It's simple, DIY.
Ever wondered how to cut down the amount of time you put in to link building? Following my process will take lots of time from the outset, often weeks depending on how large your project is but this time will mean you save much more time in the future and most of all get better results.
Firstly lets start with some opinion surrounding subjects that I detail within my process and the way I think of them effecting the process.
- 301'ing expired domains for SEO value - Don't do it, spend your time and money elsewhere buying content if need be to create a whole website, also a very easy way to flag up Google filters. How many sites do you know that naturally pick up re-directing sites constantly?
- Domains losing link benefit once it expires - Possible, though my evidence shows otherwise. If you had a choice of a blank canvas or a domain with a good history of links what would you choose?
- Buying links - Every online business in the world does it, be it banners, text links, sponsored posts etc but this is a legitimate way of not being part of that scene.
Get your marigolds out!
With a little bit of hard graft you can have a collection of 100 quality links partners live within a week or two (depends how much sleep you want), let them mature for 3-6 months and you have yourself some great links available only to you, for your clients or for your own gains. Everyone has thought about it, a few have done it but with my extra little bit of pernash the collection of domains can be just that little bit better than the norm.
The way I do it gives you these benefits:
- Link partners for life for less than $10 per link per year
- All sites are on different IP adresses
- All sites have existing quality link profiles
- Most sites gain PR within 2 weeks
- You are in control of your backlinks
I will try and guide you on how you can achieve the same.
The added touch
So, there has been a lot of talk about how old domains can be used for SEO, buying domains that have existing Page Rank and back links has been discussed many times across many forums as has the talk about how expired domains essentially have their slate wiped clean by search engines when they expire. So what if you could find domains to register for a few dollars that have existing backlinks from the likes of DMOZ & Government websites that gain PR within a few weeks of going live? I have thousands of them, including 3 and 4 letter domains that have been resold for 1000 times more than I paid to register them a few days earlier.
Some SEO experts are dubious and have done their own testing on buying expired domains and are probably shouting at me right now, but my question to you would be: If you could have an expired domain with a DMOZ link and hundreds of other links or a brand new domain, which one would you choose? So it stands to reason that a search engine would trust a domain that it used to trust rather than a new one, how many times have we all discussed the issues with a new domain on SEO forums? Buying expired domains with existing authority, albeit small is far better than a brand new one and encounters none of the same draw backs in SERP's, fact. Without getting bogged down in a subject different to this, lets move on.
OK so finding the domains is simple, all you need is a broken link checker tool, I reccommend XENU. Now you need some fodder, you sell blue widgets so you need to find some blue widget directories and the older the better, a few simple search strings in Google will give you a handful of directories from 1995. Run your XENU over the website, filter out all the links that are broken firstly, secondly narrow down your results to only those with "no such host" and bingo you have a nice collection of domains that return no physical website. Now it's a case of opening them all up, use a nice SEO toolbar with a quick link to Yahoo Site Explorer and Whois checker; then first check the links of all the domains, a quick skim read will show up any good quality links then check the Whois and register any of those that are available. In 20 minutes I turnaround about 15 domains.
Now what
So you registered 100 domains, now what do you do?
The next step is to put something on the site that is a mashup of your target keyword and the domains history and backlinks. If the domain used to be about blue and red widgets form Cuba then align this to your target keyword using well-spun content but first you need something else that helps this process along the way: A host that enables you to have different IP addresses, without naming names I use a good UK reseller account that has one touch WordPress installation and house their IP's in cluster that with a little bit of experimentation can be manipulated so that you have different IP's for each domain for FREE, my favorite cost.
So you have your domain, you use the hosting to get a different IP, you use the one click WP installation to get a nice template on their and populate it with content, add a few feeds to the site from some regularly updated sources, spin some content and schedule it to go live over the next few weeks and months then leave the site to mature.
Now its a case of repeating the process, its actually quite amazing how entertaining it is to find those gem websites that everyone has forgotten about. So far I have found:
- Old police websites with links form over 100 different police and government websites
- Expired school websites with university links
- Expired parliamentary websites with links from newspapers globally
- Business websites with links from all the best directories online
- 3 letter domains with links from some of the first website directories online
End result?
As we all know SEO is not an exact science, it's a case of what works, works. Trial and error is commonplace and there will no doubt people who have tried a similar process and failed and those who have excelled, all I can do is share my experience. This has worked for me big time, one of my websites outranks Apple's biggest software products for its main one word term and the only thing I have done is flip websites using the above process of turning an expired domain into a fully functioning blog that is constantly updated with only one external link to my site.
I am happy to provide some more details to interested people, if your looking to try it out I can let you know the host I use by email. Last thing I want is them to stop operating their cluster system to stop you and I getting multiple IP's for free!
Isn’t this link farming? If I read this right, you’re buying domains, posting mediocre content (presumably because, really, how well can you manage content on so many domains?) and linking back to your website with the purpose of exaggerating your backlink count.
I knew a company that did this and was eventually blacklisted from Yahoo! and suffered a big hit in Google.
Even if you’re ensuring the websites are on separate IPs, it still sounds pretty risky.
Shayna,
I couldn’t dissagree more.
How do you go about your link building? Unless you have untapped resources ad wealth I would imagine its through guest posting, relationship building for links and link requesting (maybe using an error you find on the host site and pointing that out to them). Let’s get real here, I know people, high ranking people at that form all the top dog SEO comapnies in the UK, they all buy links to some extent or they trade SEO for links form a host site. One or two of the better companies have realised to control their own fate they need their own network of websites to draw from, this process siimply helps you create your own network, your own power, your own success.
You could say it wasn’t white hat SEO but I would challenge you to show me the difference between the sites I create and those of a big multi national company like Lucozade who launch a different 1 page ministe weekly for competitions, promotions and events, all linking back to the main site.
I do not post mediocre content, I have several copywriters who get paid good money to write content for my networks. The minimal set up and running costs off-set the cost of good ongoing content being provided to each site. Each site is also turned into an interactive community site for that niche, not a bluandyellowwidgetsfromspain.com type site. I then use community memebers to operate, control and create content for the site in exchange for the ad revenue they can generate (of course i set the rules).
As times goes by, the sites grow, the authority grows and your SEO network grows – then your money site(s).
I set up these networks years ago, several PR7 sites now exist within it, (though I do not use PR as a gauge of authroity its a good indicator). Across the network of 87 sites im getting 1,000,000 uniques per month.
To me there is no risk, there is only a risk if the sites you create are of poor quality, interlinked and do not look like an honest website. I create my websites to become powerful in there niches, not to be powerful for SEO. I also go back to my question, why is me owning websites and naturally linking a risk? why should i be punished?
Hi Danny,
Well that’s a different story! Thanks for clarifying. It wasn’t clear how well you developed all of your properties, but it sounds like you’ve turned them into fantastic resources that provide ongoing value.
Now my only question is how you manage all those websites and all of the people running it while handling your other responsibilities. You’re like a super mom. 🙂
Cheers,
Shayna