I also own a small collection of sites myself, some of which are geo-domains focusing on a particular area. My first difficulty was to accommodate Google’s recent obsession with local listings. The problem is, Google hasn’t stopped at geo-sectors. Now, on an increasing amount of searches local listings appear.

Whilst this is fantastic news for small business owners and nearby shops/services, if you want to order something online do you really want a shop 20 miles away coming up first with no idea if they have the product in stock or if their price is competitive?

A number of pessimistic views have been posted on the likes of UK Business Forums to suggest SEO is dying, or indeed has died. However, the death of such a huge industry is extremely unlikely and tactics can be adopted to assist in ranking under local listings. The beauty of SEO; you’re constantly learning.

As the World Wide Web grows at an alarming rate and as social media sites blossom – YouTube says that 35 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute – search engines have more and more content to chew and rank. So, when it comes to outranking these sites more time and money is required to achieve the same results you could do with your eyes closed previously. Competition is not the only problem, Google is definitely clamping down on links it previously gave juice too and people with quality sites are demanding top dollar for advertising.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for change and growth. But, do we need Twitter feeds or YouTube videos getting preferential treatment in search results? It has even been suggested that Google gives preferential treatment to its own products and services. Mind you, if you were Google wouldn’t you?

Some people are even taking things a step further and instead of attempting to outrank a competitor fairly, they’re using negative SEO to devalue other sites. Talk about sneaky!

The exact match domain boost that webmasters – including myself – have ridden on for years could be coming to an end, but again that’s talk just now. Those who perhaps have spent considerable sums of money on such names could see their value cut overnight, simply because of a tweak here and there by the Big G. The only good that could come out of this is that webmasters will be forced to build brands around their site and not simply rely on web traffic.

Perhaps these changes will force greater investment by webmasters to go beyond creating a site and doing some SEO. Perhaps in years to come Google will find a way of chucking out the crap and focusing on sites with more than an exact match and a few backlinks. A clean up is in order and I think it’ll happen, so if you’re serious about the future don’t sit on your arse and pretend everything will be fine. Change can happen, and it will. Oh, and when Facebook launches its own search, there will be another competitor in the running.

Good luck with your pursuits,

Khalid.

For Technorati: 77MQX7KVWJHE

The first analysis was on Dave Naylor, a quite well known name in the SEO world. Now I don’t know Dave personally, but I do know his SEO company – Bronco – refused to show me an example of quality links they wanted to offer me. Fair enough, NDA’s and all that, but then I asked myself how Dave was getting business if he couldn’t showcase his work? I do know he’s done work for some well ranked sites, like Elaine’s All Kids, and I don’t see her complaining, so maybe Dave is worth his weight in gold. But, for someone that doesn’t know him and was steered in his direction, he didn’t do much to attract me. Perhaps it was because I had a specific requirement – quality backlinks – but isn’t that what most webmasters need?

The problem I have with public figures e.g. John Chow and such is that they gain a reputation for being amazing by posting how amazing they are. I have no doubt John Chow is making money, afterall his blog earns him thousands due to the number of followers, but what about all the other fake entrepeneurs and “seo experts”? I think they make money because they say they make money because they say they are amazing – if that makes sense?

I’m not saying Dave is a fake, he clearly knows what he is doing, what I’m saying is that I’m questioning how much of his success is down to his results and how much is because he is perceived as amazing? Dave this isn’t a dig, you just ended up on the above site first so I chose to use you as an example!

I have been learning SEO continually for years and had the opportunity to pickup tips from some great webmasters with fantastic sites. But, they only shared this information to me because I helped them in one way or another. We’ve shared resources, tested methods, trialled outsourcing and even today, we’re still learning together.

It’s no shock that the best of the best buy links, and whilst search engines frown upon it, Yahoo openly sells directory listings which is a link, so they must tolerate it! The key to SEO, in my opinion, is to have a quality site filled with hundreds of quality pages, fresh content daily and links built over time from multiple resources.

One year ago I began working for my current employer, and after battling for 12 months we’ve just reached page 2 in Google for our chosen keyword. The market is extremely competative, but we’re succeeding, only through doing the above though. There’s no magical secret in seo, it is how well you adapt the above to your website.

