I Saw My Competitors' Websites...Now I'm Depressed

[CindyBrock]

Been there, done that.

I also have seen competitors on blogs and such that I'm posting on. Usually, I just treat them like any other person. If they say something interesting, I agree. Believe it or not, I have gotten 35% of business by having a relationship with my competitors.

Here's what made the difference for me: my passion. If I 100% believe that what I'm doing is for the greater good, then I know it's important that I keep going because there are people who need my product/service and they will find their way to my site.

Besides...did you ever think that maybe your competitors are worrying about you?

[Engage]

Thanks Mike. Yes, we have different mindsets, different relationships with publishing. I'm more "artistic" you seem more mechanical. And that's good, as it allows us to explore and learn.

I'm particularly interested in your link building procedures. If you'd like to be my tutor, perhaps you might address this big picture question.

Could you apply your system to a single site? That is, if you only had one site, could you use your automated technology to get 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 links to that one site?

If yes, perhaps we might quiz you on the details involved?

[MikeF421]

Could you apply your system to a single site? That is, if you only had one site, could you use your automated technology to get 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 links to that one site?

If yes, perhaps we might quiz you on the details involved?

Yes you could easily use it for one site, 10 sites, 100 sites, whatever. The number of links you can create is really only limited by you.

Whether or not it makes sense for someone to do it on one site, would depend on your ROI for that site.

The stuff I use is not free. I started out using free methods, but then as money started coming in, I reinvested it in tools to save me time.

I could certainly work up an outline of the linkbuilding and off-page SEO work that I do for myself and my clients if anyone is interested.

A lot of it is a process that I have just gotten used to doing. I don't have a written out manual or anything that I follow. I do have a checklist for sites, but most of that would look like gibberish to anyone but me.

[MikeF421]

Wow! Once again I have learned amazing things here. This time I have to ask about the Web 2.0 thing.

Mike, when you say you created web 2.0 sites, what things did you do to accomplish that? I understand that "web 2.0" means creating a more interactive, user-driven site. But I'm unclear as to, say, what applications you use to created a web 2.0 site.

I am a pretty "big-picture" kinda guy. I get the main concepts, but get a little stuck on the "hows" in this new (to me) and wondrous land of internet marketing.

Thanks again!

Ken

By Web2.0 sites I mean creating sites on things like Vox, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, etc. I build a lot of those kinds of sites with links pointing to the main site that I am working on. Then I hammer the crap out of those sites with backlinks.

As for applications I use, I do a lot of it by hand. I sometimes outsource it for bigger projects. I've used LinkBuilder Pro. Way too buggy. I've started using Web2.0Bot from Incansoft. My results have been a little inconsistant with that one. It is a brand new program, so there are some kinks to work out. I'm sure eventually I'll be able to turn a lot of the work over to that though.

[Engage]

I could certainly work up an outline of the linkbuilding and off-page SEO work that I do for myself and my clients if anyone is interested.

An outline would be greatly appreciated Mike, I'm surely interested. Please feel free to explain what you do for clients, how much you charge, etc.

If it helps to have a specific example to refer to, I have a nature site with about 10,000 links, and am interested in learning if I might be able to leapfrog up to the next level, say 100,000 links.

I have reservations about automated link building, so if that's what you're doing, perhaps you might address the issues involved there?

Whatever you care to share will be read with interest here, thanks.

[kentheriot]

By Web2.0 sites I mean creating sites on things like Vox, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, etc. I build a lot of those kinds of sites with links pointing to the main site that I am working on. Then I hammer the crap out of those sites with backlinks.

Mike,

When you say you hammer the crap out of those sites with backlinks, do you mean that you are putting links to your main site on those Web2.0 sites?

Ken

[MikeF421]

Mike,

When you say you hammer the crap out of those sites with backlinks, do you mean that you are putting links to your main site on those Web2.0 sites?

Ken

No, those sites typically only have 1 link to the main site. Maybe 2 if I am linking to an inner page as well. I meant that I build as many links to those Web2.0 sites as I can.

[MikeF421]

I can share some of what I do. I don’t want to sound too much like a commercial or for anyone to think I am trying to use someone else’s forum to solicit business. With that out of the way…

I’m going to deal just with off-page SEO. On-page is pretty basic, IMO.
For almost all of my clients, I am doing more than just SEO work. I sell my services as a package, so the SEO work is included in the price. The monthly fee is anywhere from $500-$3500/month. For just SEO work, it would depend on the competition and what is needed to get the job done, but the fee I have charged for most people is $400-$1200/month. If it was a really involved project, I would probably charge more.

