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Apr 03 2009
SEO Generated Traffic and Backlinks
In my last post How to Get Traffic to Your Website or Blog I listed several basic SEO techniques that all bloggers should follow - regardless of whether you are trying to make money online or just blogging for fun. In either case you will want visitors. Many beginners chase social traffic only to find out later that they don’t make money from this form of traffic and all too often they find that this traffic doesn’t convert into loyal readers either. They come, browse and then leave without so much as a comment. I have called this type of traffic useless. Some have taken offense at this description and usually tell me that it isn’t useless as it helps them build links. This is true - social traffic can produce backlinks for your site. Unfortunately most often the backlinks are useless as well.
If you follow my directions then you can use social traffic to provide you with useful backlinks which will in turn help you to rank well in the search engines for terms that people search for. Search engine visitors are targeted which mean they have an interest in your topic before finding your site. Unlike social browsers the search visitors will click ads, buy products and even become loyal readers who will leave comments. There is a certain irony to all this - I have found that the best way to grow a readership and a social network isn’t with social networks - it’s best done with the search engines.
Here is the list of SEO basics I published on the last post.
SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;
You must use your keyword in your URL.
You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.
You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.
You must use your keywords and related terms in your post content.
You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.
If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.
If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.
You must use html for the bulk of your pages content
Rather than getting into a long winded explanation of why you should follow my Advice I will just show you an example of a site that uses Keywords for all of the above and a site that doesn’t. The benefit of using Keywords will be crystal clear when I’m finished.
I said that social traffic can indeed produce backlinks but that these links are all too often useless. By useless I mean that they don’t use anchored text in the link for any useful terms that people search for in the search engines.
Melissa from “Why be Normal” has a social blog here on Today.com. She spends a lot of time driving traffic using social networks and I suspect Google Images. She does quite well but could do a lot better with a lot less work.
Her Keyword “Why Be Normal” has no search benefit. In simple terms nobody searches for the term. It also doesn’t reflect her blog’s topic or niche. Her site is most accurately described as a humorous photo blog. I did a search for “humorous photo” on Google before my last post. Why be Normal was not listed on the first page of the serp’s (search engine results page) for that term. I added an anchored link to Melissa’s blog in that post. And waited.
I did a search today on Google for “humorous photo” and guess what?
(Click images to enlarge - use magnifier to enlarge further)
All it took was two anchored links using the term “humorous photo” to get Melissa’s blog ranked on page 1. (The term doesn’t have a lot of competition.)
Here is what Melissa’s backlinks look like. Notice that her links all contain “why be normal” in the anchors. This is because most people link to your site using either your URL or your Blog Title. In some cases they will use your Post title.
Now imagine if she had used a term like “Humor Blog” or “Funny Pics” or “Humorous Photos” in her URL, Blog Title and Post Titles. Every one of her links would contain those keywords and she would be easily ranking well or even number 1 in Google for terms that get searched for and drawing in daily traffic without having to do any work what so ever. No new posts, no chasing social network traffic. Search traffic shows up consistently day after day and if they like what they see they will leave comments and click on relevant ads and buy relevant products.
Now let’s look at this Adsense blog. I use keywords in all my titles and URL. I don’t post often and only in order to target more keywords.
Not bad - 9 posts, 1100 comments (which contain a ton of keyword rich content that the Google bot devours) and no time spent chasing social traffic.
You will notice I have very few useless backlinks.
Now I am not generating nearly the same traffic as Melissa is at the moment. But from Today.com’s perspective I am generating better traffic. Traffic that they can make money from using Adsense. When my traffic clicks an ad Today.com receives top CPC for the click as my visitors are targeted to the ads placed on my site.
In Melissa’s case and basically most of the Today.com sites the Google Adsense ads are smart priced and Today.com only receives a few pennies a click. The reason for the poorly targeted ads on Today.com is because the bloggers don’t use keywords in their post titles (this is the main trigger for what ads Google produces on your page) and they have several unrelated posts (and titles) on a single page. The Google bot is forced to determine what your page is about in order to serve relevant ads. If you do not target a keyword in your post title and have several post titles on a page the end result is a mishmash of ads usually not relevant to anything in particular and almost never relevant to what your social traffic is looking for. (It’s worth noting that Social Traffic rarely clicks ads anyway nor do they buy advertising or buy from advertisers. A problem Today.com is having trying to monetize all the social traffic blogs here on Today.com) This means that any clicks you do receive will not convert well for the advertiser and Google will give them a discount by simply paying Today.com a few pennies instead of the bid price.
