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Add me on SphinnAh, the common chant of PPC affiliate marketers. Well after some thought and research, I’ve decided I’m going to try and give SEO a shot, and attempt to get on the first page for a target keyword. Affiliate marketing will of course be my main source of income, as I don’t plan on making anything with SEO for the next few months at least. But as a PPC guy, I love when a nice Adwords or YSM coupon rolls around because it means free clicks. It’s just a great feeling, and I’d sure like to have that feeling all of the time - and that’s essentially what SEO is.
It all started when I read Jon’s recent blog entry. It got me thinking about how I always used to love looking around and regging 100 domains at 2am that I thought would eventually be worth it (which none of them really were), so I started browsing domains today. I ended up coming across one that I thought was pretty sweet, the auction ended in an hour and the bid was really low. I ended up winning it for $15. After it was transferred to me, I thought hmm why didn’t I check any of the info on it. It has no PR or traffic, but it is 6 years old - which from my understanding of SEO age = good. It’s a short 2 word domain, and the main keyword I’ll be ranking for gets 100k searches/month (using the SEO book traffic estimator).
Now I have the domain and niche all set up, it’s time to start building a page/applying SEO tactics. I’ll probably be going all white hat for this project, as I don’t want to screw this domain over and get it banned. The next week or so will be dedicated to re-reading SEO Book, and reading all the archives of Blue Hat SEO. I’m not really thinking about how to monetize it yet (most likely Adsense to start), my first focus is getting on page 1 in Google.
I’m not really going to post the play-by-play on this project unless you guys want me to. Hey, let’s take a poll :
Whatever you vote, it shall be done. If you vote yes, I’ll keep you guys informed what I’m doing to get the site ranked and how it’s progressing. If you vote no, I’ll just make very periodic posts on how the whole project is going.
Alright, enough of this blog posting garbage, time to go read for a few hours before I hit some Zzz’s and then enjoy the weekend.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Is there certain software you use to analzye before you purchase your sites? Also…would you mind sharing where you go to register sites like you did in your example?
Thanks,
Desmond
October 6th, 2007 at 6:18 am
More importantly we’d like to know what domain you bought, so we can watch.
October 6th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Ill doubt we will know the domain as we dont want to screw any testing that he might be doing.
Desmond
October 6th, 2007 at 6:46 am
I voted “Yeah - diversity can be key”. I’m looking forward to your posts about the experiment.
October 6th, 2007 at 7:01 am
How much competition is there in the SERPs for the keyword(s)?
October 6th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Desmond - nah I don’t do that much. I just do a whois lookup on the domain and make sure it’s not banned from any search engines. I buy from all over, Digital Point, Wickedfire, eBay, other forums.
browie - sorry, for this first project I’m not going to be giving the domain away.
Daniel - the front page sites in Google are actually pretty weak. For example the #2 or 3 (can’t remember) just has the exact domain of the keyword, but the actual site is just a Flash page about some random company. I’m hoping I can rank pretty well with it.
October 6th, 2007 at 11:24 am
In reference to Blue Hat SEO. If you plan on staying truly white hat as you say, reading Blue Hat for theory is right on target but 98% of the tactics on Blue Hat are black hat. Just FYI.
For a pretty good plan of action, download the pdf from http://www.seofaststart.com/
October 6th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Supernova -
I was under the impression that once a domain changes ownership, any PR, links juice, and the age factor gets wiped (since Google is a registrar, they know exactly when the info was changed). Also, did you buy this at an expired domain auction, or someone just selling it (for transfer)? If so, which site do you use to look for these?
-Nick
October 6th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
First time here from Shoemoney and I really like it. You have a lot of useful information unlike many of the other blogs that are alway bragging and self promoting. I am also into Aff Marketing, hopefully I will learn something new here :-)
Take care,Sean
October 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Jeremy - yeah, I want to pretty much learn as much about SEO (every aspect) as possible in a week or two, so I’ll be cramming from all sources. Thanks for the link.
Nick - I don’t think so…I’ve sold a PR5 website before and it retained everything. I mentioned where I get my domains in an above comment.
Warrior - Thanks for the kind words :).
October 6th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Owww….just wanted to also say its rare that i go to a blog and get a reply to a question or statement….you da man. lol
Desmond
October 6th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I always say diversify not only within affiliate marketing but SEo, even E commerce. you dont want all your eggs in one basket… even if some of the other baskets don’t have as much quick return.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
hollaaaaaaaaaa
note: that was do desmond before the comment after that, lol
October 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Affiliate Marketing is an end… PPC is a means to an end, and SEO is a means to an end.
Don’t think for a second that SEO can’t be used in affiliate marketing; in can be used very, very effectively. MUCH more effectively than PPC in my opinion.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Sounds like a cool project. Where do you buy your domains from?
October 9th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
^From above… “I buy from all over, Digital Point, Wickedfire, eBay, other forums”
October 12th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
SUP3RNOVA, this is a good start. I have successfully placed my 4 months old site on php on the first page of google for the keyword “learn php”. Noone told me how to do it except i knew i had to build lots of back links and i had no idea how to do that either. I started commenting on blogs and forum pages and out of the blue, i saw huge jump in traffic to my index page from google.
Age also makes a different and most importantly how much Google trusts you will also play a role. You gotta be on Google good side otherwise you will just disappear from their index if you try t be clever. I have heard many horror stories.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Then there are those of us who do SEO for affiliate marketing and wonder how people manage to make money with PPC. If I have something that takes 100 free highly targeted clicks for a sale that pays $50 for example. How do I make money with PPC when the KW costs $1 a click and converts half as well with PPC.
I think the answer is to do both, but sometimes PPC seems like a waste of money. Obviously I do something wrong there, but something right as far as natural traffic goes.
If you make serious money with PPC, SEO should be a piece of cake.
December 26th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I don’t get why SEO and Affiliate marketing are mutually exclusive? Are you not talking about SEO for your affiliate landing pages??
January 16th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Hey there Paul, drop me an email and i’ll give you some good tips for your seo quest, especially how to use affiliate marketing to make money on your site.. Sean