Another disclaimer… I in no way guarantee any kind of results. Anyone who promises you a #1 ranking in Google is usually full of crap. There are no guarantees when it comes to SEO. It’s like a puzzle you are trying to solve. If you have ever watched the movie Armageddon with Bruce Willis, which I have watched way too many times (it’s one of those movies that if it’s on, I find myself watching it and I don’t know why), I always think of the part where everything seems lost, the government is trying to remote detonate the nuke, and it would appear the drilling operation has failed. Then Harry Stamper gets on the mic and tells whoever is listening at NASA something like, “I have never failed to reach a depth I have aimed for.” Well, that’s how I look at SEO. I have never failed to reach a result I was shooting for, but again, nothing is guaranteed.

A few other things… As of right now, I don’t care about Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Ding, or any other search engine other than Google. Getting a number one ranking on Yahoo is like being King of Turd Island. Google is what almost everyone uses. Plus I’ve never had a site rank high in Google, but not rank high in the other search engines.

As far as automation and worrying about building too many links, etc. It is my belief that when you hear anyone warning you about building links too fast or that automation is bad and you should do everything by hand, it is complete and utter nonsense. I generally find these arguments coming from people who are looking for excuses to be held back. They say that somehow doing everything manually is doing it the “right way”. Or that it’s unethical and black hat to use automated tools. Just complete BS in my opinion.

Does that mean you can’t achieve top rankings without automated tools? No, of course not. If you have all the time in the world and keywords that are only moderately competitive, then go for it. My time is too valuable to me. I have a girlfriend with 2 kids, and we have 2 dogs. One of those dogs is a Siberian Husky. For anyone that has owned a Husky, I am sure you can attest that a Husky most days is like having about 4 kids. If I can find something that takes 10 minutes to do what normally would take me hours to do myself, I am damn well going to use that tool.

Automated tools also don’t take the place of your mind. No matter what tools you are using, you still need to know what you are doing and have a plan to achieve your results.

I do not believe you will get slapped by Google for building links too fast. I do not believe it because I have not seen it. I never hesitate to build links when I can. New site, old site, big site, small site. I don’t care. I have never had a site get punished by Google. Can it happen? I’m sure it can, but I have yet to find the threshold where that happens at. I’ve had sites where I built 500-1000 links a day for weeks at a time. No problems.

Having said that, there are a few things I do to protect myself and my clients, not because I believe in that famous “Google slap”, but because you never know when Google will change the rules. It’s their house. They make the rules.

1. Stay away from things that look suspicious.

2. I always do everything behind proxies. No footprints.

3. I build a lot of linkwheels with Web2.0 properties (Wordpress, Blogger, Vox, LiveJournal, Webs, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.). I still build a lot of links to any main site I am working on, but the majority of the links point to these sites which then point to the main site. (I would say about 70% of the links go to the Web2.0 sites, 30% go to the main site. If the site is 1-2+ years old or older, I go more 50-50.) These sites get tons of links everyday, so I can pretty much point as many links to them as I want without it looking out of the ordinary. Also, I find that these sites will often start achieving a high pagerank of their own. That can be useful for linkbuilding on future projects.

4. Whatever I do, I try to do it on a relatively consistent basis. I don’t build 10,000 backlinks in one day to a site and then build no backlinks again for 2 months. If I am doing socialbookmarking, I do it on a regular basis. A few pages every week.

5. Another thing I do is never target only high pagerank backlinks. I’ve come across people doing this. See rule #1. If a site only had links from PR 6+ sites, that would be a bit odd wouldn’t it? So I make sure to mix in plenty of unranked pages, PR 0, and PR 1 sites as well.

6. But I do target those high PR pages heavily. I forget where I read it, but I came across a report once that related PR backlinks in this way: Think of getting a backlink from a PR 1 site as the equivalent of getting 1000 backlinks from PR 0 sites. And if you get a backlink from a PR 2 site, that is equivalent to 1000 backlinks from PR 1 sites. And so on, and so on. Now I don’t know for sure if those are the exact relationships between them, but from my experience it is probably not far off.

