Top 3 Ideas
Archive for December, 2011
If you’ve read the impartial, no-holds-barred and highly unusual review I wrote recently on the SEO Linkvine Elite Vip here then you know I’m not one to pointlessly recommend something just for the sake of my own income.
In fact, I’d rather tell it like it is, and forgo the income and bring you the facts, plain and simple.
So in that same light and attitude, I want to show you some results of some ‘Magic Code’ analysis we did recently to answer this question…
“What is The BEST Article/Blog Syndication Network?”
What are article/blog syndication networks?
This is a network – a group – of websites onto which you can automatically publish your own articles as blog posts and you can have up to 3 backlinks to your sites within the article/post. You gain in backlinks, and the site owner gets fresh content onto their site.
These are the networks we use
- Article Ranks
- My Article Network
- SEO Linkvine
- Traffic Kaboom
- EZ Article Link
- Authority Link Network
- Unique Article Wizard
We analyzed 4 of those by using the Magic Code method. If you’re not sure what the Magic Code is, in essence it means putting a unique letter and number code sequence in your articles when you input your articles into the article/blog network. You can then search in Google for that unique ‘Magic Code’ to find where your articles are published, to get the backlink URL.
In this expose I am going to show you REAL LIVE DATA
This is not some hypothetical theory fluff…
This is real examples in action.
So over a period of a few weeks we used the same Magic Code in some of our ‘soup diet’ articles. We published each article, once it was properly spun using The Best Spinner, into each of these 4 networks…
- My Article Networks
- Traffic Kaboom
- Unique Article Wizard
- SEO Linkvine
We added a snippet to the end of each Magic Code, depending on which network they went into, to enable us to identify which network they were published into, using the following code endings…
- My Article Networks – ending in _MyAN
- Traffic Kaboom – ending in _TK
- Unique Article Wizard – ending in _uaw
- SEO Linkvine – ending in _seolv
We let the articles get published onto their network sites over a period of a few months then did a simple Google search for the Magic Code.
Here’s the COOL part of this review…
YOU can verify this data yourself!
Now, because the networks are regularly publishing more articles every day, the numbers will have moved on (and they *should* do, if the network is doing its job!) The numbers shown below were taken on 25th November 2011, so after then, you should see higher numbers (if the network is not completely dead).
So try this…
On www.Google.com search for any one of these Magic Codes (WITH the ” quote marks around it)
“soupdiet6421q62vj63o7_MyAN”
“soupdiet6421q62vj63o7_TK
“soupdiet6421q62vj63o7_uaw”
“soupdiet6421q62vj63o7_seolv”
As of 25th November, these are the recorded numbers of article URLs (and hence backlinks) in order of backlinks
- 5900 – Traffic Kaboom
- 1780 – Unique Article Wizard
- 497 – My Article Networks
- 162 – SEO Linkvine
So it is MASSIVELY clear that Traffic Kaboom is by far and away the BEST of those 4 networks.
I am increasingly impressed with the 2 Jason’s behind Traffic Kaboom (Jason Potash and Jason Katzenbach). They clearly know their stuff. I have personally tested and verified their tools, just as I have shown you above. Traffic Kaboom simply gets LOTS of powerful backlinks which help YOUR site’s Search Engine Optimisation and Google ranking
For that reason, I have no problem recommending you get and start USING Traffic Kaboom.
Learn more about Traffic Kaboom here
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Case Study: Google position #4 in 2 months EASILY [CORRECTION: Now at #1]
Case Study: How To Get a Competitive Top 4 In Google In 2 Months
About 2 months ago I built this site as part of the sales funnel for Real Revenue…
UPDATE:
The site is now at position #1 AND #2 as this screenshot shows – PLUS it has the photo of me in the Google results – which builds greater trust and clickthrough…
Niche Research Site at Google position #1 and #2
NOTE: I’m not done yet. This is early days. I just thought I’d show you this now, so we can watch it and track it together over time…
As you can see it is already ranking in Google and is showing on the first page at #4. Now, I am not saying that #4 is particularly great. I don’t think it is. It’s not bad in itself, but I would not be happy with just that – if it were its best position it would ever gets…
BUT it is a good START – especially given that it is a fairly competitive market and the site has been live for only 2 months.
