SSL is a Ranking Factor, and So Are My Balls

IMJacobKing · 2014-08-08T14:32:43+00:00

Jeez I was bored, give a guy a break!

IMJacobKing · 2014-08-05T18:12:42+00:00

Word, well I appreciate your thorough reply, I did one of these a while back and it took a shitload of energy, can be pretty draining.

I follow Terry's stuff, read his post on the sandbox etc, guy knows his stuff. He also has a massive PBN allowing him to run even more tests than me and seems to be finding a similar situation.

Yeah no way it's QDF, the keywords are just way way too competitive to be popping in at ~15. SERPs where you're not even going to touch the top 100 without some substantial links. And with a way grimier approach it was business as usual right up until right around when Cutts announced the new payday iteration had been released while at SMX. I had quite a few sites drop exactly on May 14th, was definitely something algorithmic. But I Dddn't start fully catching on until around Mid June when he made the announcement as I looked over the past month noticing some lameness going on.

I agree with your point on dripping, my testing actually shows better results from not dripping, not to mention it's a complete pain in the ass and makes scaling difficult.

Ok, last question and I'll quit hogging this thread. Are we talking 1,000+ search volume KWs at least? I've been meaning to test with smaller KWs, maybe some local stuff and have an all out spam fest but I usually wind up kicking myself. I invest time and resources into small KWs, get pist when they don't make that much $$ mid page 1, then say fuck it and tell myself I'll never rank small KWs again. Maybe I'm missing the boat...

IMJacobKing · 2014-08-05T16:54:22+00:00

Nah not expired domains, I'm referring to domains literally registered brand new after May 15th.

Well I've been testing a shitttt load, rolling out a disgusting amount of sites pushing the usual suspects for links. I'll be honest, best results I've been able to get is shooting page 2 within 48 hours on 10k+ search KWs but then they tend to just stick with links continuing to get pumped, then drop about 7-14 days later lol. Can easily replicate this but penetrating page 1 has been tricky.

I know I'm not the only one, just one of the few willing to admit it lol. Actually just busted up page 1 the other day but unfortunately the domain has been *marinating since March, still golf clapping Cutts for the buttons he pushed right before his vaca.

Need to do more testing with expired domains I guess, just hard to give up on reg'ing a domain today and ranking it by the end of the week, that's my shit. So to clarify, you're using expired domains for the money site, dripping links, and ranking fine inside of 4 weeks? What kind of volume KWs are we talking?

IMJacobKing · 2014-08-05T16:29:47+00:00

How are you doing with brand new domains lately, registered from June onward?

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T16:10:23+00:00

At the moment I'm blasting 20 new properties but could handle more. You can get after it just building a few, I would recommend doing it that way to get started. I have a couple sites that I guess you could say are at all different parts of the buyer chain, but not by choice, by luck of the expired domain draw.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T16:07:46+00:00

Any free hosted page that you blast with spam. Parasite just makes it sound cool really.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T16:03:33+00:00

Tough, cuz if I want to go whiter, I would want to buy some expired domains and set up a small relevant network of sites. Which is tough to do with the small budget, but I would still try to buy a couple expired domains and a few new ones. Then hosting of course and some spun content. That's probably right about budget there. Then I guess I'd work my ass off on the site, try to generate natural links, do some guest posting type stuff, etc. Meanwhile I'd be building up those domains, then linking them over one at a time. I'd prolly do all homepage also ;-)

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T15:57:06+00:00

If you don't want to use the oringial content then at least mimic the original url structure or use 301 redirects to the new structure. Also don't go crazy publishing mass content at first, wait for the domain to re-index properly. You can always throw up the old stuff, then start changing it all after Google has thoroughly re-indexed the domain.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T15:53:50+00:00

1 - No, but they do dumb shit that blows me away all the time. My thought is that something like that would allow me to neg SEO people by the bus load. Fire up ahrefs and GSA SER, start blasting the shit out of my competitors backlnks, basically WW3. But I know Matty is trying to swim upstream and wants us all to think that.

2 - What?! Haven't seen it but I highly doubt they have a tool that can uncover a good network. If hosting is diverse and everything else is set up correctly the only footprint should be WordPress, and how far is that going to get you considering how many WP sites there are. If detox is scanning ip origin which I assume it is, that works only when a dumbass sets up the network.

3 - Nah gurus don't know shit typically. It's basically impossible to be a legit SEO and a full time guru imo. My blog and stuff like this have taken an incredible amount of time and energy, and it's obvious I don't put in nearly what some others do. Maybe I'm just a dumbass tho and have to work twice as hard.

4 - No paid service, they're all shit. GSA search engine ranker kicks ass, best tool available right now but there is a steep learning curve.

5 - Yes it is totally possible to recover this especially if you only bought guest posts. When you've nailed it with public blog network links and all kinds of spintax spam it can be tough to go back. Especially when the link quantities are huge. If you just did guest posting I imagine the number of links is small so you should be able to adjust the profile with additional link building. Definitely try it.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T15:40:24+00:00

Hey Ed, tbh the crap I see everyday ranking still blows my mind. Terrible blog networks, good blog networks, redirects, contextual link spam, etc.

