Over the years I have had an entourage of Spies who really aren’t that subtle about watching what I do (Statcounter is great for spying on the spies) In truth I have always encouraged people to pay attention to what I do rather than just what I say and a large group of friends have done just that. In part I can’t always speak about everything openly (G gets persnickety about some things) and in part because I really don’t want to give the malicious saboteurs any ideas or ammo. Having said that I want to clear up a few things now that I have re-entered the MMO sewer as my old friend Splork likes to call it. (Quite an apt description I think.)

Before going any further I’d like you to read a couple of comments that Lorecee and Red left on my last post and then I’ll throw in my reply to them.

RED

Grizz, or anyone else that may know…I’m going to test this out soon, but what does everyone think about getting a strong link to be indexed with from the beginning. Is there a better effect or no effect at all by getting a few links and then a strong one, or having your strong one be your first link to get indexed? Anyone test weather G throws more weight in one way or another? My plan was to build “normal links” and then a month later or so then throw in one that will have considerable weight. I was just curious if anyone knew anything about that. I think I remember reading somewhere(possible MMFB) that its good to get a strong link first, but now that things are changing I might want to go as natural as possible. I think I answered my own question, but if anyone else has any input, it would be greatly appreciated. I love theories on this stuff. They are addicting in their own right.

Lorecee

I think I can help Red with his question:

“I’m going to test this out soon, but what does everyone think about getting a strong link to be indexed with from the beginning.”

I’ve been watching the construction process of Griz’s other two MMO blogs. The cardinal rule of bear watching is “watch what he does more than what he says.” Of course you need to remember that that some things he does may be tests, as in don’t try this at home or you might blow something up.

I’ve been wrong before (or so my BF tells me), but it would be just like Griz to model the construction of a new site from the ground up for those who care to pay attention. True or not, he’s sure got mine.

Glad to see you back, Griz. –Lorecee

RED

I’ve actually been watching what Griz has been doing with internetmarketinglessons.ca. It appears to be heavily bookmarked(scuttle plus) on individual posts. I don’t know if this is Grizz’s doing, or if someone just decided to help him out. I also noticed they are on bookmarking sites that are indexed in G and some have pr2′s or higher on their index page. The anchor text looks to be a mixture of heavily targeted and general related terms. I also noticed not just anyone can register on these bookmarking sites. So either, Grizz owns them or a buddy of his does. Or the third option. I once came across a “service” that allowed you access to a number of scuttle plus sites(with PR) for a fee. I’m not trying to blow the lid off anything your doing Grizz, so if you want to edit my post I understand. That being said I think all of the above is common knowledge with the folks that do this IM stuff. It also looks like he is trying to relate the words “Grizzly” and “Brears” with having to do with Internet Marketing and SEO. I’m not an expert on G, but I assume if it finds Grizzly and Brears on pages related to that stuff, it will start to equate those words with having to do with the niche. How many other people will choose those words for their IM or SEO site? Most likely only Grizzly. I guess it helps with branding. Just a theory, though. It may not work like that at all. By the way Grizz, which site should we watch most. Internetmarketinglessons.ca, Grizzlybrears.com, or this one? I’ve already picked the .ca to closely watch. Am I in the right ballpark er.. golf course?

Red,

Believe it or not – I haven’t built a single link anywhere for any of the three sites you mentioned. In fact, this may surprise most of you – I don’t link build anymore and haven’t in ages – yes I do acquire relevant links from appropriate sites but not for G’s benefit and not in any way that falls afoul of G’s guidelines. (I will talk about this in due course on the IM Lessons site.)  The IM.ca site has ranked page 1, position 3 on the Canadian data center for over a month now and page 7 on the US DC. If you are finding links to them then others have been bookmarking – would you believe I have never bookmarked any site – ever.

I have simply created what I consider properly SEO’d on site pages and then wait as the SE’s sort them out. So far they have been indexed quickly (without links) and ranked where they are without experiencing the G dance.

For those watching – the IM.ca site has only two posts. The GB site has 40ish put up rather quickly and then I stopped completely. In both cases G and the other SE’s treated the sites exactly the same – quick indexing and ranking without the usual dancing around.

Why?

Because I don’t manipulate them in any way shape or form. Or to put it another way they mimic a natural progression because they are in fact natural.

Over the past year I have seen this happen over and over again with all the business sites I have built for my clients. No this will not get you to position 1 but that can wait.

My goal with every new site I build is to avoid penalties and gain trust. The easiest way to do this is not to do anything other than introduce optimized content – either slowly or rapidly – makes no difference, just don’t build links. Be patient. Concentrate on optimized long tail related Posts/Pages and the SE’s will send traffic. More content = more long tail traffic. More traffic and surprise, surprise – real links will start to appear on their own or by legit means instigated by you and acceptable by G – in fact G is more than happy to give you a link themselves. (Surely some of you have learned how this is done by now?) If this sounds like just what G is looking for… it is. And it works – at least for legit sites in business niches. I’m just seeing if it will work in the cesspool niche we call IM/MMO.