I will be happy when it is at #1 or #2 
There is an interesting and important thing which I wanted to test with this site – see if you can guess what it is, as you read on down the page…
The Aim: Why Do This?
The plan is to be in front of people searching for “niche research” and the like, to help them with their Niche Research, and in so doing, introduce them to the Proper Profits Coaching System and show them how it can help them increase their business income each month – ie to make more money!
The Research
So first off, I did the market research around this. And yes, you can see the exact steps on how to do this market research within the Proper Profits training – and the text-only part of it is in the FREE report which you will find at…
Yes – the niche research process that I went through to ascertain IF this was a viable business option is what the site itself offers as its free report and squeeze page incentive!
In a nutshell, I used Market Samurai to check if I could find a sweet-spot search term that is searched for a lot, but not crazy competitive.
I usually double check what Market Samurai says for the number of searches, with what the Google Keywords Tools says. Here is the screenshot from Google Keywords Tool…
So then I look at the top one, “Keyword research” in Market Samurai’s “SEO Competition” module (this is really where Market Samurai is incredibly useful. The other functions are handy, but can be mostly done for free. The SEO Competition module does in seconds what would take hours to do using the free options. Hence why I use Market Samurai a LOT!)
This is the Market Samurai SEO Competition view for “Keyword research”…
If you’re not completely familiar with Market Samurai, get the free Niche Research Report here which outlines in detail how best to use it etc
In that screenshot above, you can see there is a LOTof red there.
That means that should be a red light to you as a niche to go into. It’s going to be VERY competitive.
Before I completely put the “keyword research” option to one side, I always check for one sneaky backdoor into the top of Google…
The pure keyword domain name!
IF I were able to get a decent Top Level Domain (TLD – ie .com, .net or .org for global markets, or the country-specific equivalent eg .co.uk, .com.au etc)…
IF I were able to get a pure keyword domain with a decent TLD then I might just stand a chance of competing…
So I go to my preferred domain registrar site www.uk2.net and lookup “keyword research” in their domains box.
As expected, all decent TLD domains have gone ie keywordresearch.com is taken, keywordreserch.net is taken etc
Now I could go for a non-pure keyword domain (this is covered in more detail within the Proper Profits training). This means carefully choosing a near-pure keyword domain but which has some other word in it eg keywordresearching.com (note the “ing” on the end there?)
There are a couple of TLDs available for keywordresearching – but to be honest, I still see it as up against a massive amount of competition – old established domains with vast amounts of backlinks – plus the average PageRank of the top 10 results is 5.4 – which is way too high to niche target. Ideally you want an average PR 3 or less.
To go for this keyword, you would need to go all guns blazing – to have ALL of the tools outlined in the Proper Profits training – AND to full-throttle go for it.
Which means ‘all eggs in one basket’
So “keyword research” is not a good target…
How about “niche marketing”?
That’s not as much red as for “keyword research” – but it’s still fairly red – which means it is going to be quite competitive.
IF we were able to get a pure keyword domain, we *might* be able to get this new domain into the middle of page one by hitting it with a lot of backlinks AND having set it up perfectly, as outlined in the Proper Profits training…
IF we were to get a pure keyword domain… Which we cant, because they’ve all gone!
Now, again, we could get a non-pure keyword domain – which I am sure we could get to #7, given that there is a newish domain at #7 with relatively few backlinks (1,877 backlinks in the screenshot above). We might get to #5, depending how it goes.
But the option to get to a best position possible of #7 or maybe #5 is not good enough for me.
You see, the truth is that positions #1 and #2 get a massively disproportionate amount of the click-throughs – after #2 or #3 the click-throughs REALLY drop off.
