-in list of responsive day-traders who like receiving your newsletter, and actually act on your recommendations? What’s that worth to an IPO/promotional firm? Or even an investment division of a major bank?
The answer to both scenarios is – MILLIONS.
The effective ROI for a top-of-the-food-chain business in a “Magnitude” industry will undoubtedly realize millions of dollars in newfound revenue from a fresh source of consistent leadflow.
(Think about it. What’s one single mortgage worth to a lender whose borrower sticks with them for the entire duration of a home loan? What – about double the price of the house?)
So here’s the big difference… and the reason why I’m so passionate about the Final Frontier.
You don’t sell your business based on what YOU can make.
You sell it based on what the BUYER will… which can be staggering, even if you effectively guarantee a 500% ROI in the first 5 years for them, based on your historical and projected leadflow.
And best of all…
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It’s NOT Saturated! (Yet)
Wanna see an example of this in living color?
Head over to Google and type in:
* parking lots for sale
With or without quotation marks, doesn’t matter.
How many exact-match domains do you see?
How many aggressive affiliates do you see setting up linkwheels, blasting out thousands of articles & press releases, etc?
How many root domains do you see targeting that specific title tag?
CURRENTLY – ZERO.
This is a million-dollar keyword. This makes keywords like “registry cleaner” look like a freakin’ lemonaid stand. It gets 4K searches per month. And it’s GEO-friendly. There’s hundreds of variant geo-handles you can target as well (“parking lots for sale in los angeles”, etc.). You could literally build the pre-eminent authority AND leadflow source in a major sector of the commercial real estate world.
Just by setting up a 3-page site with an exact-match domain, focused title tags, and building 20 backlinks. You could pull in leads for both investor-financing and real estate.
And there’s thousands of other keywords like it.
Literally, just fill in the blank:
“[Big Expensive Thing] for sale”
“[Big Expensive Thing] for sale in new york”,
Etcetera.
Then you set up a network of sites targeting the major scope of keywords in that sector, and just start driving leads. Hook up and ally with brokers/agents as needed to help your visitors, but really – what you’re doing is:
1) Building a pre-eminent force in a market where millions of $$ change hands every day
2) Building an uber-valuable lead-base that you can tap any time you want (or that your future buyer can…)
3) And then selling it off to someone who can pay you $XM, and then turn around and make $XXM for themselves.
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Proof of Concept?
Well, aside from the fact that I see people spending $20/click (happily) and racking up $80,000 PER DAY Adwords bills in some of these markets on places like KeywordSpy.com – the proof is inside these industries themselves.
I was first exposed to this kind of buyout-insanity last year, when I was trying to set up a membership site with a investment banker who previously worked with Merril Lynch. Basically, I was just completely and utterly floored at the kind of money his colleagues were happily willing to pay just for SOLO MAILOUTS to an investor list.
Responsiveness was the key – but I remember my jaw hitting the floor when a broker was looking to spend $850,000 just to send a one-off IPO promotion to a list that averaged an open rate of at least 10,000 responsive traders.
(In our market, a solo sendout to a list of 10K subscribers is worth what… maybe $3K? At the most?)
And when these guys would buy up intellectual property, it was beyond staggering.
From that point forward – as well as after my experience with “Rick the Realtor” (look back in last-year’s blog posts) – my view of what’s really possible with the “affiliate marketing” model drastically changed.
And it’s very much the same within the mortgage industry, the merchant service industry, etc. These are things I’ve seen first hand, and I’m sure many of my readers have as well within their own respective industries (and perhaps in a past career-life).
It’s not about the “traffic”, or “12 months revenue”. It’s about what someone can easily make, quickly, from your resources.
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No Matter How You Shake It…
This is Unquestionably the Final Frontier.
And, as I’ve shown above… it’s more than possible.
No, it’s not as “automatic” as traditional affiliate marketing. Yes, this takes some setup – and yes, there are some legal issues to consider when you start playing within the realm of regulated industries.
If you can get a cut of the transaction itself – awesome. You’ll make a killing. If not – you’ll still make a killing. Just set up a marketing service contract that gets renegotiated every month based on the client’s overall sense of ROI. Or hell, just sell the leads as a flat fee.