Why be Normal should be showing ads for various humor related topics as that is what the traffic is looking for. Instead the site is showing ads as follows;
If her post titles all contained related “humor” or “Funny Pics” keywords she would see an instant change in the ads displayed and Today.com would see a much better return as far as CPC (cost per click) is concerned. Changing her blog title to “Humour Photos - Why Be Normal” would have the most impact on both her search rankings and Adsense relevancy. Moreover the blog description should simply read, “Humorous Photos and Funny Pictures to make you laugh”. If her friends would change their anchored links pointing at Melissa’s blog to related keywords like “funny pics”, “humor Photos”, “Humorous Pictures” etc she would see a sharp increase in search traffic as her blog ascends the serp’s for those terms.
These simple tips will work for any site and aside from making you more money with Adsense they will increase your readership and comment levels as you will be drawing in targeted visitors. Melissa averages 3k - 7k visitors a day with un-targeted traffic and has to post often and work the social networks to keep the traffic coming. Is it worth all the work? Today.com isn’t making much from the traffic, Melissa has few comments and her RSS feed subscribers show no readers. (using Blog Perfume Feed Analysis which may be broken? )
This Adsense blog had a whopping two posts for the month of March. How did my traffic stack up?
13,300 unique visitors or 6,650 unique visitors per post. Not a lot of work put in any way you look at it. I even made $40 for the effort but that isn’t why I’m here. I am simply trying to dominate another set of keywords related to the make money online niche. In time I will add more and more targeted keywords to this site and eventually drive 1000’s of visitors here daily without doing much of anything. It’s the ultimate system for passive income and I have reproduced this method countless times before.
My main blog produced the following search traffic over the final two weeks of March with only two posts;
and in case you don’t believe that targeted search traffic makes money this shot shows how well each keyword converted into revenue;
No amount of social traffic will give you those kind of earnings for the work involved.
Be smart - blog socially if that is your thing but at least optimize your sites for the search engines. Using proper keywords in your URL’s and Titles will create useful anchored links even from social bloggers who don’t know what an anchored link is. They just send links using your URL so make sure your URL has your keyword in it and you will rank for it in the serp’s. Eventually you won’t have to chase social traffic. Google will send you all the traffic you need.
Cheers,
Griz
Once I started getting a handle on the whole blogging thing, I started doing as you recommend above. I don’t know that it’s really having much affect, but my chosen search term/niche is not a really hot one so it’s kind of hard to gauge.
Thanks for further info on the whole backlinks thing; it’s my current focus on both my blogs.
88.13% of your adsense revenue comes from search engines. I think that says it all mate
Hi Griz, thanks for the post.
What program is that you’re using to check other sites’ backlinks?
Also, I am a little frustrated…I think my site is sandboxed but I’m not sure. It is indexed in Google, but doesn’t rank for my keywords despite my anchored backlinks. I read in another post on your Beginners blog that backlinks can get you out of the sandbox, but it was kind of old post I think. Is this still true? And does it only apply for links that come from ‘authority’ sites in your niche? The majority of my backlinks are on article sites for now.
Thanks!!
Yes but you also have an ARMY of followers who are all willing to help you out by correctly linking to any blog you put up with anchored terms. She (and most of us) don’t have that sort of trained army willing to help us.
Although what you say is technically correct, it is so much easier for you to do than any of us who do not have a built in following. Starting out from zero with no massive following is just not as easy as you would have us believe.
You’re a beast and you know how to make money with adsense. =)
oh and make money with adsense.
make money with adsense.
=) lmao.
Keep up the good work Griz!
@Andy - it all depends on the niche - don’t try “make money” cause you will have to compete against Grizz and you will lose! Find a real world product or service that people need - I regularly find niches where the first page have all their anchored based on their company name or something else which has nothing to do with the term I’m focused on - all I need is a few backlinks to dominate .. Also if you have a post on say “Stuffed Bears for Home Decor” - and someone links to it what are they going to anchor on : “click here” or “stuffed bears” is my guess one of which is good!
Hey Grizz - excellent post chock full of useful how to make money with adsense information. Thank you!
I’m getting ready to build my first blog specifically optimized for monetization with adsense and I’ve been reading three of your blogs (this one obviously LOL, makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com and makemoneyforbegginers.blogspot.com). Are there any others I should be following?
I’m going to start taking action on what I’ve already learned from you, but I also want to make sure not to miss anything. This stuff is crazy good!
Thanks for all the great information. BTW, once I’ve developed a blog or two with some juice behind it, I’ll be glad to join your merry band of link makers.
Grizz,
It’s funny, I have been following you so long I can predict what you will most likely say. I do laugh, it like watching a mad scientist at work.. ie.. do this and do that.. create this.. link to that.. etc..