So we keep looking…
Now to “keyword analysis”…
There is less red here – but the top 10 results is still largely populated by sites with a lot of backlinks (many with 50,000-plus) and ALL older than 4 years old) and the average PageRank is 4.8 (too high to easily compete)
Pure keyword domains have all gone so no chance of sneaking in that back door…
Given the high SEO competition I would not go for a non-pure keyword domain (unless I REALLY wanted to go for this market – maybe later…) – but my estimate would be that we would get to about #6 given the non-pure keyword domain which is currently at #6 there, and that it does not have a massive amount of backlinks (2,292 backlinks)
So moving on from “keyword analysis”…
To “niche research”…
Now this obviously gets far fewer searches than the previous keywords we’ve looked at – but I would always far rather be at #1 for something with 3,000 searches than at #10 for something with 30,000 searches – because the drop-off in click-throughs from position 1 to position 2, 3, 4 down to position 10 is exponential.
That means that the click-throughs in position 10 are a tiny fraction of the number of click throughs that the site at position #1 will get.
So now let’s look at the Market Samurai screenshot for “niche research”…
Da-da-da-DAHHH!
Now we’re getting down to far less red! Much better for us!
I’ve taken this screenshot recently hence why you can see my site nicheresearch.co at #4 – so obviously this wasn’t what I saw when I first did the research for this.
Looking at the sites in those top 10 results there, there are only a few keyword domains – which means we have a chance to compete if we can get a pure keyword domain…
And the average PageRank of those top 10 is only 1.9. Much better!
Now, those sites at position #10, 9, 8 and 7 were there 2 months ago. I looked at them and KNEW I could beat them – for a number of different reasons…
They are relatively new, they have fairly few backlinks and they are not fully optimized on their sites (shown by the “N”s in the right side of the Market Samurai results)
So I figured I could/should probably beat those to get my site to about #7 or 6.
The site at #6 now has a lot of backlinks but is not a keyword domain and is not perfectly optimized onsite for this keyword – so I figured I would likely be able to beat it (and already have)
So this is how I got to #4 within 2 short months. Yes, Search Engine Optimisation takes a long period of time.
But the god news is that I have spent approximately a total of 2 and a half hours work on this site, including setting the site up and some follow on marketing.
When I set this site up I followed exactly the Proper Profits ‘Site Setup’ checklist. I literally opened the Checklist file myself and followed it – doing exactly what it said.
Now what is interesting is that if you look up at that last screenshot you will see that my nicheresearch.co site has a puny, tiny amount of backlinks – only 96 backlinks!
And yet it is outranking sites with 1,000, 3,000 an even 87,000 backlinks!
How can this be?
In short – because I set it up exactly as per the Proper Profits Site Setup Checklist!
That means setting it up right, populating it right, and doing a few things right after the site setup.
If you havent already, you can get access to this checklist within the Proper Profits Coaching System
Now, my assessment / educated guess / hope is that my site might get to about #3 or #2 within the next 3 – 6 months. We’ll see.
And again, I am NOT pushing this hard at ALL! Just a few gentle, strategic SEO steps as outlined in the Proper Profits training
So did you guess it?
What the thing was that I was testing in this site’s promotion?
It was the .co domain ending and whether it had any effect – positive or negative – on a site’s ranking.
There has been a lot chattering amongst SEO forums and blogs about whether the .co domain ending might not have a good impact for global markets because the .co is strictly originally the domain ending for Colombia (country in South America)
It is a practical reality that country-specific domain endings (eg .co.uk, .com.au) sites get better SEO results in that country. So when I am targeting the UK for a specific niche I always try to get the .co.uk and the .org.uk of the domain.
But the question was whether the .co domain could rank well outside of Colombia.
And the clear result is that this .co site – www.NicheResearch.co – is ranking very nicely in the USA and globally.
Now that is certainly because I set it all up as per the Proper Profits checklist and followed those steps and tweaked the settings to get this working. But the question I wanted to know was “would I be able to rank a .co site well globally”.
