How to Rank - A Quick Guide for Newbies

[gandalf22]

+1, thanks for the guide! it's good to have it as a guideline of what to do in my projects! thanks!!

 

[thehighmind]

Big thanks for this wonderful guide!
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind because I just started to follow your guide and build webs 2.0
1. After you publish your article on a web 2.0 with your backlink, you build backlinks to your web 2.0 or to your article from your 2.0?
2. Is ok to build more web 2.0 like 50-100?
3. Do you name your web 2.0 related to your keywords?
Thanks.

 

[lightningblitz]

1. I build to the Web 2.0.

2. You can. The point is if it is an Easy KW you shouldn't need more. You also need link diversity which having all Web 2.0s will be suspicious. If you diversify you can build more than 10 / 20, depending on KW.

3. I try to name them LSI KWs. If the Web 2.0 ranks, it will pass more power to your Money Site. So I go with something related which can be ranked but I would not include on my money site.

 

[mrrambunctious]

Thanks for a marvellous thread.

Please excuse my ignorance, however, but is this all considered "White Hat" or is some of this bordering on black?

Cheers,

Rambo

 

[lightningblitz]

If you build links, it is Black Hat. Building links is never White Hat.

Some things are safer, such as Web 2.0s. The quickest way to a penalty would be:

- Patterns
- Inconsistent Velocity
- Spam

If you hae an increasing velocity, no specific pattern, and have slightly higher quality in most cases you will be fine.

 

[PROGSM]

Great one. I like it. This will help me take a second look at my site.

 

[aarongoldsten]

This is a fantastic thread I got a ton of information. I am still kind of new b have a couple questions if you don't mind answering:

1. Instead of making 10-20 web2.0s by hand why not use fcsnetworker to make them linking to your money site and then send the blasts you talked about using gsa to them?

And I just want to recap:
WEB2.0
^ social bookmarks. social networks. article submissions. blog comments. 25OBL PR3+ a couple links a day

^ 500+ contexual links spread out over 30 to 90 days? (do you send spam links to contexual links?)

a handful (maybe 6 -12?) url shortners of the web2.0 and money site? and share on social media using gsa or something else? then send contexual link blast to them right? But for money site url shortner you just share on social medias. and url shorters of web2.0s you hit those with contexual links? Or do you hit every url shortner with social shares and contexual links?

and the 10 profile links there is no program for this right? just do manually?

Thanks!

 

[zoewarrior]

Hi Lightningblitz

For clarification on GSA SER, when you say SER "does EVERYTHING but Web 2.0s" so you mean tumblr, wordpress, soup or open source social network platforms such as phpfox, jcow etc?

I ask this question because I notice you only use Articles and Microblogs (******** Contextual) in SER to pump your Tier 1 web 2.0 sites.

For your home setup for SER, do you let the software scrapes the targets?



doing SEO for themselves, my set up works perfectly well. In two weeks of GSA for ten projects, I have 2K links on the low end, and three projects have 70K links. In total, over 350K links from my home set up. This is all tier two, and one tier three. Most projects have strict filter such as under 100 OBL for links, not posting to same site twice, only a few types of links selected (Do Follow, Articles / Microblogs Only, ect) and GSA is scraping as it goes.

 

[wiso4151]

Thanks for posting this thread

 

[lightningblitz]

This is a fantastic thread I got a ton of information. I am still kind of new b have a couple questions if you don't mind answering:

1. Instead of making 10-20 web2.0s by hand why not use fcsnetworker to make them linking to your money site and then send the blasts you talked about using gsa to them?

And I just want to recap:
WEB2.0
^ social bookmarks. social networks. article submissions. blog comments. 25OBL PR3+ a couple links a day

^ 500+ contexual links spread out over 30 to 90 days? (do you send spam links to contexual links?)

a handful (maybe 6 -12?) url shortners of the web2.0 and money site? and share on social media using gsa or something else? then send contexual link blast to them right? But for money site url shortner you just share on social medias. and url shorters of web2.0s you hit those with contexual links? Or do you hit every url shortner with social shares and contexual links?

and the 10 profile links there is no program for this right? just do manually?

Thanks!

1. You can use FCS. FCS is the best on the market for Web 2.0s but is not always prefect at making them. I prefer manual but have used automation, so can you.

2. I suggest the handful of links a day from GSA to go DIRECTLY to your money site. Yup. Directly to. You need consistent velocity and diversity to rank, and those few links do a good job of it.

3. You can spam the mess out of your Contextuals, but for Easy KWs you never will need too. I do suggest building another tier (Tier Three) if the KWs are stubborn.