It may surprise you that as an SEO consultant myself, I’ve employed two companies who rank on the front page for Google.co.uk for “SEO services” to work on websites for me, and they both returned with link farmed crap. The cost to me was £x,xxx but I learned one lesson – if you want a job done properly do it yourself. These links get cached, but how long will they last before Google ignore’s them or they get removed as the company has a new client that needs the space.

By outsourcing I learned what the competition were doing, what to do myself and what to avoid. By analysing rival websites, ranking websites in other niches and cross-comparing with my own, I also learned how the higher ranking sites were doing better. Now, I do little bits here and there for myself and some clients, and I’m not afraid to show my current and previous work.

I’ve never pro-actively promoted myself as an “SEO Guru”, nor have the few people I choose to share information with, but we’re doing well because instead of shouting about how amazing we are, we just get on with the job in hand.

I really commend people like Dave for being able to get some of the contracts he does, and as I said before I have no doubt he’s good at what he does, I just think the media spotlight shines a light on these people that blinds others into thinking they’re better than they actually are.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

However, you don’t always need to the keyword domain name to succeed. Famous examples, such as confused.com, utilise other easy-to-remember words to promote themselves, and just work that little bit harder at SEO to get it to rank.

Amy, my friend and business partner Rob’s girlfriend, has recently done this when reaching out to lovers of British Fashion with her fantastic blog Desirable.co.uk. Amy has been working hard to provide quality content covering a multiple areas within the fashion industry and although she isn’t number 1 for the term “British Fashion” (yet!), Amy’s site reaches in excess of 500 people per day and counting. And to add to the benefits of utilising a non-keyword domain, Amy is able to target a wide variety of topics without feeling her site is deviating from its description.

Having the keyword domain name certainly helps but can restrict your websites reach and content if you feel like it doesn’t fit in with the website’s name. So think outside the box and remember QUALITY CONTENT IS KING. Write informative, appealing articles, blog posts and such and in time people will notice.

Good luck with your pursuits,

Khalid.

I was pleasantly surprised to find one or two of my sites have crept up the rankings without link building, just from the domains being a little older. In my experience this can really help and I have read some webmasters buy a domain then leave it for a year before they build a site.

The extra traffic I am not getting will help me nicely and I am sitting here with a smile and I own over 100 domains that are maturing day-by-day. I can’t wait to start producing good quality sites on domains I’ve had for maybe 2 or 3 years.

Right now though I’m still working on my current front line sites, including the content based ones I’ve been talking about. Both are coming along nicely, I just wish it was 6 or 12 months down the line and they were established.

Time will tell. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

If you remember, my challenge with RHW was to purchase cheap traffic and convert it to clicks on my ppc ads. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, and I couldn’t go down the social media route as the traffic is adult(ish!). With Ribbu, I received a huge surge in traffic from StumbleUpon then it all died down very quickly.

I recently re-visited both these sites only to find they were generate about 500 unique visitors per day each! A lot of the traffic is from Google Images but it’s still traffic! So I’ve slapped on some more ppc ads and hopefully they’ll convert in due course. I’ve started posting on these sites again, and even if they aren’t successful in gaining a good position within the SERPs, I’m still getting daily visitors.

Just remember never to forget an old site, they’re probably worth something.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

I intend to reveal more in due course but I wanted to put a question out to all readers. For a small content site (MFA), how many pages is ideal to rank well in the SERPs? I tend to find 3 pages with 500 words on each but I wanted to know what your takes was. Let me know!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Further to that, trying to sell links that don’t have a high pagerank is even harder…until now.

In steps TNX, a link network/marketplace that allows you to buy a high amount of links within specific niches without breaking the bank. And, you can sell links easily too!

For the publisher, TNX will allow you to earn money on text links, even on pagerank zero pages! For the advertiser, TNX gives you access to thousands of link spaces across hundreds of sites without you remortgaging your house!

As I write this, there is 23035474 links in the system with 32665656 pages indexed by the site. In short, this is not a trivial system that can be laughed at, this is a resource that provides you with easy access to quality link building.

The entire process is easy for both publisher and advertiser:

For the publisher… 1. Install the TNX code on your site. 2. Add your site to TNX system. We will approve it in 1-2 days. 3. Raise the number of links displayed on pages of your website (max. 4 links). 4. Create your own ad campaigns or sell TNX-points to TNX-system or other TNX users.