And the answer so far is “YES”
So don’t be afraid to get the .co version when you are looking for a good domain name. The only downside is that the .co domains are more expensive – but if a niche is working going into, then the extra cost for the .co should not be a barrier to you.
Good luck.
I hope you’ve gained some insight into how we do market research and how you should think it through.
Let me know what you think – your thoughts and the best bits you learnt here. Let everyone know in the comments below…
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I’m about to do something highly unusual in the ‘Internet Marketing’ arena (and this has already cost me $2,000) …
Have you ever Google-searched for a review on something?
You’ll find that 99.9% of those reviews will give you a quick outline of the thing, give you lots of positives, maybe a minor negative, just to show you they are ‘real’…
Then they say you should get it and click their affiliate link to buy it…
There are 2 principle reasons that this situation happens.
- The ‘reviewer’ is only going to make money if they tell you to buy the product, and buy it via their affiliate link
- Internet Marketers dont want to write a negative review in case it crashes their chances of ever doing a monster Joint Venture (JV) with that product’s owner
That’s what normally happens…
Let’s break the mould right now…
I’m going to give you the real stats and screenshots – and you can tell ME if you think this is a recommended tool or not.
You can weigh up the pros and cons, the good bits and the bad, and you tell ME below what you think, whether you think it is worth it.
So this tool in question is the SEO Linkvine Elite VIP
NOTE: This is NOT the standard SEO Linkvine. You can only get access to the VIP version once you are a paying member of SEO Linkvine
So we’re looking at the Elite VIP – I’m just going to call it ‘Elite’ from now on…
It boils down to the same concept as many other blog/article auto-syndication networks. You input your articles, or short-articles, in which you can have 1 or 2 backlinks to your site, which get automatically syndicated out and published on a number of websites within the network.
Elite’s marketing blurb promises to have a more powerful network than most other such auto-syndication networks. That is its principle USP (Unique Selling Point) – that the sites within its network are more powerful than other networks.
For access to the ‘more powerful’ sites, you pay the princely sum of about $500 a month (its $495, but when its near-enough $500, you’re not interested in a $5 difference)
So now, given that cost, any decision has to be relative to the benefits of this network AND relative to the comparative cost of other great blog/article auto-syndication networks like
- Article Ranks (best)
- My Article Network
- SEO Linkvine
- Traffic Kaboom (best of this type)
- EZ Article Link
- Authority Link Network
These ones above we DO USE – and do recommend YOU use. THEIR prices vary between $50 and $80 month. We have done numerous other tests using the Magic Code method which show these are proving effective at getting us good quantities of good backlinks (Traffic Kaboom is proving to be the best – but more on that in a separate post here on the Proper Profits blog later).
(We then use the Backlink Multiplier methods to supercharge these backlinks)
So what about this ‘Elite’ tool?
Well, after 4 months paying $500 a month (hence the $2,000 cost I mentioned earlier), here are the results…
2144 publications ie 2144 backlinks.
Thats near enough $1 per backlink. Now IF these were powerful high Page Rank (PR) backlinks, then that would be good.
Unfortunately, they’re not high PR, as you’re about to see.
I took the report that Elite gives, of these 2144 backlinks…
I then looked closely into the Excel spreadsheet of these backlinks…
There were MANY duplicates. That is, there were many backlinks which were on different pages, on the same domain. Sometimes 5 on the same domain, sometimes 8.
The issue here is that 5 backlinks on the same site is nowhere near as powerful for your SEO as 5 backlinks on 5 different sites (domains).
So I de-duplicated the list – and got down to only 369 different sites!
(From 2144 down to 369 shows there was a LOT of duplicates)
Not so good, to my mind.
Now, again, if these sites were high Page Rank it might be worth it. Or if they had stacks of backlinks to them. Or if they were old AND had lots of backlinks.
So I ran the first 100 of these 369 through Market Samurai because Samurai is the quickest method to get the data that matters.