4. Exactly. A handful can be three, or ten. Keep it random to avoid foot prints.

Build a couple to your money site to share socially only. Build a few to your Web 2.0 and blast away.

5. Many programs will build profiles, but they do not stick around long.

Hi Lightningblitz

For clarification on GSA SER, when you say SER "does EVERYTHING but Web 2.0s" so you mean tumblr, wordpress, soup or open source social network platforms such as phpfox, jcow etc?

I ask this question because I notice you only use Articles and Microblogs (******** Contextual) in SER to pump your Tier 1 web 2.0 sites.

For your home setup for SER, do you let the software scrapes the targets?



doing SEO for themselves, my set up works perfectly well. In two weeks of GSA for ten projects, I have 2K links on the low end, and three projects have 70K links. In total, over 350K links from my home set up. This is all tier two, and one tier three. Most projects have strict filter such as under 100 OBL for links, not posting to same site twice, only a few types of links selected (Do Follow, Articles / Microblogs Only, ect) and GSA is scraping as it goes.

Web 2.0s are Wordpress, Jimbo, ect. I avoid them because GSA will not often post to them successfully, and it hogs resources when you try to do it.

I do not only use those two platforms, but I was listing two of the most common contextual options. Use anything contextual you can get your hands on (For example, Wiki).

For my home set up I let GSA scrape targets for me. It tends to avoid footprints rather than using the same list 100 other people are using. When using it to build tier one links, you must avoid footprints.

 

[Cshark]

One of the best threads for the newbies. Great job, OP. Hats off to you.

 

[Million Dollar Idea]

A couple pages of, Content works wonders !

 

[michael rozy]

This includes, About us and, A contact page!

 

[teh_johnny]

Great read. Thanks OP!

 

[aarongoldsten]

man i REALLLY REALLLLY REALLLLLLLYYYYY Appreciate it!!

I just re read your article for the 7-8th time in the last 48 hours and your response to my question (which I appreciate 4 times) and I get it!!!

but now I just have one more question. Everybody says this is great guide for beginners where do we go if we want to learn medium / advanced stuff?

Regards!

 

[metafser]

Amazing share mate. Thanks for it buddy.

 

[thehighmind]

From 20 webs 2.0 how many anchors will be exactly your targeted keyword, how many anchors do you build to a related keyword and how many anchors do you build like "more" "via" "info" "link" or are your anchors are targeted to your main keyword?

 

[splishsplash]

The word 'natural' is one of the most over-used terms in SEO. So is 'diversity'.

Google is a series of algorithms. It's not some human closely looking for 'natural' links. It would need a really sophisticated algorithm to determine what is and isn't natural.

The hilarious thing is, what most SEO's call 'natural' is a million miles from what naturally really is.

For starters, diversity is not natural. Neither are exact anchors, lsi anchors and certainly not anchors like "click here". Legitimate sites have an overwhelming number of brand anchors, followed by url, with a few lsi mixed in. When have you ever been reading a blog post, and you see a link to an external site as "click here"? Or "visit this"? "Click here" is a CTA on sales pages. Not an anchor for external pages.

The only time you'll see diversity, is where there's been SEOs at work.

The next thing is, there is NO such thing as "a natural link profile". What's natural for a news site, is not natural for a local plumbing business, or a forum, or a blog. So saying you need comments, and nofollow this and that to diversify and look natural is gross over-thinking.

Every type of site is different. Natural links for blogs will include comments. Although these aren't "natural", as such, they're "natuarl" in that the blog owner isn't trying to get backlinks by commenting, but rather build their brand.

Basically, there is no overall "natural" link profile. The closest thing you'll find to natural is that most big sites have 50 to 90% brand/url anchors. Usually brand is the dominant one, but sometimes url.

Google would have to build some sort of topic/site based link profile heuristics and try to determine what's natural for say "blogs about insurance", and "forums about insurance", then "insurance companies". Then the problem is how does it get the seed lists for all those categories? What if it starts with seeds that had SEOs working on them?

People grossly over-complicate SEO and what Google is capable of. In a small test environment some interesting things can be achieved, but to roll out such sophisticated algorithms worldwide on their index would be chaos. Look at how much trouble they had with penguin and panda. It's taken them years to improve, and panda/penguin aren't that complex.

Google only look for simple triggers. 1000 new backlinks a day on a fresh site? 80% exact anchors? Penalized.. Extreme cases of things.

The SEO industry is full of hogwash. While the OP has no hidden agendas, he's been brainwashed by the industry into thinking all this crap needs to be done. It doesn't. It's all crap.