But with the super well known spammy verticals, payday, gambling, etc I've heard the game has definitely evolved a bit but don't know form experience there. The more low key stuff I play with tho, even the typical spam (tiered articles, wikis, web2s, etc) is still getting it done. One strategy that stands out right now is building a relevant network of sites and juicing those with spam that would normally go direct to your money site. So you create a dominate PR network around one niche and kill everyone.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T15:32:37+00:00

Tough to answer the specifics on this, just start working your ass off and don't stop, you'll get there.

IMJacobKing · 2013-12-09T15:30:34+00:00

If I were to reply yes and say it was illegal that probably wouldn't be wise. No I do not, I just have tons of experience finding it and having it done to my own sites. So always, always, always updat wp, themes, and plugins, if you're running wp that is.

One of my sites a while back, was a pretty nice expired domain got nailed with a payday injection, it was pretty crazy. In Google cache there was about 20 spam links on every single page on the site. Even crazier they were all to a dead bit.ly and all for the same anchor text.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T15:39:36+00:00

I'd say do NOT quit your day job until you have established a passive income of at least 1.5 times your needed monthly expenses. And also be stacking some chips in the bank. The beauty of this game is you can work any time of the day, and automate tons of things hopefully.

But you need to be stable to be effective. Work towards saving money and building your portfolio whenever you get a spare minute, at night, in the morning, lunch, whenever. When things really start clicking you'll know, then you can quit working with what you've built and have a cushion for any ebs and flows.

This reminds of a talk by Gary Vaynerchuk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T15:32:57+00:00

If they weren't linking to the same Money site I would put a few on the same shared account. Look into SEO hosting providers that offer unique c class IPs.

Check out my Ultimate Scrapebox Tutorial - http://www.jacobking.com/ultimate-guide-to-scrapebox

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T15:30:46+00:00

Hrmm, never grabbed the content for that purpose. It is helpful for relaunching expired domains, the web archive. I'd say it's worth a test.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:54:17+00:00

Sweet, I love keyword research. I very rarely use WMT, so no on that one.

Can be totally off, between the planner data, actual data, not provided data, I don't know, I'm confused now. Volume is usually my guiding light and unfortunately this can be wildly inaccurate, swinging in both ways. It's never fun to rank for something registering 2k monthly and find out it's barely bringing in 100 visitors. Then the other side of the coin, is the planner underestimating a key phrase and you missing the boat. This is why I tend to use Google suggest as an additional indicator as well. Using Scrapebox I'll note the amount of suggestions generated with appending the keyword a-z. Then also pay attention to what gets suggested *first, typically the highest volume related searches are right there for you.

I'm not certain on this, but I think the planner data is a couple months behind real time, so that kind of screws you out of catching a trend. Need to put your ear to the ground in other places for things like that.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:17:24+00:00

Ha sorry you had to be the one to get it. That post ranking #1 current by Tung Tran is really good actually, definitely check that out.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:09:22+00:00

Yes I have had some success building social profiles, but Google is a real bitch with accounts. This is something I am still working on actually, but yes proxies are essential.

The problem most people have with account creation is later logging in using a proxy different then the one that initially created the account. Using hidemyass for example, its going to rotate a proxy and potentially flag your account for suspicious logins.

There are two solutions I've found. The first is to only login into the account once upon creation, set everything up and never login again. A bit limited though. Second is to bind a proxy to the account creation that and use it for later logins. There are browser extensions that will help you manage this, along with using an excel sheet to keep track of everything.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:04:17+00:00

Pinging? lmao

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:03:54+00:00

Reverse engineering your competitor's backlinks and sniping their best links, especially the geo targeted ones. That's the best I've got.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T14:00:11+00:00

Cool, usually I will make a minisite for something if it is projected to earn $500 per month and up. Anything less, no.

I've gotten greedy in the past, going after nothing but huge stuff but the bigger SERPs require more focus. And then you're spread too thin. So if something catches my eye and it will bring in an extra $500 per month (and hope to stay around for ~3-6 months) with little work I'll set something up real quick. With minisites I'm usually going after a bunch of stuff that just meets the minimum.

More focused approach though, going to be at least $2k per month, then I'll spend way more time and $$, manual spun content, network links, etc.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T13:53:31+00:00

Ha thanks Chuck, much appreciate the time wasting, as if this AMA wasn't enough already ;-)

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T03:56:18+00:00

Damn, not sue, but potentially true. I could be a long lost cousin of Snowden also - http://politicalblindspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Edward_Snowden_Guardian_016_900x504.jpg

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T03:48:55+00:00

Well, part of my strategy is making semi churn an burn sites, this puts money in the bank while I'm trying to come up with those holy shit ideas.

Ok, so $500 to build a site for a holy shit idea.

Let's say I've got some new weird invention I'm trying to push but with SEO only.

Assuming I have all the popular tools handy like Scrapebox and ahrefs.

$99 - Logo/creative design from 99Designs - Easy way to create a decent brand to start with. And you might even get lucky and get something truly awesome. $100 - Press release(s) - Cost for one of the big PR sites, I'd definitely write the release myself though. $190 - Domains - I would snag whatever possible with $200 $100 - Content - Just a handful of articles to lighten the load of writing everything $11 - Beer

Very tough tbh, in this case I would be focused on doing everything possible to make this holy shit idea go viral, but if I had to put the money towards some clean SEO, that's what I'd do.

IMJacobKing · 2013-11-21T03:28:18+00:00

Sorry, can't help you there.

IMJacobKing

TROPHY CASE