Because at the end of the day – when the EXIT is your true goal – who really cares what the current setup is?
The fact is – especially since these are current NOT markets saturated by the mainstream affiliates – potential buyers will see your network of sites as a force to be reckoned with. You may not realize this, but your skills as an affiliate are MASSIVELY VALUABLE when applied to Magnitude markets.
Not only in terms of leadflow and massive-value client lists, but also in terms of TIME. Major businesses usually prefer acquisitions to boot-strapping. It’s faster and easier. It’s not like selling to another webmaster. It’s actually the furthest thing in the world, from that.
Is it “brainless”?
No.
Is it “easy”?
Well, the ranking bit probably is. But the other stuff does take groundwork. (Hint: Rank first, then reach out. Much easier to ask someone if they can take on your existing leadflow that you “don’t know what to do with”).
Is finding a buyer “guaranteed”?
Nope. But at the same time, it’s just the law of supply and demand. When a business is hungry, and the ROI makes sense – it’s a matter of simple logic.
But I know for myself – this is the route I’m going to continue following with my “affiliate” campaigns. And from what we’ve generated already, and from what I know is possible first-hand, there’s simply no turning back…
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Oh yeah… How could I forget…
We actually developed a CMS specifically for building sites of this purpose.
It was originally going to be the equivalent of “Affiliate Genie Enterprise Edition”. An authority site builder, database-driven, and designed solely for professional styling mated with ultimate conversion.
Built-in, Aweber-supported lead gen form builder.
Built-in split testing panels.
Professional themeing for the express purpose of building sites that can EASILY pass the “trust test” as being an established local business.
The original idea was to do a full-on product launch. Hitting clickbank, rounding up the big mailers… etc. The whole shabang.
That all changed once we started getting more involved with “Magnitude Marketing”. As soon as we started seeing the results really start to come in, rolling out another “Affiliate Genie” didn’t really stir our souls, in comparison.
Therefore, we’re not going to put it on the market. To support another long-term CMS product would be detrimental to our current projects, particularly our own Magnitude campaigns.
However – because it truly is the cat’s ass when it comes to quickly deploying lead-gen sites (in any market), or even massive authority sites in standard affiliate markets, there’s no sense in not sharing it with my customers. Plus, since Matt (my JV partner on that project) was the one who put in the hundreds of hours coding it from the ground up, it just sort of seems like a waste just to use it ourselves.
So here’s what we’re gonna do:
1) Tomorrow (or shortly thereafter) I’ll show you a real site we are presently building with our “Magnitude” CMS, and go into complete detail as to what it does.
2) Shortly thereafter, we will sell this to a maximum of 300 people – OR – 72 hours. Whatever comes first.
3) All the orders will actually be sent straight to Matt (just a headsup if you see a different order page than usual), since he’s the one who developed it, and
4) That’s all she wrote. You’ll never see it again.
Cool?
Stay tuned for a detailed breakdown of what this thing actually does – as well as a live example of a Magnitude site that we are literally building as we speak, with said CMS.
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Congratulations!
You’ve successfully made it to the end of my gargantuan blog post/novel.
I hope it’s sparked a few ideas, and hopefully, at the very least enlightened you to a whole new world of possibility on the net.
Who knew that it was the same amount of ranking effort to become a dominant player in an industry where the average customer is worth $10K+…
…as it is to rank on page 14 for “best acne removal cream”.
Take care – and stay tuned.
-Chris
P.S. Yes, I’m showing you a real, actual site of mine in the next day or so. Please have the creativity and common decency to NOT copy my content, nor try to set up an identical site.
I do actively send out DMCA notices to hosts (if I have to).
Today’s blog post talks about what I feel is currently the biggest opportunity for “early-adopter” affiliates in 2011.
Markets where earning $X,XXX per transaction is commonplace, the “offers” are mainstream and sell themselves – and where only a trickle of traffic is needed (in comparison to normal/competitive markets).
The way I see it – this is truly the “final frontier” of widescale, untapped opportunity for affiliate marketers.
I’ll explain why in detail, below.
But first – a quick update on stuff:
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Wow… it’s been quite a while since I’ve sent out a mailing/blog post. Several months.
