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30 days – day 17 – white hat sites – Elgg

June 19th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in 30 Day Website Network

I’ve briefly touched on ELGG and how easy it is to set up a web 2.0ish social site with it.  I usually use ELGG installs as a foundation site because you can set up cron jobs with it to pull in feeds into different profiles.

An example is the 1k visitors a month a single profile on a elgg install sends to one of our reality sites.  Total time setting it up sorta goes like this. The actual profile gets about 4000 or more visits a month.

Install elgg (15 minutes)

Add advertising (10 minutes)

Set up 10 profiles (15 minutes)

Get links (2 minutes using sitewidelinking or even bookmarkdemon or the command center)

Even for a newbie it’s about an hour set up total time.  Sure that doesn’t include any real customization, or anything else.  And for a white hat site you are going to have to put some ‘time’ in.

The good news is that ELGG is about to release a new version (summer of 2008) and it looks like they are close at the time of this posting.  I’m not sure how that will affect things, but my guess is that it won’t be that much of a change and it will probably make your life easier.

http://elgg.org/

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30 Days to a Kick Ass Website Foundation – Day 17 – White Hat Review Sites!

June 18th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in 30 Day Website Network

Ok – As mentioned previously all our “Day 17″ posts are going to cover different types of “white hat” sites.  There is only ONE rule for all of these – and that’s to rank for product names…. and of course convert them to sales. These sites are your money sites after all.
If you are using real products – that also gives you the ability to use kaboodle (covered previously as well) to list your pages.

WHITE HAT REVIEW SITES

These review sites aren’t going to appear like all the other review sites you see out there – we want some street cred.  That means a few negative reviews of related products or services, and instead of being 100 percent positive we are going to throw in a few ’slightly negative’ reviews with all our good ones.  Let’s face it – who believes the 100 percent glowing reviews you read on some of these affiliate pages.

One of the easiest things to set up is a review site.   Easy doesn’t mean that you don’t need to do any planning.  Here is a little outline for you:

1.) Pick a ‘topic’ – like furniture.

2.) Pick a few products.

3.) Do some research on them – what seems popular. What sites are ranking for the terms. What does Wordze tell you that you need to rank for the product terms  (Don’t worry to much- we are going to go long tail in the end – but who says you can’t rank well for the ‘good’ terms as well with your network behind you).  The good news is you can do quite well with these types of review sites/pages when you are on page 2,3,4 in the search results.  Your visitors will be LOOKING for a reason to buy or not buy this product….. that means they will search deep.

4.) Do your research for the reviews – ie gather other peoples reviews, comments, etc..  You know how to use Google so that is where you start.

What platform to use?

I tend to use dreamweaver to make these sites, but to be honest with you there are easier and even faster ways.  One is xsitepro 1 or 2, and wordpress.  There is a (now free) plug in for wordpress that helps you run a review site.  It’s called rating dominator.
Now that I’ve dug into Xsitepro 2 a bit more I think I’ll be using it for a few things other than the types of sites I make with the Black Hat Xsitepro methods I teach in Niche Site Special 2.  One of those things is going to be these types of review sites because I can get one out in an hour or two (total time – research, comment hunting, and making it live).

So let’s say we’ve picked out a few product models, and know that we can take our competition with just a few hundred links (even less for some long tail words).  It’s time to start thinking how we are going to be doing our seo.

 SEO STRUCTURE FOR THESE SITES

The main thing we are going to be worried about here are page titles and descriptions that get some attention even when you are on page two for the search results.  For my example here we will be selling widgets :)

Example Page Titles:

Widgets Brand XXX – Negative Reviews, Complaint Information, and How to Resolve.

Widgets Brands – Customer Feedback, Complaints, Reviews, Resolution.

( Think about it – if you were getting ready to buy that widget would you click on that?)

Your meta description matters too – make sure it sounds “official”.

Well I’ve given you enough of an idea to run with I hope.  Remember through the whole process that you are trying to reach people that are going to possibly buy your widget — because that’s what they are looking for, real reviews, and a reason to justify what they want to purchase.

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30 Days to a Kick Ass Website Foundation – Day 17 – White Hat Sites Revisited!

June 18th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in 30 Day Website Network

I’ve been listening to you – and I think so many of you are having a problem with what a “White Hat” site is.  So for day 17 I’m going to cover it in a few posts.

A white hat site is your “MONEY” site – and it doesn’t even need a load of traffic to turn into money if you aren’t relying on adsense to earn your money.  Sure adsense has a place in things – but not on our ‘white hat money sites’.  Think about it – if folks are paying for related ads to show up on your site over and over, wouldn’t you do better plugging in your own affiliate links?

I know a lot of you come from the warrior forum, digital point, etc…. you think that click bank is the place you get affiliate products.  It sure is if you want to push “internet marketing” products  — but you can’t sell a sofa there.  So go sign up for some affiliate networks.  Pepperjam, cj, shareasale, etc…

It’s going to give you a HUGE range of product to promote…. and you will finally have something to do with that keyword research you have been doing.

So – to sum things up here.

  • I’m doing several posts on ‘types’ of white hat sites.
  • I want you to stop using adsense, clickbank, and “internet marketing” mindsets.
  • I want you to make sites to sell “REAL” products (like a sofa, chair, or a toaster).
  • I want you to make these your white hat money sites – and I’ll show you how.

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