You know how G has always stated that we should just provide good content and the rest will take care of itself? Well the Algo is actually capable of doing that in the mostly uncompetitive niches these days – I’m interested in seeing the results in a competitive niche. Most (read “all”) of the competition manipulates their rankings and while they may achieve results for a while I believe they will all shoot themselves in the foot sooner or later through penalties. In the end the non manipulated sites should rise to the top for no reason other than they aren’t penalized – it may take a while but once there they will never falter. As I said this has worked well in the not so competitive business niches so I am testing it in this niche now. I have some reservations though – this niche attracts saboteurs and an endless stream of new competition which I don’t see in the Aviation SMS niche or the Shrink Wrap niche or the Timbuktu Equipment Rental niche etc.

So that’s about it for those watching and wondering what I’m doing with these MMO sites. I am simply allowing G to do what it says it can do – weed out quality from the morass of sewage in this niche. Btw – I have no designs on any particular keywords – not interested. I just want to see if these sites acquire trust as quite frankly none of the sites in MMO have it in any meaningful way.

On a side note I linked to a clients site above – shrink wrap – so you can see just how quickly a site can rank without any manipulation in a local niche with moderate competition. Keep in mind that the business is located in Winnipeg and the owners only need to rank well for people searching for their product in Winnipeg. The site was built near the end of Oct. 2010 and within days it was sitting in 3rd position with nothing more than a link from G and a link from a relevant business directory.

Click to Enlarge

And how will this help you make money online?

Well I intend to drag you all out of the sewage niches and put your knowledge to work providing services to people who could use your help and are willing to pay you for it. There is a huge market out there for people with the skills you’ve acquired and you will be surprised at how little competition there really is.

More to come…

Griz

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In most cases the buyers believe that they can find a monetization package that will work for the purchased domain. This rarely happens though. Popular sites garner large buyouts because they seem to promise traffic and everyone knows that getting traffic is the hardest thing to get online. Get the traffic first and figure out how to make money from it second. Lots of people are losing a lot of money following this mantra.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the principle behind this thinking but I have always maintained that all traffic isn’t equal. Search traffic can be monetized. Social traffic is very hard to make money from. If you are buying a site and it doesn’t have steady search traffic then beware or you will pay too much.

There are lots of social sites for sale – what I don’t see are keyword SEO’d domains for sale. What I would really like is to be able to start a campaign on competitive niche and find 5 or 6 keyword relevant solid PR domains for sale. Oh and a consistent stream of search traffic even if small. This type of domain lends itself to Adsense income and has PR to pass which makes it far more useful than buying a popular social site.

And this brings me to this blog.

I want to see just what is necessary to produce a keyword optimized blog with solid PR in as few steps as possible. If a formula exists I want to find it and then duplicate it over and over in order to produce ready to use – income producing domains right out of the box. And then sell them.

I have not posted much on this new blog for a reason. I want to know what the trick is in avoiding the sandbox. Is it frequent posting? I’m thinking posting has little to do with it. Is it quality backlinks? This I’m thinking has a lot to do with it. So far this blog has not been sandboxed by G and the only factor that can account for this is the fact that I have accumulated a number of quality links from my friends. This is entirely white hat – all the links are legit and come from a variety of trusted sites. I was given a PR0 during the last update which could be seen as low but I see it from a different angle. The blog was less than a few weeks old with 2 posts on it in a highly spammed niche and yet G still ranked it – low yes but ranked none the less. I suspect that by next update all the high PR backlinks will be accounted for and credited to this blog resulting in a PR increase.

Now I don’t plan on selling this blog. I plan on using it to test my theories and once I have worked out the steps I intend to start producing ready made niche blogs for others to buy. In most cases I hope to find aged domains with the right keywords in the URL and then tweak the blogs and build links. Aged domains are preferrable as they don’t generally get sandboxed. In most cases however aged domains are not available and I will have to start the blogs from scratch without being sandboxed. This is not something I am doing alone. Terry from The Honest Way and I are working on this together. In time I expect that we will need the assistance of a number of other friends in our little network and of course everyone will share in the profits.

What would you pay for a site that pulls in $10.00 a day from Adsense? What would you pay for a site with 3000 RSS subscribers but only makes a few hundred dollars a month?

I believe there is a business model here that can work and should be relatively easy to accomplish given the fact that we have built up a community of quality bloggers. You can make money online going it alone but the real money is in the networks. Just how many pre-made domains do you think a small group of us could churn out using our existing blogs as the anchors?

If you have some quality sites with PR3 or better and are interested in pursuing this model please contact me and we can discuss this further. Any ideas you have are more than welcome.

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