For the advertiser… 1. Create an Ad campaign following all 3 steps that are provided you by TNX. Buy TNX-points if you don’t have them yet. 2. Relax and watch for results. 3. Edit your campaigns or create new ones using your experience.

So how much does it cost and how much can you get paid?

Well, I’ve personally never used the site as I’ve been too busy recently, BUT, the results seem good. According to Jim Karter, a webmaster, he did quite well with the system!

Well, first of all I put it on a website which did not had much unique content but had a page rank of 4 and around 3000 pages indexed. I hope everybody know how easy it is to create such non-unique sites, but those sites do not get search engine traffic. But I did not need search engine traffic. I added the code from TNX in my template so the links were sold for every page. In one month, I made around 140,000 TNX-points.

So, overall what I got in return of a useless (because of it non-uniqueness) PR4 sites is:

1. Cash of $66/month 2. Around 3000 to 4000 PR0 and PR1 backlinks for my new sites. (I did not need higher PR link for my new sites right now)

TNX use a points system to pay webmasters, so instead of money you get points which you can cash in or use to buy links for your sites. Like a virtual currency, the moneytary value of your points can fluctuate, which can have a positive or negative affect on your earnings.

If you are worried about the negative impact of selling links, i.e. losing your rank, TNX has that covered too! Unlike other text link networks, TNX use a code that seemingly Googlebot doesn’t pickup.

Overall I think TNX is fresh, effective way of link building/selling and it is something I’ll definately be trying it soon! If you’ve used TNX, let me (and other readers!) know so we can get some honest reviews.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

When I first began building sites for profit and dabbling in ppc revenue methods like Google Adsense, trickles of income began coming my way. My problem is that I become wrestless, I don’t like to wait. That trickle could become a stream, then a river and so on and so forth.

I wasn’t prepared to wait, and my first network of sites were sold for $50 each.

A lot of learning has occured since then and I now follow strict personal rules when considering selling a site. I plan for the future, I think about the short and long term gains and I don’t sell until I am sure I either need the cash or want to exit the market.

Proxy traffic is considered “trash”. Proxy users are generally people who want to bypass school filters, view adult content or get away with playing their favourite arcade game at work. The only company willing that offers good revenue and is willing to allow placement of their ads on proxy sites is Google Adsense, a network which I was banned from about a year ago.

Aside from Google, there’s Adversal and Adbrite, but both offer low payouts. Adversal did provide a few extra dollars per month for their non-intrusive pop-under ads so it is a network I’d recommend.

Getting a little off track, I bought Kortaz.com for $15 simply because I liked the name. Kortaz was originally a big site divided into smaller sections, including an arcade, funny videos feed, proxy and image host. The idea originally came about when I saw arcades making, say $10 per day, a video site $20, a proxy $5 and so on. I thought about combining them to create one large site that would generate revenue through each section.

Unfortunately it was difficult to market without a big budget, I hadn’t really thought it through properly, but being a businessman involves learning, so I’m glad I made the mistakes.

Knowing I could profit from proxy traffic, as I did by building and selling SneakOnline.com for $750, I turned my sites back to the trash nobody wanted (apart from us profiting proxy webmasters). I was bored with a proxy site as you couldn’t do much in the way of earning money, so I thought about a proxy listing site.

I didn’t want one of these topsites nobody visited, so I managed to find a free script that offered something more unique – a links lister with sections and a hit counter for each link. The only change I made was to randomize link orders. Kortaz, the web proxy list was born.

Originally I offered free placements to all and a few lucky people were “Featured” (premium placement) for free. A link back to Kortaz with the anchor text “web proxy” was always required on the homepage if you requested a free link.

As the number of submissions and backlinks grew, so did traffic. The hit counter beside each link, along with a few testimonials, was proof to webmasters Kortaz provided great traffic, all for $6-$10 per month (I changed the price to attract people during difficult times).

I managed to profit here from two things. The first was that links rotated randomly so each featured and non-featured link got time at the top of the pile in their own sections. Secondly, there was some negative press about the biggest proxy listing site, proxy.org, using bots to imitate traffic and click on Adsense units of sites listed on the site.