For your regular/army of followers who set up a today.com blog.. make sure you make some posts.. I forgot I set up a blog and only made two posts they canceled my blog. I emailed them letting know I have been sick and out of town. They reactivated my blog. Just an FYI…
@Lorecee - Thanks for those links and the heads up about Lis and LarryG! I’ll be adding them to my reading list for sure!
For those folks who have an objection to people sharing link love, how exactly do you think Grizzly started out? He didn’t have a ready made population of people hammering his sites with optimized backlinks from the get go.
Instead, he built a community of loyal readers (mostly by word-of-mouth from what I can tell) by offering valuable information for free. Karma, baby…
Also, on one of his blogs (I’m too lazy to go look), he has a community of people willing to help each other out. Doesn’t get much better than that.
It’s a little hard to try to criticize Griz when he’s doing a ton of giving. Instead, get out there and build your own community of merry link makers! Or better yet, don’t. Less competition for me. LOL
After reading all of the golden nuggets of info on this site, I was faced with (kind of) the same problem that Andy talked about - no one was linking to my site using the keywords that I wanted them to use. I had named my site Nonfiction Lover, which is cute, but fairly useless when it comes to SEO. I am trying to target nonfiction book reviews (which is what my site is -mostly- about) and so getting links for “Nonfiction Lover” didn’t produce much of use for me.
So I changed. I can’t change the URL for my site, but I can change the title and I also had a new header put together by a good friend which also had the right (and SEO friendly) phrase in it. Now when someone comes to my site, they’re going to see the title and the header and think, “Hey, this site is called Nonfiction Book Reviews” instead of Nonfiction Lover as it had always been before. From there, they will link accordingly.
The moral of the story is: You can start out doing something that is not SEO friendly, and change midway and still save yourself. You don’t have to start all over again with a whole new blog, now that you know what you really need to do.
Not content to stop there (what’s the use of having an SEO title if no one links to you?) I then put together a contest on my site where people win prizes for linking to me, using my targeted keywords. If they use “Nonfiction Lover” (or heaven help me) “click here” they are not entered into the contest. I am literally bribing people to do what I want them to do, and I have no qualms doing it.
Want proof that it works? I went from a ranking at #107 for the phrase “nonfiction book reviews” to #18 in seven days, just by doing the above. I of course have much farther to go (#1, baby!!!) but this is a great start.
To anyone who whines that they cannot do this, all I can say is: Yes you can. Read the steps, and then do it. It isn’t rocket science, it’s a simply formula. Follow it and succeed.
Havs
@Hava - well done cool idea with the contest todaydotcom people seem to love contests and you’ve turned this to your SEO advantage!
Someone asked re the software Grizz is using to analyse backlinks - yes its SEOElite - the price should be $167 - but he’s split testing a subscription model (not worth it IMHO) - so if you get that page -try changing the url to index 1 or 2 - whichever its not
@Frank - today has opened up advertising to anyone who cares to pay the price on any blog in the network that ad is not being run by Grizz or today
@Lis, that was me who asked about Griz’s software. Thanks for your help
If/when I get SEO Elite I will remember to avoid the subscription model. Thanks again!
Great post as usual. I’m so glad I found your sites, & never got sucked into the whole social blogging thing.
Thank you for another great post with priceless comments about making money with adsense!
@Frank: I am here because of you and never gave you a proper thank you, so thank you! From WF and you directed me to your blog about the problems with putting adsense on blogs too soon.
@Lis Thanks for pointing out the differences in SEO Elite.
@Faith, you have brought up some good questions that I will be watching for the answers to as well! After letting a few of my blogs age, I know I can totally take some longtails and either create hubs, lens, or just provide proper anchor text to…what is the best strategy? My traffic is still to low to put adsense on anything, so I really need to start building it up! Sounds like you are doing great!
Hi again, Griz or anyone who would be kind enough to answer…
I have a question about ‘pingbacks’. Are they good or bad? I got two of them today and they were from people who are using my *entire* blog post. My backlinks are there on their blogs, but both of those blogs are very strange-looking–they don’t look legit at all. Could I be penalized because spammy sites are linking to me?
Thanks so much for any help!
@misbehave - you can’t be penalised by who links TO you - think about it - anyone could take down any competitor site just by providing them some nasty backlinks. In your case it sounds like a splog has got you on the radar - if the backlinks are dofollow its all good really…
Hey - thanks for a very good post - I will be roaming through your site to read others as I continue to learn SEO and what works best. I am trying to figure out how best to use my keywords - which are my blog title “Science Fun” - The keywords would work in some of my posts, however, if I am giving weather statistics or an update on Volcano that popped its lid - how would I incorporate the two keywords - science fun into a post like that? Should I have multiple keywords - Science covers a broad spectrum of topics - I have a mix of space, astronomy, weather, historical stuff as it relates to science advancements. Thanks - off to read some more stuff.
