A discussion of somewhat grey-hat SEO, and more in my quest to get rich online
April 27th, 2009 — General
Ok so the site I blogged about a long time ago that was in the google sandbox came out a while ago. I figured I would let you all know and see. It only took like 9 month, which is one of the longer sandbox runs I’ve ever heard of. I’m now #1 for my main keyword and in the low numbers for a lot of others. Anyway here is the moment we’ve all been waiting for:
August 14th, 2008 — Beating SEO
A lot of people don’t know what the sandbox is or when they’ve been sandboxed. Well a phsycologist would say the sandbox is a soul crushing creation by google ment to discourage spam sites and having the side effect of making a lot of web entrpruners go bald.
The google sandbox is really a penalty a site gets when it’s doing TOO well (getting too much search traffic), and it is a new site. This is a major reason why Vic @ blogger unleashed heavily recomends buying pre-owned domains. What I’ve generally expiranced is that your site will hit around 200 search visits a day then get dinged down to 40-50. The sandbox MAY only affect competitive niches. The sandbox MAY only affect sites that build up links “strangley” quickly. The truth is no one knows for sure but these are a couple of theories. I had a site about the upcoming election that was getting well in excess of 1000 search visits a day and it never got sandboxed, it had a TON of crappy links.
Grizz is planning on doing some expiramenting with the sandbox which God willing will be very benifical. He talks about it in his post about flipping pre owned domains.
Anyway the real point of this post was to SHOW people what it looks like to be relegated to the sandbox. A picture says 1000 words so here it is:
The sandbox is a couple things for sure 1) it’s painful 2) it’s real. Other than that not a lot is known for sure.
March 19th, 2008 — Building A Site
Ok so it’s no secret that the URL of your site is one of the most important factors in placing high in the rankings. Choose a URL containing your keywords.
TOP LEVEL DOMAIN (the .com part of your URL)
Generally choosing a generic top level domain is a good idea. .com is the most popular but from everywhere I read using .org, .net, .info or whatever. People generally want to get .com, and I would recommend that as my first choice, but getting another generic one is fine, just harder to sell if you ever want to flip it.
**REVISED Aug 13, 2008 – Google is now heavily penalizing .info domains due to them being spammed heavily so stay away.
If you are going to target a niche in a non-USA country using a country specific top level domain might be beneficial. for example: in Canada using a .ca URL might be beneficial (as it will rank higher at google.ca).
DOMAIN NAME (the screwyougoogle part)
This should contain your keyword string. If you want to target ranking high for “why turtles operate quickly” then getting the url “whyturtlesoperatequickly.com” is your best option. Generally (at least for me) if you want a keyword(s) that are searched regularly all the URL’s are bought up so I’ll add on a word that makes it sound like a magazine or paper like “today” or “daily” to get “whyturtlesoperatequicklytoday.com”. Alternatively think about better targeting what tye of visitors your want, if you’re selling green widgets use “buygreenwidgets.com” instead of “greenwidgets.com”. Adding the word “online” can also be a good idea.
Basically the important thing is to realize that a lot of domains are bought up and it is hard to find one that fits you sometimes. Just keep looking and don’t get discouraged, and MAKE SURE YOUR KEYWORD STRING IS IN YOUR URL.
March 17th, 2008 — Building A Site
Ok here’s a step that works on a supposition that one would rather compete against 100 people for $10, as opposed to 1,000,000,000 people for $100,000. Check out your competition and compete for SERP against fewer, weaker opponents.
The first and most basic step is to type your search term into google [my keyword]. This will be how people will find your site, so I guess it’s the most important (it’s not really). I don’t even really look at the number of competitors at this level, what’s more important is PR. If there are 6’s and 7’s at the top few sports on the SERPs you’re in trouble with this keyword (Even 5’s are tough). If the PR’s are 4 or less you should have NO problem getting a good ranking for your keyword (Don’t worry you wont need to get to PR5 to beat a 4 if you build your site properly).
The second step is a more targeted search by quoting your keyword ["my keyword"]. This is where I start to look at my number of competitors. More than 2 million and I’m not happy, more than 5 million and I’m really not happy (will only do it if it’s a really juicy keyword), more than 10 million and I’m going and looking for a new keyword. PR is important at this step too. Hopefully no one has higher than a 5, if they do then take that into account with the number of competitors and think if you want to work this hard to make a small site.
Third do a targeted search for the top two criteria for on site keyword ranking, your title and URL (I’ll talk about this in steps 4 & 5)[allintitle:"your keyword" & allinurl:"your keyword"]. The number of sites that come up for these should be a lot lower. Look for numbers less than 50k for these, and again preferably under PR5. If there is a site that comes up number 1 rank for both of these searches and has a high PR it will be tough to beat out.
Anyway if you make it through this step and are still happy then you’ve probably found a winner so congratulations. Next time we’ll get into building your site and the fun begins.
February 20th, 2008 — General
So here I go on a hopefully long and fruitful journey down a path that will free me of the Google machine. I have many, many, many sites geared towards getting tons of Google traffic, archiving the #1 keyword ranking, and spending countless hours getting links to my sites in hopes of getting a +1 to my page rank next time the G-men (No not the Giants but speaking of which ALL HAIL ELI & SCREW YOU TOM BRADY) decide to do an update. Hopefully they will at least do it correctly next time.
5 Reasons Why I Hate Google:
Anyway… I considered blocking robots from my site but figured hey, I hate search engines at the current moment, not traffic. So I’ll allow them to spider my site and send their traffic in while I bitch and moan about how annoying they are. I know how it will go… the same way it always goes… the shitty little engines (usually MSN) will love my site and Google will say “good work, I’ll be back in 6 months, and if you’re still working your ass off maybe I’ll send you a few hits”.
So what am I going to spend my time on? I’m going to work to build a navigable site… nay a navigable community… where I will do my best to show a different way to get traffic. Web 2.0 baby! Stumble Upon, Digg, BlogCatalog… they will all be my friends; however, my #1 goal will be to provide useful information for my readers. I might even try to give a hand with some of you perusing the Google Machine’s blessing.
If you have an idea for the blog let me know. If you like the blog help the community by commenting and submitting it to all your favorite social media sites. If you want to write an article I’m always open to the suggestion.
Anyway subscribe to my feed and I’ll do my best not to let you down.
Until tomorrow continue to fight the Google machine
-DaMan