I can sum up the reason for my “silence” in one word: ActuallyRank.
We literally filled capacity on launch day, and I haven’t publicly reopened the doors since (aside from filling a handful of spots here and there from the waiting list).
So what’s the deal? Well, as members have seen first hand – it’s been quite a journey. The last several months we’ve had one sole focus – building the ultimate system. And what started as a scramble to fix our algorithms eventually turned into a massive operation of a different scale.
We literally built our own “DoFollow” search engine. It pulls in about 1.3 Million URLs a day, and filters them down to just a few thousand that are 1) DoFollow and 2) Pass our filters. To do this, it currently takes 5 dedicated process servers and a staging (relay) server running 24/7.
Not to mention, an ungodly amount of IP Addresses & API keys…
Here’s the key “plot points”, in order of appearance:
* ActuallyRank launches
* Algorithm not consistent across large data volumes
* We manually intervene at first. This involves hiring 53 people short term. (Yes, fifty-three).
* Simultaneously, we completely re-build the system. I bring on the guy who literally developed XML to build a codebase capable of processing and filtering thousands of URLs a second. He’s not cheap (his average invoice so far has been about $15,000 per month).
* “V2″ (our internal name for the new system) is launched, tested, and refined. It takes 6 dedicated servers to to load-share so it doesn’t fall over. It’s insane. The new accuracy % is over 80% – infinitely better than when we started.
* We develop our own multi-layered scoring system to provide far more useful information about URLs, with the help of AttackSuite’s PageJuice Calculator
* We roll out a brand-new user interface, based on feedback. Some functions are removed to eliminate abuse.
* A few days ago, our servers process the largest batch of DoFollow URLs yet (getting about 500K DF’s from almost 60 Million URLs scanned). The data-set is large enough to show us something very important. Namely, that there are FAR LESS dofollow blogs than anyone ever imagined. If it’s inline with our current percentages, it means that there’s only about 1 – 2 million commentable DoFollow URLs that exist in the world. (Keep in mind there’s currently only about 150 Million blogs, total)
* And our system has already brought in the majority of them. Wow.
* This means that ActuallyRank is far more valuable than we’d ever imagined. And it also means that our pricing is going to change (for new, incoming members). Additionally, the PageRank quota makes no sense, since DF inventory is in reality very limited, and the PR quota forces a 5:1 waste rate.
Our members have watched this play out in real-time.
It’s not for everyone, but those who have made the most of their inventory have seen incredible results.
Oh – and we already have 50+ success stories with major ranking boosts – usually just from members building a handful of comments.
Updates on re-launch to come shortly. (In the meantime, if you’re interested, you’ll want to get on the waiting list – which is on the ActuallyRank order page – we have to adjust the salesletter before taking any new members).
Just wanted to let you know what was happening.
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Okay – back to the Final Frontier…
If you haven’t guessed it already, the “final frontier” is marketing big-ticket services (mortgages, real estate, insurance, investing, etc.) in Geo-Targeted, or local, markets.
And yes, I know I’ve already (sort of) talked about this in the past, and on the blog.
However, what I talked about about previously was promoting National/Network offers with GEO traffic. And that works very well, but it’s really just long-tail SEO at the heart of it.
But what I’ve found from my own campaigns – especially over the past year – is that the real money is in directly promoting and teaming up with brokers who can process deals on a provincial/state level. This is where you can make $500 – $5,000+ per “sale”, on a routine basis, and from a trickle of traffic.
Why?
5 reasons:
* Competition. Basically, there isn’t any. You’re competing against busy, frazzled brokers, mom & pop shops, and clueless local SEO firms. There’s the odd player, but in general, there’s few enough that PAGE ONE is up for grabs.
* Conversion. When you team up with a “real person”, you can personalize your site. It won’t just be yet-an0ther lead-gen squeezer. That will instantly boost conversion.
* Magnitude. You’re not selling leads anymore. You’re taking transaction kickbacks. That means that $450K mortgage or real estate transaction you referred (which is just business as usual in much of North America) means you’re getting a 4 figure commission. This also means you DON’T need much traffic. Work with the right broker and you can generate a full-time income from 5 leads a week. Less than one a day.