@ WordVixen,
To me it looks like it could be to do with the theme you are using on that blog and the tags (h1, h2, etc) it uses.
I don’t know whether or not Griz would agree with this, but this is what I do on single post per page blogs in WP.
I set up a static front page for the ‘home’ page and then have another page for ‘blog’.
This means making your own static front page which you can only change on the file, not from the WP admin panel. But it looks like a normal blog page.
This gives your ‘home page’ a h1.
Then I make two header php files.
One is called by the home page and the other one is called by all the other page files, including the blog.
The one called by the home page shows the blog title as h1.
The one called by the other pages shows the blog title as h3.
I then change the tags on all the files - page, blog, archive, etc, so that the titles of posts and pages are h1.
I then mess about with the css, so that h1 looks like h3 when necessary and vica versa.
It’s complicated to do, and if you want to edit your front page at a later stage, you need to mess about with the html, but it works. People arrive on the post you want them to get to. It also appears to get your posts to rank a bit easier.
Of course, if you want your blog name to rank, rather than your individual posts, not such a great idea, but for a blog with different posts in slightly different categories, it seems to work well.
Re: Keyword in Title
I’m working a niche where the #1 spot is a company with the keyword in the site name. Most of its backlinks are simple links from directories with the URL(and coincidentally the keywords). The site is a POS, yet it is outranking older, better content, higher PR sites. It is funny because it is ranking #1 by accident.
bk
There is a lot of valuable information that Griz has to offer, but I have asked several times that my inadequacies not be spread out for the world to scrutinize. Several weeks ago I asked you to stop Griz, why do you continue? I hear what you are saying and I am sure that your techniques work. I read your blog way before you called me out on the carpet. What you aren’t hearing is that when you post about me, my traffic does not spike (100 UV’s in three weeks), but my hate comments do. I have had to start moderating comments because your followers write die biyatch, Griz is king! All over my blog. Please stop using me as an example. I’m sure there are plenty of willing today bloggers that you can use an example that would be thrilled.
Melissa,
It is unfortunate that you are receiving hate comments. I do not condone such tactics nor have I advocated anyone doing so.
I suspect the comments are a result of your forum thread and not as a result of anything I have said. The forum thread was over the top and out of proportion to my comments which didn’t call anyone names - I just pointed out to my readers (on my MMOFB blog and not here on Today) that the members of Today.com were beginners - and you chose to find offense with that. You could have let it ride or chose to see my comment in the light it was intended but didn’t. Instead you felt the need to flame me over an innocuous comment that is after all is said and done - still true. I can hardly be accountable for the reactions other people have had regarding the comments made by you and others in the forum. I took no part in that thread nor have I made any derogatory remarks to you or others. The same can’t be said on your part or several other members of Today.com. With all due respect you brought this on yourself by posting the forum thread - what were you trying to accomplish with that post anyway? It should be obvious to you and any who read my blogs that I offer helpful advice and am not out to harm anyone. Your thread seemed to be for no other reason than to say nasty things about me? Uncalled for and not surprising that others would return the favor to you.
Needless to say I have had no part in it and your blog was an ideal example to use in explaining how Today.com bloggers could both increase readership and increase targeted visitors in order to provide Today.com with better revenues - a concern expressed by Dave (the owner?) who is desperately trying to make money with this enterprise. The fact is that most of the blogs on Today.com bring in useless traffic (from a monetization standpoint) and yet the bloggers want to be paid for it and complain when Today.com doesn’t give them what is expected.
Thanks to your thread I now have a lot of Today.com bloggers reading my posts and sending emails asking what I mean by useless traffic and how can they draw targeted traffic. I have used your site to explain this and hopefully everyone will benefit from this. If Today.com doesn’t start converting traffic to sales or clicks then it won’t survive it’s current model. There is a reason similar platforms like hubpages and squidoo don’t pay for posts or traffic - they would go broke. They use shared ad revenues - meaning they make money when you make money putting the onus on the blogger to generate targeted traffic. The problem Today.com has is that there is no incentive for the bloggers on here to generate targeted traffic. Hopefully people will see that it is in their own best interest to do so. If they don’t they will end up with nothing.
I am asking you to stop using me as an example. Simple. I’m glad you have a ton of followers. Please stop using me as an example. You and I are both intelligent people and you know there was much more involved than me “bringing this upon myself”. You have your place, I have mine. I am asking that you stop using me as an example. Why aren’t you respecting this?
