[FAQ] How I build, rank and monetize Authority Sites

Lately I get a lot of questions regarding how I handle my authority sites, so in order to not explain the method to each of you separately via Skype, I decided to write a short FAQ on how I do it and how I earn money from them.

First of all nobody was born smart, so I guess that some of you don't know what an authority site is. It's a site with more then 100 articles, targeting more then 100 keywords and a site which offers more value then regular Micro Niche sites with which everybody starts with. Although the initial investment is bigger then building MNS sites, its a long term solution for getting passive income and I got rid of almost all of my MNS sites and focused on authority sites.

KEYWORD RESEARCH
You need to make a proper research where you can get keywords which you then can monetize via three or more different income models. I usually monetize them via these methods (more regarding how to monetize them properly a few rows down):

- contextual ads via infolinks
- banner ads via adsense
- content locking
- my own e-book for sale

This means that you can not target keywords like "BMW X5", or any other similar keyword which can't ask of the user to make some action. But more keywords like:

[chicken recipe]
[chicken salad recipe]
[fried chicken recipe]
[chicken noodle soup recipe]
[chicken soup recipe]
[chicken curry recipe]
[butter chicken recipe]
[chicken enchilada recipe]

With keywords like the ones above you can offer the user a chicken recipe, which is evergreen content, you can monetize the content via contextual ads and adsense, you can offer your own e-book which explains the best chicken recipes out there, and you can also give free books for download in a download section and content lock the download button with a mail submit.

So, as you can see, in the above example we have several sources of income for one site. Now, let's say that we gathered 100 keywords which cover the above topic of recipes, now we are going to the other step

GETTING CONTENT
Get 100 articles which target all of your keywords. The content should have at least 400 words, it has to be unique and informative. I usually tell my writers to write some fun facts about chickens, recipes, cooking or any other similar stuff to fill the word count, but to keep the content interesting.

PUBLISHING THE CONTENT AND RANKING IT

Now this is the interesting part. This is my way of doing it and it worked in the last 6 months, so I don't see a problem why it would not work in the next 6 months also.
So let's say that you have 80 articles, the first thing which I do is buy a domain and publish 20 articles on it, where each post has one picture, one youtube video and one internal link. I then let it breath for at least one month without any backlinking to it. After that I have a pattern which I follow:

STEP 1: backlinking the first batch of 20 articles
- I bookmark the published articles via this service
- I then drip feed google +1 to all the 20 articles, a random number to each article, if you can't do it manually I recommend this service
- I wait for the services to finish, around 1 week.
- Then I add high PR comments in a random number to each article, usually from 5 to 20, if you can't do it manually I recommend this service
- After that I build 40 web 2.0 blog posts with unique articles on them, targeting either my homepage (raw URL) or the sub-pages (main keyword) . If you can't do it manually, I can provide you with that service here
- I then bookmark the web 2.0 blog posts again with the above mentioned bookmarking service and build high PR comments to them also. I also submit them via a spintax article to a blog network.
- After that I have around 61 URL's (1 homepage, 20 subpages and 40 web 2.0 blog posts), I scrapebox each URL under anchor texts like "Mario, Karmen, Maria, Read more, More info" or any other similar anchor which is not targeting my keywords. The list which I use is an Auto Approve list with OBL below 200.
- I then collect all the links and submit them to linkilicious and wait for another two weeks.

It is crucial to build proper backlinks to the first 20 articles which you have on the site

STEP 2: backlinking the second batch of 20 articles
30 days later, almost all of my keywords are in top 5, if you found good keywords, some may also be on #1.
I then publish the other batch of 20 articles, which again target 20 different (but similar) keywords. And again start my backlinking, but a little bit different then the first part:
- each of the articles is again published to facebook or twitter
- each of the articles again get some Google +1 likes
- each of the articles get's high PR comments, but the double amount of the first batch

And that's it, I again leave it breath for another one to two weeks.

The fact is that we have build proper backlinks to the first batch of articles, and the second batch will automatically gain authority on google and they will be crawled in seconds and ranked properly, without any additional backlinking.

STEP 3: backlinking the third batch of 20 articles
Here I repeat the Step 1

STEP 4: Backlinking the fourth batch of 20 articles
Here I repeat the Step 2

STEP 5: Building high PR to your domain
After the whole thing I start building HIGH PR comments to the domain, my RAW url. In this case I also love to include .edu backlinks, like Big Budies pyramid


As you can see, each batch will look different to Google because it has random numbers of backlinks, it's diverse and it has multiple sources of backlinks. I usually get 70% of the keywords to the top 5 and I'm more then happy with the number of visitors.

I repeat, this is just my way of ranking sites, you can use other methods if you don't like my way of doing it.


MONETIZING THE AUTHORITY SITE

CONTENT LOCKING
- on your right/left side you should have a link to the download section (which is just a separate page with 5 links and descriptions). In the download section I have 5 free e-books about cooking which a user can download after filling out a CPA offer via MeatHeads content locker

ADSENSE
- each page has two adsense blocks. I usually take one block and one leaderboard banner.

CONTEXTUAL ADS
- I integrate the infolinks script which offers a few dollars here and now

PROMOTING YOUR OWN E-BOOK
- you can either promote some clickbank products, or you can give your writers to write you a proper e-book, which in this example would have chicken recipes. Like, top 50 chicken recipes with nice pictures, graphics and good content. I usually sell them for $9.99, put it on a separate page on the site and mention the page IN EACH POST.


And that's it, I let it earn and each month I add another, smaller, batch of articles to the site.