Below are the screenshots of the Market Samurai results for the first 100 (first 100 in alphabetical order). Have a quick scan of the columns that matter – mostly BLP and BLD backlinks. Here is what each column means (if you dont already have Market Samurai, it is a great tool)
URL: Site where the backlink is (partially blanked out to protect the network)
DA: Domain Age
PR: PageRank
IC: Index Count (number of pages indexed)
RDD: Refering Domains to this Domain
RDP: Refering Domains to this Page
BLP: Backlinks to this Page
BLD: Backlinks to the whole Domain
BLEG: Backlinks from .Edu or .Gov
DMZ: Listed in DMOZ Directory
YAH: Listed in Yahoo Directory
Now, here are the screenshots showing how good or weak each site is to get a backlink from (note, I inputted the main domain home page which usually has the strongest numbers of backlinks etc – deeper pages usually have fewer backlinks etc)
I would clasify a backlink worth having as one on a domain with over 1,000 backlinks to itself and/or a backlink with 5 or more backlinks to that specific page. You could then assume that Google will have that backlink indexed and counting towards your SEO power.
5 backlinks to your backlinks is not a powerful backlink by any stretch – but it should simply be enough to get your backlink noticed. But still not worth paying over the odds for…
So looking at those screenshots above, I count only 7 of those 100 sites as having more than 1,000 backlinks to their homepage. Yes, some of them are older than 3 or 4 years, which starts to get interesting – IF and only if the domain has a healthy amount of backlinks to them – yet most of those ‘older’ sites don’t have that many backlinks.
So now lets look at the specific PAGE that our backlink is on. The only columns to look at here are
RDP: Refering Domains to this Page
BLP: Backlinks to this Page
Run your eyes down the RDP and BLP columns there…
Absolutely 100% all ZERO!
That means there are zero backlinks to these backlinks. Nada – nothing – ziltch!
So they’re highly unlikely to be indexed in Google or paid any attention by Google.
Now, of course, I would and will be running the Backlink Multiplier steps on all these backlinks, putting them through the Proper Profits ENGINE and getting them all indexed and loved by Google – but only by MY own work – not from ‘work’ I have already paid over-the-odds for.
But I can get similar, relatively weak backlinks, with zero backlinks to that page and only a moderate few backlinks to the main site’s homepage, by using the much cheaper blog/article auto-syndication networks listed above.
For instance, in one recent similar analysis run we did, to check out the other article/blog auto-syndication networks we use, in a similar timeframe to the test above, Traffic Kaboom produced 5,900 backlinks – compared to Elite’s 2144.
Yes, Traffic Kaboom generated over TWICE as much!
I also have a minor issue that Elite is getting backlinks from sites named like this
transsexualsexvideos.net
2-get-female-foot-job-fetish-worship-celebrity.com
I saw those URLs in the link list and baulked at the site thinking our link was going on some dodgy adult site. It turns out that the site is just named that way and the content is not adult material – the content is basically a content farm ie a site created purely to publish other articles within the network.
And here’s the rub…
I own 80+ websites, ALL of which are FAR higher quality and much more tightly relevant to my niches than most of the sites within this ‘Elite’ network. I dont say that to brag – not at all.
I say that because I am just a guy who slowly (and maybe too lazily) built these sites of mine up over the last few years, working things out as we went along, honing it down as we went.
And in essence, the whole way we build these sites is laid out in clear step-by-step detail in the Proper Profits.
My point is not to suggest you need the Proper Profits Coaching (a wise move in itself) – but to suggest that you can build your OWN network of sites which will have much higher quality AND relevance than the sites within this ‘Elite’ network – and probably a number of other networks too.
Now, I am not totally discounting all the backlinks gotten via Elite. About 7 of the links shown above are good. And all of them are worth having – they are just not worth $500 a month, in my view.
So we will need to do a fair amount of work on these backlinks, to get backlinks TO these backlinks, to get Google to pay attention to them and to supercharge them, as per the Backlinks Multiplier strategies.
So tell me what you think…
How would you rate backlinks like this?
Would you be happy to pay $500 a month for them?
Let me know in the comments below…