Screw You Google

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.

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.

Ok so it’s time for Step one of how to build a good money make, high SERP ranking website. This step seems to “make sense” but it’s not always as clear as one would think.

First: PICK A TOPIC YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT AND WRITE ABOUT IT. I have even been guilty of building sites trying to get into some higher paying niches, but the fact is if you don’t know about it, things will take you 10x longer to write, ideas will be 100x harder to think of, and your content will be 1000x more painful to make. I made a site about snowboarding a while ago and it was BRUTAL. I couldn’t write my own content and ended up just taking it off the product I was promoting’s site.

If you don’t know about a topic how are you going to find a niche? Using any search information software you’ll get screwed because they always have crappy not-real search terms in them. “OH WOW! ‘Forex for your mom with banana syrup’ gets 1000000 searches a day!” it happens and makes it very painful when you build a nice site, get a #1 ranking for your keyword, and then get 1 hit a week.

**Revised Aug 13, 2008 – Now Google is releasing search numbers so you can get much more accurate results about related keywords here; however, still write about stuff you know about.

Second: PICK A TOPIC THAT YOU LIKE. It can be a bad idea is blogging about your job (especially if you hate what you do). This is strange advice for me to give because I am a law student and I frequently make blogs about the law, but hey, I like the law, I talk all day about the law, and when I go home I watch TV about the law and think about the law.

If you have a hobby write about it. If you like it so do other people and you can make it work.

Today was sort of a touchy feely topic, which I don’t love, but it needs to be said. Check back over the next few days when I’ll write about “Keyword Research”, a topic that mystifies a lot of people.

Ok, so what is the key to success to beating Google while still making money? Every internet marketer dreams of being ranked #1 for a competitive search term but few ever attain it. The #1 ranked site for a search term recives about 40% of the search traffic for that term, 6% goes to #2, and then #3-#10 get between 2-0.5% each. I get more traffic to most of my sites for #1 rankings for terms that are searched like 10 times a day then I do for 2nd page rankings on those terms searched 1000’s of times.

So the question becomes how do you get top SERP rankings, effectively “beating” google? Well there are 2 keys: 1) Content and 2) Backlinks. As a tool for building effective sites for this type of project I’m going to outlay a 18 step plan over the next month or so that should help you build a site in around 4 or 5 days if you work at it. This type of site can easily make $1/day, if not $10/day if done right. This might not seem like a ton of cash but they key is to build literally hundreds of these smaller sites. If you have 100 sites each making you $1 a day while doing nothing more that is a nice little chunk of change.

I’m going to encourage people to take up a new project. Build a new site along with this guide and track your results. If you follow this guide along with any other SEO knowledge you have there is no reason why by the end of the project you won’t have a successful site. Give it a shot, work hard and you WILL be successful.

Check back in throughout the week for updates and participate in the discussion. I’m far from being the utmost of authorities on the subject, all I can tell you is what worked for me.

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:

1. It takes 5 seconds to get indexed, but 5 months to get a decent ranking
2. They make arbitrary decisions without warning that hurt site
3. Nothing ever gets done right the first time (I realize they have a lot to consider, but that’s why they are a billion dollar corporation with thousands of employees)
4. When I build a site for them to like… they get mad (wow… Google and My Girlfriend… future article?)
5. They punish the little guy (blogger) while catering to the big guy (advertisers)… can anyone say PayPerPost

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