To sum it all up:
- build authority sites which offer evergreen content
- put quality content on them, don't put bullshit, you will get natural links if the content is good
- each article should have a picture and a YouTube video
- diversify your linkbuilding
- have several ways of monetizing the site
- keep updating it with articles and backlinks



If there are any questions feel free to post here or PM me.

thank you

These are the kind of threads we should be seeing in BHW, not the threads we are seeing right now that are asking how to become rich overning or how to rank an authority site with just fiverr gigs. Thanks OP. Very informative and helpful.

Thanks for that. What is an example video for a chicken recipe? What would you put in the vid? I know it's an example but just curious.

I guess I should start my own authority site since I have the skills to write rich content articles. The only problem is the backlinks, it would take much of my time since I don't have money to invest for backlinking software.

Question: How many months will it take before I see the result?

artlocke said:

Question: How many months will it take before I see the result?

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It all depends on the keywords which you choose, the competition and other, similar facts. But usually under two months.

Vibrance said:

Thanks for that. What is an example video for a chicken recipe? What would you put in the vid? I know it's an example but just curious.

Click to expand...

Well, guess what, you put a chicken recipe video : )))

Very informative post! I would like to ask you few things. From your experience what is the lowest number of searches per keyword and CPC that you would actually accept to be worth of your time and effort? And where do you find your article writers? I know that there are plenty of them but could you recommend me someone and what price do you pay per article? Do all of 40 articles on your WEB 2.0 property are unique or 1 unique article - 40 versions of it?

SpecialOne said:

From your experience what is the lowest number of searches per keyword and CPC that you would actually accept to be worth of your time and effort?

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This is a good question, I did not cover this one in the first post.

If I find 50 keywords with below 500 searches per month, I use 300 words articles for those keywords
If I find 50 keywords with above 500 searches per month, I use 500 words articles.

So, the lower the amount of searches and competition, the smaller the article.

I usually don't bother with the CPC if the traffic and keywords are good.

SpecialOne said:

And where do you find your article writers? I know that there are plenty of them but could you recommend me someone and what price do you pay per article?

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I have my own article service

SpecialOne said:

Do all of 40 articles on your WEB 2.0 property are unique or 1 unique article - 40 versions of it?

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Yes, they are all unique, you need quality backlinks which can surpass next google updates.

Bookmarked , thx a lot ^^

very nice informative post. Thankyou .But i dint get one thing . u mentioned :

"- After that I have around 61 URL's (1 homepage, 20 subpages and 40 web 2.0 blog posts), I scrapebox each URL under anchor texts like "Mario, Karmen, Maria, Read more, More info" or any other similar anchor which is not targeting my keywords. The list which I use is an Auto Approve list with OBL below 200."

WHy do you use such unrelevant anchor tags. is there any meaning on this ?

Good info - I'll have to come back to read it more carefully tomorrow... in class right now...

Finally! Thank you so much for the detailed instructions.

Very insightful and comprehensive post. Thank you. I like the part about mixing in non-keyword related anchor texts to make it more realistic. Do you create your own videos or do you just swipe one off youtube?

This just reminded me to get off my ass for my own evergreen authority I've let slip for a bit.

Thanks and Rep

SyZygy,

Wow awesome post mate! I have got to say that's a very in-depth strategy with great details.

Can I ask a question about the Panda and Penguin updates?
Have you noticed your sites not being affected at all? Or have you recently had issues with the most recent Penguin update?

Sorry mate just wanted to see if this is something that is looked at by google as good linkbuilding. I can see many approaches that you have done that does seem to be tackling each hurdle Google has put up there, but I am unsure if it would get penalized or not by Google's Update but looking good so far if you are still going well.

Thanks heaps mate!

Cheers

Great post Syzygy

Great Post! Thanks for going over many of the details regarding the strategies you use to rank your authority sites. Bookmarked for future reference.

wow this is such an awesome read.. do you need to create the video yourself and post it on your yt channel with a link in the description to your site?

I have the same question. Are you creating and posting 80-100 videos or are you just snagging one from YT?

iclosem said:

Very insightful and comprehensive post. Thank you. I like the part about mixing in non-keyword related anchor texts to make it more realistic. Do you create your own videos or do you just swipe one off youtube?

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sourabhswarnkar said:

very nice informative post. Thankyou .But i dint get one thing . u mentioned :

"- After that I have around 61 URL's (1 homepage, 20 subpages and 40 web 2.0 blog posts), I scrapebox each URL under anchor texts like "Mario, Karmen, Maria, Read more, More info" or any other similar anchor which is not targeting my keywords. The list which I use is an Auto Approve list with OBL below 200."

WHy do you use such unrelevant anchor tags. is there any meaning on this ?

Click to expand...

Looks more natural to Google. I was using the name anchors for a while now and the results are better then just stuffing the anchors with keywords.

walandio said:

wow this is such an awesome read.. do you need to create the video yourself and post it on your yt channel with a link in the description to your site?

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It's all up to you, I usually just snatch them from other youtube channels.

Daveslaw said:

SyZygy,

Wow awesome post mate! I have got to say that's a very in-depth strategy with great details.

Can I ask a question about the Panda and Penguin updates?
Have you noticed your sites not being affected at all? Or have you recently had issues with the most recent Penguin update?
Cheers

Click to expand...

Yes, most of the sites were affected. One of the newest sites which I started to build 2 months ago is now looking like this:


In other words, no, I did not have any negative problems with sites which I have build per the above mentioned way.

But, the most important thing which you have to know is that most of them are evergreen content sites which offer value, this also means that people share the posts on facebook/their blogs on their own - I get natural link building every now and then, which is always a good thing.