Melissan, he’s trying to help you. He got you onto the first page for “humourous photo”.
Why are you upset at this? Constructive criticism helps everyone. I must admit I’ve been looking hard at everything I do, in the light of what he said on his blog, and a lot of it makes sense.
A few of us had already figured out a while back that social traffic did not pay (true story, in the very first month I started a blog on blogspot back in the day, I managed to get 16000 readers from Reddit for a single post, but only 8 adsense clicks, and made 50 cents, I could have cried). So we knew what didn’t work, but we didn’t know what to do next. Griz is kindly telling us, and he doesn’t have to. He could have kept it secret and let us twist in the wind.
There is another aspect. If Today.com doesn’t make money (and they won’t as long as people chase social traffic), they will close down. We are in a recession people. Some sites have already closed down - eg the writing site thisisby.us. Because they weren’t making money. If Today closes down, then everyone trying to earn from this site loses out too. So we might as well pull together as a team to get search traffic. Just a thought.
Thank You Silverfern - that was exactly the point of all this. Today.com could make money if everyone produced targeted search engine traffic and it would be a win/win for all concerned. I had hoped that Melissa would take my advice, optimize her site and report back her findings to her friends on Today.com and thereby sparking the rest to do the same. That this turned into a controversy is most regrettable but worth it if the message still gets out.
I know that he is trying to help. The majority of my traffic for April has been google traffic.
I do not have access to the google adsense for my site, so I do not know if my site has made today a penny or not. If I am not profitable for today, I am sure that they will let me know.
Have you ever searched the term “humourous photo”?
Further, I have made the google front page for quite a few search terms.
Call me a horse’s ass because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her drink. I’m not thirsty.
Its true. If people continue to write posts about giving lemmings cookie which fail to make any sense and are clearly dragged out just to meet the 100 word quota the payment model of Today.com wont last very long.
It cheapens the system for those who write quality content.
Hi griz. lol Nice comments
I wanted to see how fast I could get a website onto the front page for a term that is easily monetized and relatively competitive. After searching for terms I found a string on the Adwords keyword tool that advertisiers pay $10.99 for with 5,400 searches per month. After using “allintitle” I found 1,360 websites as competition. Using the regular google search the first page of listings only had two pages with a PR above 3, and that was eHow.com and answers.com. They were on the first page without any “good” links to their page.
On April 2, 2009 I bought a domain name that contains the full search term. I wrote 4 posts between 400 and 700 words that were readable, but not very informative. I then added about 25 anchored links from pages that were loosely related to the topic.
6 days later I am listed as number 7 on the first page. On one of my blogspot support pages I wrote about 300 words with the link to my main page and added about 10 links pointed towards it. My support page is now on the second page of the SERP.
Moral to the story…Do what Griz says. It works. He will teach you how to make money online with adsense.
Did Grizzly go into cyberation.?
Hey Griz,
I have a question that is probably more relevant to a previous post, but every post of yours is about making money, right? So here goes …
When you talk about setting up a linking scheme, or as a previous reader put it, a ‘pyramid’ structure, you set up your money site on the top, and 2nd level legit sites (authority sites in their own right) to act as buffers, passing link juice from a ton of farm site links … that’s all pretty straightforward as to how the link juice is passed through the 2nd level site all the way up to the money site.
I’m not quite clear on what the penalty would be if you didn’t have that 2nd level buffer - would you get sand-boxed? low CPC? flagged? adsense suspended?
The reason I’m asking is that after all the link building effort towards the 2nd level site, if that 2nd level site starts to generate almost the same traffic as your money site, then the greedy side of me thinks why not put adsense on both the top level and 2nd level and double my money?
At what point do you decide if a site within a link building ‘pyramid’ should be monetized, or is it a hard and fast rule only to monetize one top site, and all link builders below are not monetized? Do you sometimes decide to pull a 2nd level site out of the pyramid and make it a money site? And if so, do you remove the link to your original money site? Can it actually become a money site with all of those direct splog/farm links?
And going down one more level, if a few of the pyramid’s farm blogs have decent content and a bit of traffic, would it be worth putting adsense on them if they’ll make $1-2/ day? I’d like to get as much income as I can out of all the site and link building I’m doing, and any income at this point is better than none - but I don’t want to jeopardize the money sites which I (would like to think) will bring in quite a bit more than that.
As always - super content, and thanks for being generous enough to share your wealth.
@brodderick
AH, delving into the farm blog questions. Grizz hasn’t “officially” addressed the farm blog process, which is understandable, since all of his MMO blogs are whitehat. Google really frowns on farm blogs and will eagerly de-index any sites deeply associated with a blog farm, if there is evidence. I can understand why Grizz has publically avoided the topic.