UPDATE & Note:Transaction kickbacks have legal ramifications in some industries (particularly mortgages & real estate), depending on region and type of transaction. You will need to research these details as they vary widely based on where you are, or where you want to do business.
In some cases it’s as simple as properly disclosing the referral arrangement and making sure that only the broker handles the actual client management, and in other areas it may simply be easier just to get licensed yourself so you can pass deals to another broker and get included on the deal. (The cost and training requirements involved in getting a real estate or mortgage broker license are usually quite minimal. It’s a few weekends, the fees might be a few hundred bucks. Big deal. Keep in mind that lots of people sell real estate / broker mortgages very casually, less than part-time).
* Local Places.This is the big one, folks. Now that you’re representing an actual local broker/business, you can hold an “office” (a virtual one, if your broker already has their own site registered with Places) and gain a spot on Google Maps and, subsequently, the top-fold of Page 1 results for most of the relevant local keywords.
* Scale. You can do this in every major or even mid-sized city in North America, and much of Europe. Think about how many MASSIVE transactions (mortgages, housing, commercial, investments) occur every single day just in your city alone. Now multiply that by several hundred.
The opportunity is staggering. As an example, some of our sites only get about 7 – 10 visitors a day, and yet they bring in about a lead a day. That might sound terrible compared to traditional marketing (list-building, for example). But in the “local” world, it’s HUGE.
One active lead a day (in the right market) can equate to generating massive commissions on a consistent basis. For example, this month we’ve already had two mortgage leads requesting a REFI on properties worth over $1 Million. If they close, then we’ll have a 5 figure month. That is insane for a site that basically receives NO traffic.
And yet, in this New Frontier – it’s just another day at the office.
Yes, it takes a bit more setup than traditional affiliate marketing. But it’s a double edged sword.
Traditionally, affiliate programs are easy to join – but traffic is the challenge.
In the New Frontier, “affiliate programs” need to be created by you (which isn’t actually that hard), but the difference is that TRAFFIC is a cakewalk. Literally, a cakewalk.
In the New Frontier, it’s all about magnitude and conversion. Getting a lot more from a lot less.
Take a moment and think about this…
How many affiliates are busting their ass writing articles, putting up site after site promoting Clickbank’s finest (or whatever other network offer) for $29/sale, in markets getting pummeled with hordes of new sites, pages and affiliate activity every single day…
A lot. The majority.
It takes a LOT of traffic to reach 5 figures a month in affiliate revenue. Traditionally. $10K in net commissions means you’ve sold a crap-load of $40 widgets (or $400 products on Amazon/CJ)
But when you’re talking about $400,000 mortgages, $3 Million life insurance policies, $350,000 home purchases, etc… these are things that happen by the dozens, DAILY – just in your own neighborhood, let alone your city.
In some cases, even referring just ONE or TWO of these a month will equate to 5-figure revenues. And it’s truly not that hard to do. All you’ve got to do is bring in a trickle of traffic. (Something I’m sure pretty much everyone reading this is capable of doing!)
If you have trouble believing this, here’s something to consider:
Despite what you might think of the market, PayDay Loans and otherwise “Personal Loans” are currently pretty hot in the leadgen space. Yes, they’re controversial, and no I’m not saying “promote them”.
However, what I will say is this – in most cases, these services can only offer loans up to $1K, sometimes a little more. That is NOT what I call magnitude. And yet, how much do the aggressive Personal Loan offers pay affiliates per lead (NOT sale, lead)?
$35 on the low end, $60+ on the high end. PER LEAD.
Remember folks, in most cases we’re talking about a $1000 loan, here. And yes, I know the interest is sky-high, but these numbers are NOTHING compared to the numbers in the “real” lending space.
So if a lead for a $1,000 loan is worth $35 – $60….
How much is a lead worth for a $400,000 refinance?
Or a commercial investor lead looking to finance 60% of a multi-family building for $1.2 Million?
This is stuff that happens EVERY DAY, folks.
The only difference between driving “PayDay” leads for $35 a pop VS “real” lending leads for $XXX – $X,XXX+ per transaction comes down to your keyword targets, content and title tags.
Food for thought…
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Part 2 will take you behind the scenes and show the types of leads my sites get, and just how little traffic it really takes to do this.
