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Are you following the rules?

June 10th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Rambling

I’m sure by now you realize that the rules are bendable.  But the more you learn you realize that some people (websites) don’t even need to play by them at all.

I’m talking about Google playing favorites with sites and allowing them to cloak and do other stuff that would get me or you smacked into serp oblivion.

  The Rules

XMCP did a little guest post over at search engine people that you should check out.  Pretty much agree with him 100 percent.

Cash in on your Competitors’ Work – SpyFu Ad History

Popularity: 40% [?]

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Aftermarket Domains because time is money!

USED DOMAINS -  or Aftermarket Domains.

Time and time again I see people start new sites. Keep in mind in this case we’re talking about whitehat sites that you’re going to put a lot of time and effort into such as a blog, forum or website. The first thing they do is go search whatever domain hosting company for a domain that works well for the site that they’re building.

I haven’t touched on this before – but I feel I need to since I’m going to be talking about White Hat sites for the next few days.  I’ve already posted a little audio blurb about it but I’m not done.  The next 4 or 5 posts will probably be all about the all important top of the pyramid (white hat sites).

Usually when you start thinking of your white hat sites the first thing you do is rush out to namecheap and buy a domain.  That might not be your best move.  It takes time to get ranked for keywords – and yes to break out of the sandbox.

Disclaimer:  All sites, and all keywords are not treated equally – sometimes a site can break right out into the rankings, other times it get stuck in limbo for 6 months…. some say longer.

The good news is that an “aged” domain doesn’t have the same problems as often.  Imagine for a couple seconds that your “white hat” site is starting off with a pr of 3 or 4, and a few hundred links out there already.  That’s an awesome head start right?  You can then concentrate on new links, better content, and monetization strategies.

That aged domain might not be 8.99 – it might be 15 dollars, it might be 300 dollars, or it could even be higher.  Let’s think about this for a minute.  Xyzed.com is on the aftermarket for 200 dollars.  It’s got a pr2, and 120 links out there.    You’ve got a plan, you’ve got the content, you’ve got the ads to put on it….. how much are you going to lose over 6 months while you wait for Google to trust you?  If your site is going to just make a few bucks a day – or lets say 60 dollars a month….. that’s $360 dollars while you sit in the sandbox.
You still have to research the site, see what kind of links it has, etc…  Sometimes you can even pick up an existing site for sale at some place like sitepoint or digital point that is already established and grow it instead of starting from scratch.

Always do your homework – and use places like this:  http://www.domainswithbenefits.com/ to get a leg up if you have the money.

Cash in on your Competitors’ Work – SpyFu Ad History

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Black Hat Future? Slightly Shady’s Take and Mine….

March 31st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Network Building, Newbie Corner, Uncategorized

Today Slightly Shady SEO put up a post about the future of the black hat side of things. It was pretty much to the point and straight up along the lines I’ve been saying. He talks about 3 methods – speed, stealth, and do it yourself.

Go read his post –> Slightly Shady SEO

Over at Black Hat White Hat I talked a few weeks ago about using your own web properties to increase your links. It’s a good plan and one that isn’t talked about much but should be a given.  I covered this a little in one of the Day8 topics, but I felt it was important enough to go over again.

Some easy ways are to use some of the social scripts that are out there – elgg, dolphin, scuttle, pligg, etc…

My take on the future of “real” black hat seo?  It’s going to get harder and harder as time goes on.  The search engines have a vested interest in stopping you, your competition has a vested interest in stopping you, and diminishing returns on your efforts will slowly sap your will (and others) to keep building pages and sites.

Jumping up above the ‘real’ dark stuff and giving yourself a way to stand out from the crowd and even have others bury your spam in real content on a site you own only makes some sense.

Regardless no matter what direction SEO goes in the future it’s going to get harder and harder for the little guy.  If you look at some of Google’s experimental search pages in the Labs – you might see what I’m talking about.

Cash in on your Competitors’ Work – SpyFu Ad History

Popularity: 36% [?]

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