Unfortunately, without having a vast network of hundreds and hundreds of PR’ed farm blogs (some people have thousands of PR ranked farm blogs), it’s pretty much impossible to dominate a lot of the competitive niches without resorting to buying high PR links. You can dominate the less competitive niches without resorting to farm blogs, but you won’t have a chance at any of the “big” niches.
The point is to have your money sites squeaky clean with nary a questionable link while still being able to propel them up the SERP’s through the power of farm blogs. Most of your money site links should be coming from legit, none-made-for-adsense/blackhat/spammy sites. This means that your competition can’t tattle to Google and Google can’t find fault to slap your site down the SERP’s
if your farm blogs are deindexed.
The penalty of not having a second layer buffer? If your farm blogs are compromised by google and deindexed, your money site’s SERP rankings may plummet. Having a second layer of buffer sites provide solid link juice by themselves. If the lowest level is taken out, your money sites will still keep their PR and ranking. You may lose some of your ranking, but they won’t completly tank like they would otherwise. You can actually get faster SERP rankings by just sending crap article links, farm blog links, forum links etc direct to your money sites…but these links are always risky and prone to be delisted by google which makes your money site very vulnerable.
There is no clear rule about 2nd level (support blogs) becoming a 1st level (money site). If a 2nd level blog is getting a lot of traffic you can turn it into a money site. Grizz has stated that he’s turned 2nd level blogs into money sites in the past and that there is no “hard” rule for this. 3rd Level blogs have become second level support blogs, and 2nd level support blogs have turned into money sites. It’s sort of organic.
If you find a second level site outranking a money site or getting more traffic you can also use it to funnel traffic back to the money site. Whether you want to put adsense on a second level site (thus turning it into a money site) is up to you. However, the thing you need to consider is the quality of the links pointing to your second level site. Since it is/was a second level support site, you will probably have a lot of links from questionable, possibly spammy farm blogs.
This means if you put on adsense — assuming it’s the same adsense that’s on all your money sites — Google now identifies the site with “you” and since it’s one layer closer to the farm blogs and crappy links. If all the links that are crappy and questionable are 1 way, Google probably won’t penalize the site if the layer below get’s taken down, but having a second level blog with adsense means less protection from the G man.
Think of it this way: if your lowest level blogs are taken down by G and G suspects your support blog as being owned by the same person, they now can track all your other money sites because that adsense account is connected to you. Google has the power to delist all your money site in one fell swoop.
Is this probable? Probably not, but it still is possible. There are more than a few people around here that will tell you something similar has happened to them.
It goes without saying that for the 3rd level (i.e. the crappy farm blogs at the lowest level), you should never put on adsense. The whole point of a pyramid is to keep the tip clean while still being supported by the lower level. If you slap on adsense on the lowest level, you immediately compromise the identity of the money sites. Always keep the backlinks going up the chain, never down. The same thing goes with protecting your identity – you don’t want anything to be traced to the top.
Hope that helps.
Ben K
@jjasc BenK
cool. yes, that helps tons - thanks for taking the time for that explanation. I know Griz has touched on a bunch of this stuff already, but your writeup brings a lot of it together and clarifies the consequences, and the obvious things to avoid so I don’t stupidly wipe out all my work by being too greedy. Thanks again.
(Griz, you got off easy on this one
)
Ben K - I found your reply helpful also. If you (or anyone else) has experience with Linkvana, do you think it’s ok to use that to link directly to your money sites? Or would blogs like theirs be classed as third tier spammy sites?
thanks
Thanks guys, I know when I first started reading Grizz months ago I banged my head against the blog farm issue. Grizz sort of dances around the edges (which is understandable, he’s always directly in the crosshairs for the competition and google) of the issue, but if you actually want to have a fighting chance in the niche marketing world — especially if you want to go after medium-high competition niches — you won’t stand a chance without a powerful blog farm unless you have deep pockets to pay for links. I’m not saying it’s impossible to dominate high comp niches without resorting to “blackhat” techniques like link farms (Court doesn’t for one), but your competition sure won’t have any qualms about doing so.
Anyways, I won’t say any more about the blog farm issue. If Grizz hasn’t publically blogged about it, he probably won’t like me openly spilling the beans and landing him in trouble
Regarding Linkvana:
I haven’t had experience with Linkvana. I know people who use it. Word on the street is that it offers the best quality links out of all the article services (better than 3rd tier spammy sites, maybe closer to second tier sites). But you pay for the price. Personally, instead of shelling out almost 200 a month, I would opt to go with UAW,AAM,BS, and CC(content connect); using these 4 services together will give you way more link power than Linkvana will. UAW and AAM give you crap links, but you get so many of them. You can create an spun article with AAM (this will take 1-3 hours), then 3 of the unique versions to also almost instantly submit it to UAW and BS. That’s 1 article that can be used for all 3 link services to give you lots and lots of links. If you really made sure the spun article gives lots of unique content, you can also use it on your support blogs.