So stay tuned…
Cheers,
~ Chris
P.S. Yes, this is a leadup to something, but it’s not what you might expect…
I figured the easiest place to conduct this “feedback session” was right here on the blog.
Basically, I’m going to lay out our current plans for significantly changing (and improving) the way we score, sort and display data for your URL inventory.
And I’ll also mention (briefly) the other logistical changes planned to come into effect in your user-interface. And I’ll finish off by asking “what did we miss, and what do you want?”
Sound good?
Great – let’s get started. First up is URL Scoring…
We all know that PageRank is essentially useless when it comes to representing fair link juice value. Not only is it about a year old at any given time, it’s also simply not indicative of REAL factors, such as average cache time, inbound links to the domain/page, etc.
So we’ve developed a scoring algorithm that takes the following factors and scores them accordingly (out of anywhere from 3 to 10 points or so), coming up with a ballpark “total” of a little over 100. To do this, we’re using a combo of the SEOMoz API and our own scraping.
Based on how we’ve been benchmarking this system so far, this is what we’re seeing in terms of how it’s scoring…
100/100 would be URL like google.com’s home page.
60/100 would be a key page on Apple.com
40/100 would be the home page of an established niche authority site
20/100 would be a strong, visible internal page or blog post of a niche authority site
10/100 would be a good link opp on an internal page of a site that has some authority
5/100 would be a an average backlink on a new blog post
1/100 would be the equivalent of an “article link” on some content-farm-style article directory.
And here are the factors we are currently using (and “weighting”) to arrive at these scores… I won’t reveal our weighting for each factor, but you can probably guess which ones get the most attention.
For example, let’s examine the URL: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ using our new link scoring system. The values from our sample link-scoring algorithm are returned in bold.
Our actual scoring algo (how we rate the data) is proprietary, but this should give you an indication as to how much MORE valuable this kind of evaluation is compared to PageRank.
Here’s what comes back…
Page-Specific:
* How many juicy backlinks to this page? 116871
Data Source: seoMOZ API This is the # of *followed* links to this page. seoMoz is more along the Google #’s compared to the outrageous Yahoo Site Explorer #’s , but this will all be relative so it doesn’t matter much #’s wise.
* How many total backlinks to this page (inner & outer)? 305452
Data Source: seoMOZ API This is the total links in to the page from the same domain, outside, no followed and followed…
* The seoMoz Page Authority of the top 3 external *juicy* links in? 77.27
Data Source: seoMOZ API seoMOZ grades every page similar to google’s PR, so this takes the top 3 pages outside of the domain that’s linking to this page and then averages the score. So the top 3 pages linking to this page on apple’s site has a rating of 77.27 / 100 .. which is very high
* The seoMoz Page Authority of the top 3 internal *juicy* links in?94.80
Data Source: seoMOZ API This is the same as above, but concentrates on *internal* links
* SeoMoz Page Authority? 90.96
Data Source: seoMOZ API This is their version of PR power … which is similar to what we’re using here, but I have no idea how they calculate their ratings. I mean in reality we could just take this number and use it on your links .. but I think it should just be 1 factor
* SeoMoz mozTrust for Page? 7.9
Data Source: seoMOZ API (time included) This appears to be a similar calculation to the above, based on SEOMoz’s own internal scoring. We may use this or we may not, depending on manual corroboration.
* How many outlinks from this page? 0
Data Source: The actual page of the url in query This is how many links this page is sending outside of their domain (followed or no-follow) (I’m getting this directly from their page)
* What’s the PR of this page? 9
Data Source: google toolbar search Google pr from google toolbar search
* How many delicious bookmarks for this page? 621
Data Source: delicious web search Grabbing this data from delicious directly to show social power in
* How many twitter mentions for this page? 10
Data Source: twitter API Grabbing via twitter’s api, which is rather limited as the # of mention isn’t all that accurate obviously, so this may be a smaller factor. Right now 10 the highest number of tweets received.