Those are some of the general principles I follow. Now getting into some actual tools I use, techniques, etc…

I believe strongly in forum profile backlinks. I have seen them work. I used to subscribe to Angela’s backlink packets each month. I saw some pretty incredible results immediately. For those that don’t know what this means, it is simply finding message forums with a high pagerank. Then creating a profile there. Most message forums will let you create backlinks on your profile in an About Me section or somewhere else in the profile.

As I said, I used to subscribe to Angela’s monthly packet. That was before I found this amazing little tool called Scrapebox and figured out that I could find as many high ranking forums as I wanted. I currently have a personal list of about 800 PR 4+ vBulletin forums that I use. I have a second list of another 1000, but few on that list have been tested. I don’t know if the forums are still in existence, have an open registration, allow backlinks in your profile, etc.

Here is one instance where automation is a lifesaver. I have recently started using a program called Sick Profile Submitter that will go to each of these forums, create a profile, confirm the email for registration, and stick your links in the profile. I have used other tools for this in the past, but I am really liking Sick’s program right now.

For social bookmarking, I use BookMarking Demon. In the past I used SocialBot, and still like it. BMD is a bit more expensive, but does a lot more. It has automatic account creation, which is a real timesaver. You can load in a bunch of webpages for bookmarking and then schedule it out. So you could have a page bookmarked at 3-5 different sites a day for say the next 10 days instead of hitting all the social sites at once. You can also have it use different profiles while doing this. I have about 60 profiles I use. Another nice feature of of BMD is that you can import profiles. I have a few people who I trade profiles with all the time. So these profiles are bookmarking all kinds of different sites all the time. BMD will also bookmark random sites if you want it to. No footprints. Nothing obvious for Google or anyone else to find.

Blog commenting is something I find extremely boring and tedious. I use Scrapebox for this as well. Scrapebox will find Wordpress, BlogEngine, and Moveable Type blogs relating to any keywords you choose. I could write a whole book on all the things you can use Scrapebox for. It took me a little while to figure it all out, but once I did… Wow. I couldn’t imagine having to live without it.

Now there are those that say they only do blog commenting manually because they want to add something useful to the blog. I just think that is BS. Let’s just admit it. You are trying to get a backlink. You are adding a comment for completely selfish reasons. You don’t care about the conversation on their blog. You want a link back to your site. With very few exceptions, if you couldn’t get a link out of it, you wouldn’t be leaving a comment. So… Scrapebox. Trust me. And no, they have no affiliate program. Believe me. I wish they did. I would sell the crap out of that one.

So while someone else manually submitted their 3-5 comments at blogs, I just submitted 450. Will they all stick? No, but even if just 10% do, I’m still winning. There are some things I do with Scrapebox to ensure that I get a much higher percentage than this of links that stick, but I am not going to go into them here. Like I said, just all the things to do with Scrapebox could be its own book.

One of the great features about Scrapebox that I will mention here is it will go back and check for your links. So about 4-5 days after I run through a blog commenting session, I go back and have it check for my links at all those sites where it successfully posted to. Many are held for moderation, so they won’t show up right away. That’s why I check for them a few days later.
I hate going through the trouble of building links and Google not finding them. There is no guarantee that Google will find them, but you can try to help Google along and increase your chances. I take all the sites where Scrapebox tells me I now have links showing and export their URL’s. Then I load those into BMD for bookmarking.

I will also take those sites, along with my profile links and mash them into RSS feeds. There are free tools out there that will do this for you. For example, www.html2rss.com will allow you to put in any url and it will turn it into an RSS feed. I don’t put them all into one feed. I create many different feeds that then get submitted and pinged with RSSBot (one of the best paid tools you will ever find).

I haven’t even touched on article marketing (which I do a ton of), video marketing, social marketing, or press releases, but this getting pretty lengthy.

Not everyone may agree with all of my methods or opinions, but I have used them. They have worked for me. SEO is not an exact science. The rules can change at any time, and you need to be ready to change too. However, backlinks, backlinks, backlinks is what it has been about for years. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

If anything on here is against any of the rules of the forum, please feel free to remove this post. I'm not very good at reading or following rules.

[MikeF421]

I just posted a nice long message here and it's being held for moderation. I guess it was too long.

If it doesn't show up, I saved it and can PM it to anyone interested.

[angienewton]

Mike,
Any posts with links are usually held for moderation so that's what happened. I just approved all your posts, thanks for your patience. We have to set the forum up like this because it would be a big spammy mess (trust me!).