If you want the best links possible, CC delivers since you ususally get VERY VERY contextually relevant links from blogs people care about. A lot of the blogs have no PR or low PR (though you may luck out and get a good PR link), but all of the links come from relevent sites which make them more valuable than high PR non relevent site links.
Ben K
Thanks again Ben! I understand about Griz not wanting to talk about all this publically. I’ve been through the archives of all of his blogs & have picked up some info on the subject, but don’t think I’ve got the whole picture yet. So I’m looking at services like LV, which is kind of pricey for me right now, but I’m planning to get UAW soon, & will look into the other ones you mentioned too.
@brodderick
The blog farming scene is something I have been involved in heavily in the last few months. It’s a very obtuse subject. Many people believe that Google seeks out farms to destroy, I don’t think G does this. Google wants to destroy spam sites and splogs and MFA sites spam links etc. If G really wanted to take out farms or networks it would use the same technology that it uses to detect click fraud. A farm that can’t be detected by G is expensive and sophisticated. If you ever have a farm taken down it is most likely because a competitor turned you in or maybe you linked your spam sites too obvious. What you really want to do his hide your footprints from the competition.
In my backlink research i have found many farms, some of them are blatent, G hasn’t touched them yet, some are even monetized.
Just don’t be a retard, I saw one guy (who was on the first page) that had a bunch of squids and hubs and was signed in under the same friggen name for all of them. He won’t last, someone will turn him in eventually.
My farm(I’m still building)is a masterpiece if I say so myself. I am going to blog about it in detail eventually or if Griz says its OK I will comment about it here. It is very large all in the same niche, 4 levels, multiple IP’s, ISP’s, Computers, Domains, Companies, LLC’s, Routers, Locations,Check Accounts,Host Accounts,Bank Accounts. Friggen Madness! The only way G could ID me is with the help of the IRS. To me, G is the biggest of the big Bro’s.
For most farmers, all of the steps I have taken are not necessary, especially if you are not BlackHat. I think just about every situation is unique. If I wanted to build a farm of 30 - 40 sites all white hat, the only thing I might do would be to have more than 1 Adsense account for the money sites and I would host on a couple different accounts, use both paid and free, also private whois.
btw all of my level 2 sites will have adsense. Oddly enough, my money site is a business making a product. That is one of the reasons for all the secrecy, and of course, level 4 is as BlackHaT as it gets. When ever your computer screen dims a little, nevermind, I’m just doing some work on level 4. lol
“It’s very boring and tedious creating a support network”
It’s a little less boring on the dark side, but yeah for the most part it is tedious as hell. You can always hire some of the shit work, but you have to go through that learning curve as well(who to hire ,who to trust etc.) I’m going through that now.
Hi Grizzly!
I don’t know if this has come up somewhere on the comments or in the articles but:
Which do you think is the best way to get google to notice you as a relevant site in your niche
a) Write 10 posts each about 500 words long with the keywords in the topics and spread around the text
b) Write 5 posts each about 1000 words long with the keywords in the topics and texts.
And in the future with option a) I would write two 500 word posts per week, and in option b) write one 1000 post per week.
hey Grizz
So, above you mention that lots of on-point comments help with google bot, would that include commentluv and keyword luv if you can manage all the spam? Or are they useless any more?
SueC
@doug
It depends on a lot of things. Bottom level blogs content is often auto generated using software and tools. Blogs that are closer to your money site only need to be updated once or twice a month, sometimes not even that often. I only update when trying to match a keyword to an anchored link. Also a lot of people pay writers for content. It can be anywhere from 2.0 to 50.0 per article. You will get what you pay for. Also, not every site in a network has to be a blog. I have many static sites in my network.
Not a stupid question
Now this is stupid, I have a blog that ranks page #1 for SEO retards… I never would have known but someone actually found my site via “SEO RETARDS” search. LOL I suppose it won’t be long when I start ranking for MMO douchebaggery
BK
Hi All –
I have a question about behavior I’m observing on one of my sites. I get a fair amount of traffic every day, about 30% of which is SE. Not optimal, but not terrible. It’s improving.
I get some good Per click payments, anywhere from .20 to 1.00.
But occasionally I get a click that pays me nothing.
And additionally, through statcounter, I see that I have a lot more Exit Links through Adsense ads than I am getting registered on my Adsense reports.