* How many facebook likes for this page? 80048
Data Source: facebook API Grabbing how many likes it’s getting from Facebook, another social in factor
* How long ago was this page cached? Apr 16, 2011 23:32:11
Data Source: google toolbar search A good factor to show how often it’s crawled, and how SOON your backlinks will actually get noticed. * Does this page rank in the top 10 for the 1st 3 words in their title (not including site.com)? yes
Data Source: The actual page of the url in query (included) & google search Basically it will take the 3 words in the page title – not including their domain if it’s there, and see if it ranks in the top 10 of google for it. A really good page should be on the 1st page for almost any title …
* Does this page rank in the top 10 for the 1st 2 words in their title? (not including site.com) yes
Data Source: The actual page of the url in query (included) & google search Same as above, but just using the 1st 2 words in the title tag — this will really show a page’s power to rank
* Is this page linked from domain base page? (aka 1-click) yes
Data Source: seoMOZ API
Pretty simple here, is this page (assuming it’s not the homepage), linked to from the homepage .. aka 1-click from home
Domain Specific:
* How many backlinks to the domain base 953665
Data Source: seoMOZ API Same as above but this time for the homepage
* What’s the mozDomain authority for domain 99
Data Source: seoMOZ API seoMOZ’s PR for the whole domain, a really good sign of power
* What’s the mozDomain page authority for domain root97.65
Data Source: seoMOZ API Same as above, except pertaining to the homepage
* seoMoz mozTrust for domain root? 8.0
Data Source: seoMOZ API Same as above, but for domain
* Is this domain in DMOZ? Yes
Data Source: search of dmoz’s site Boost if the domain is in DMOZ … (search directly in dmoz)
* What is the PR of this domain? 9
Data Source: google toolbar search Google pr of the homepage from google toolbar search
* Is this domain in the Yahoo Directory? Yes
Data Source: search of yahoo directory (0.413 secs) May or not be a factor these days, but shows a little quailty if the site’s in yahoo’s directory .
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Well folks…
That is all the crap we consider when we formulate this new score. Seems a little more accurate and valuable than a PR level, if you ask me…
As I mentioned above, we take all these factors and score them based on their overall importance in comparison to their respective counterparts. As you can probably guess, factors like inbound links and caching times have a much higher scoring weight than the number of bookmarks on Del.icio.us, and so on.
But since we are in the process of integrating all of this into the user-interface, what I need your feedback on is 2 things:
1) Are we missing anything?
2) In addition to the xx/100 score, what THREE data values (eg. How many backlinks to page, clicks from homepage, etc.) do you want to see alongside each URL?
Now is the time to let us know.
Please leave your comment below…
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I mentioned above that we’d talk about logistical improvements to the User Interface here as well, briefly.
I fear that if I go into too much detail this blog post will simply be too long and involved to properly “reply” to from your point of view. So I’m just going to summarize the changes we’ve made (which you will see very shortly) in the new UI:
* Pagination. This is the big one. You now no longer have to click 800 times to get back to the page you were on when you reported a link, or maybe lost your spot. You can easily skip to any page of your inventory in one or two clicks.
* Add Specified Number of Top-Rated URLs to Project. Yet again, another big timesaver.
* Export Projects to CSV
* Create Your Own Standalone Database of “Favorite Links”. These are different than Projects because they’re actually your own database of solid sites/pages that you find as you navigate the system over time, building up your own “ultra-goldmine” so to speak.
* Projects Now Include Work Description Area (Optionally), for people who are outsourcing.
* POSSIBLE: Scan Your URLs and See How Many Backlinks are Live. (This is in development).
Those are the major ones. And that concludes our UI improvements section, for now.
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Alright folks…
This is truly YOUR service.
So please tell us:
1) What we’re missing (UI or Link Scoring)
2) What you want to see if you had to choose THREE data points from our link scoring algo alongside each URL, in addition to the 100 point score.
As you can hopefully see by now, your input is taken seriously, and we are committed to making ActuallyRank totally untouchable in terms of value.
Link Diversity Matters Too - In Addition to the real backlinks (see #7), you’ll need to essentially “camouflage” them with a diverse base of supportive links. Things like directory subs, bookmarks, press releases/articles, and perhaps any of your preferred private networks, such as LinkVana or BuildMyRank. This is the usual stuff, but you’ll want to really get strategic here, since you’ll need to watch your bottom line closely.