However, as the site grew, so did the problems. The script was designed for heavy use and would max out after 2,000 outbound hits, I couldn’t integrate automatic Paypal payments and so on. I managed to hire a great coder for $50 who developed the site as you see it today using a free web template (why waste money if you don’t need too!).

The new design was rolled out and I put some contextual advertising and Adversal popunders on it, afterall it was “trash traffic”! I managed to get the stage where the site was earning around $150-$170 per month. It was doing well and I had a small money-maker on my hands.

Traffic was excellent, with the site ranking first in the SERPs for “Web Proxy” and on the first page for a number of other terms. This was simply due to the high number of relevant backlinks accumulated over time (slow but steady link building).

My reason for selling – I needed cash, I have student debt and bills to pay. I was sad to see it go. I decided to list the site on Sitepoint.com with a price tag of $2k. I didn’t think it would reach this because nobody likes proxy sites but I was surprised it was sold within 48 hours. I think I could have gotten more but you learn. I think the strongest selling points were the SERPs positioning and the private link sales, i.e. no reliance on an ad network.

Building, establishing and maintaining Kortaz.com was one of the best experiences I’ve had online. I turned a domain name into a profitable website, I learned about SEO and link building and I tasted success.

One man’s dirt is another man’s foundations and Kortaz.com was exactly that. The owner didn’t want the domain and a lot of webmasters don’t like proxy traffic. I took two negatives and turned them into a positive – all in under one year.

I hope you learned a little from this story, good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

In today’s World Wide Web, where each keyword becomes a market and every webmaster is a vendor, simply having one stall doesn’t cut it anymore unless you have a truly unique product to offer. According to Verisign – the digital infrastructure authority that manages Internet domain names such as .com – there were 153 million domain names registered in 2007, up 27% from the previous year.

For many of us budding entrepreneurs, creating the next FaceBook or YouTube idea is simply something we probably won’t be able to achieve, or fund for that matter. It’s not that we’re unable to think of great ideas and market them, it’s that these sites are a one-of-a-kind and generally very successful or huge failures.

You are rolling a dice hoping for that success, but for many, the odds of 1 in 6 are too slim. Entrepreneurs are risk takers, but we like to invest wisely. Dominating a niche in an attempt to become the king of one sector seems like a viable choice… and it’s working for me.

The benefits of dominating a niche include the following:

1. You’re concentrating on one sector so your knowledge of it is enhanced, thus your website’s content will be too.
2. Each site is targetting a different keyword in the same niche so you are spreading yourself well over one area.
3. You will automatically have relevant backlinks available to each other as each of your sites will be in the same niche.
4. Linking to each other helps boost your overall SERPs, as they help pull each other up the ranks.
5. Adding a new site and targetting another keyword will be easier as you already have an established network setup to help it get indexed and ranked quickly.
6. By establishing yourself and building strong foundations in one area, you are making it harder for others to compete.

I’m sure there are additional benefits to dominating a niche, but these are probably the most important. However, there can be downfalls too:

1. If the niche you are targetting already has this operation in place it’ll make it much harder to compete.
2. If the niche does’nt have many paying advertisers, having “all your eggs in one basket” will probably not convert to the profit you were hoping for.
3. The content is limited so spreading it over a huge network of sites may not be easy. For example, news about “tattoos” is rare so spreading this over 10 tattoo sites won’t be a walk in the park.

Overall I think dominating a niche, providing you have researched it well and have a viable business model, can be a success. At present I am doing this and have 3 sites in the same sector, adding a 4th by the end of today. It’s a proftable operation that is earning me money, and my aim is to have 5 sites targetting 5 different keywords and ranking in the top 5 of the SERPs (tongue twister I know)!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Whilst he “No Follow” attribute may stop PR leakage, links are still counted towards the overall backlink count, which is what you should be targetting. In my post Off Site SEO, I stated “I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines.”

Regardless of whether these links are “No Follow” or not, they’ll still be counted. Sure it would be beneficial if they were “Do Follow”, but it is not the deciding factor.

Here are some important notes regarding the “No Follow” issue…

1. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves. In short, it doesn’t look good.

2. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Both Yahoo and Google have been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. Proof from Search Engine Journal and Jon Warass.