Is this common? It seems on some days I’m getting more than twice as many exit links through Adsense registered by Statcounter than Google is registering in my Adsense account.
Any advice? Thanks!
Short question, does one usually put adsense on the sites in your “farm” or do you leave adsense for your money sites.
Hey Griz,
I think my blogger site has been sandboxed becaus it’s not showing up on google when I search for the URL. Depending on which free keyword site I use I get a keyword density of between 5% and at one point 17% (but I brought that down to 10%). I think the the articles are below 5% but all the post headers and tags are pushing it way higher.
Should I remove the tags for my posts?
I’ve been using your link swapping service and I must have around 10 links to the site now.
How long before I get sandboxed?
PS
Is there a forum to discuss your method?
Cheers.
You don’t put adsense on your farm/throw away sites. You don’t want anything that’ll make it look like it’s yours. You use crap sites to boost your flagship. You use your flagship to boost your money site.
Hi there. Your Tags do not work. Clicking on any Tag returns you to the first story. Thought you’d like to know.
Great post Ben k.
I have a blogspot blog and have achieved first page of google in just over a month using Grizz’s techniques. Its not a cometitive niche and I did it as a test to see if things would work.
The short answer…….they sure do, but you have to put work into it.
Does anyone here have a way of managing the work to be done on a blog?
Anyone have info on how to get articles done quickly apart from spinning?
I was also wondering, if you set up say 4 supporting blogs on your long tails and build up a few posts and links and leave them,then after they get a bit of authority start linking them slowly to your main short keyword site….wouldnt this also work, as well as incorporating the pyramid strucutre you mentioned in your post?
Im thinking this would double the speed in which you get ranked highly.
What do you all think?
@Ben K
Interesting stuff and I checked out your site……Ive seen that style and format of website somewhere before!!!
Hahaha!!!
I guess ugly blogs do rule huh! ;o)
No seriously, I will read the stuff on ur site and refresh myself with the stuff on Grizz’s and then start a few flaghip blogs.
Another few questions.
How many blogs do you guys have and what kinda income are you getting from them through adsense?
I have read in many sites you should start a few off in one go rather than just start one, optimise it and sit and cross ur fingers that it makes $$.
What strategies do you guys follow?
How long in ur experience do you have to wait for the $$ to start flowing?
Are all of you using just adsense or have you experimented with other monetization methods?
Has anyone experimented with other adsense copies like adbrite, chikita, etc?
Questions, questions oh so many questions, but its all good and Im sure many here will benefit.
Thanks,
DP
according to my datacenter Griz now ranks number 1 for make money with adsense unbelievable!
Unbelievable? Not exactly. Do some googleing for keywords “make money” “make money beginner” “make money adsense” and so on. You will se a lot of Grizzlys blogs on the top three
That is what happens when you know your stuff. It is not unbelievable, it is the real thing.
c’mon griz, this post is over a month old. quit slackin’!
Hi Grizz, I just came across a site www.associatedcontent.com which pays you if you get x amount of hits on your article page and also gives out article assignments - basically pays you to write articles on certain topics which is useful because you may already be writing on that topic so you can basically get paid to write your own article with a backlink to your site.
Just in case you haven’t heard of it yet
Griz,
If you don’t post sumtin soon I will turn you in toTeh internets poliz
I am going through Griz withdrawal…
sounds like many mizz the Grizz. cheers. b
@Afon
Are you getting tens of thousands of daily visitors already? Good luck on conquering the internet
Hi
I go by the name Windmill on the internetz. I am a college student who is 18 years old and is looking for a good source of income. I used to have my own video game store instead. However this seems like a much better opportunity. I had plans to start up a blog to make money, and thanks to your blogs…. I found out I was going about it totally the wrong way!
While I am remaining very skeptical of your blog posts (lets be frank, if what you say is true… then the information you are giving out could potentially cripple you if enough people capatalise on it) but earlier you made a good point that pretty much no one will follow your advice anyway.
Well I intend to follow it and make me some passive income. Please post more, your information is invaulable. I will read it.
Question: you at one point linked to your friends list of 7 things people should do to make monies. But that page seems to be set up for the purpose of selling their little internet school on adsense. Do you think it is worthwhile signing up for it- do they give more specific information than you? I’m willing to invest in my future but I don’t like to buy things willy-nilly. I’m a college student. My money streams only go so far.
Also, another question. I am currently looking to make, one day in the future, about $850 a month off of this. That is my current goal. My niche would be in the field of video games… a small niche within that which doesn’t seem to have much competition. How much traffic do you think I would need each month to wrack up that sort of money?
Thanks
Windmill