I really doubt the OP has tested campaigns both with and without all this diversification nonsense. Half of what the OP does works, and he doesn't realize that the other stuff is entirely superfluous.

Want to know what works? Contextual do-follow backlinks from relevant, powerful pages. You could build 100's of links, all contextual do-follow, 100% do-follow, no comments, no social, no directory, no article marketing, none of that shit. You'll rank.

As for anchors. Exact aren't needed. Why? Contextual backlinks. Context. Google knows what the page is about. Want to rank for "best hamster wheels"? Do a brand link from an article entitled "Best Hamster Wheels". I've tested this. I've seen jumps from page 9 to page 3 from 1 brand link from an expired site. Which keyword went up the most? The one in the title of the article with the brand link.

Want to rank on google? Just create contextual do-follow brand links from articles targeted to the keywords you want to rank for.

But the truth is. If everyone knew this then all the SEO sellers providing big complicated services with a billion tiers and supreme ultimate diversification would go out of business.

Ranking is simple, but it's not easy.

 

[lightningblitz]

man i REALLLY REALLLLY REALLLLLLLYYYYY Appreciate it!!

I just re read your article for the 7-8th time in the last 48 hours and your response to my question (which I appreciate 4 times) and I get it!!!

but now I just have one more question. Everybody says this is great guide for beginners where do we go if we want to learn medium / advanced stuff?

Regards!

Test, test, and test. I may do an advanced guide one day...

But the hope is for you to take this guide and figure it out by trying. This is as straight forward as it comes.

From 20 webs 2.0 how many anchors will be exactly your targeted keyword, how many anchors do you build to a related keyword and how many anchors do you build like "more" "via" "info" "link" or are your anchors are targeted to your main keyword?

This depends on the KW competition.

My 'other' URLs are normally raw. No click here or other text. I am for branded as well.

The answer is, nothing is set in stone. Keep it all random.

The word 'natural' is one of the most over-used terms in SEO. So is 'diversity'.

Google is a series of algorithms. It's not some human closely looking for 'natural' links. It would need a really sophisticated algorithm to determine what is and isn't natural.

The hilarious thing is, what most SEO's call 'natural' is a million miles from what naturally really is.

For starters, diversity is not natural. Neither are exact anchors, lsi anchors and certainly not anchors like "click here". Legitimate sites have an overwhelming number of brand anchors, followed by url, with a few lsi mixed in. When have you ever been reading a blog post, and you see a link to an external site as "click here"? Or "visit this"? "Click here" is a CTA on sales pages. Not an anchor for external pages.

The only time you'll see diversity, is where there's been SEOs at work.

The next thing is, there is NO such thing as "a natural link profile". What's natural for a news site, is not natural for a local plumbing business, or a forum, or a blog. So saying you need comments, and nofollow this and that to diversify and look natural is gross over-thinking.

Every type of site is different. Natural links for blogs will include comments. Although these aren't "natural", as such, they're "natuarl" in that the blog owner isn't trying to get backlinks by commenting, but rather build their brand.

Basically, there is no overall "natural" link profile. The closest thing you'll find to natural is that most big sites have 50 to 90% brand/url anchors. Usually brand is the dominant one, but sometimes url.

Google would have to build some sort of topic/site based link profile heuristics and try to determine what's natural for say "blogs about insurance", and "forums about insurance", then "insurance companies". Then the problem is how does it get the seed lists for all those categories? What if it starts with seeds that had SEOs working on them?

People grossly over-complicate SEO and what Google is capable of. In a small test environment some interesting things can be achieved, but to roll out such sophisticated algorithms worldwide on their index would be chaos. Look at how much trouble they had with penguin and panda. It's taken them years to improve, and panda/penguin aren't that complex.

Google only look for simple triggers. 1000 new backlinks a day on a fresh site? 80% exact anchors? Penalized.. Extreme cases of things.

The SEO industry is full of hogwash. While the OP has no hidden agendas, he's been brainwashed by the industry into thinking all this crap needs to be done. It doesn't. It's all crap.

I really doubt the OP has tested campaigns both with and without all this diversification nonsense. Half of what the OP does works, and he doesn't realize that the other stuff is entirely superfluous.

Want to know what works? Contextual do-follow backlinks from relevant, powerful pages. You could build 100's of links, all contextual do-follow, 100% do-follow, no comments, no social, no directory, no article marketing, none of that shit. You'll rank.

As for anchors. Exact aren't needed. Why? Contextual backlinks. Context. Google knows what the page is about. Want to rank for "best hamster wheels"? Do a brand link from an article entitled "Best Hamster Wheels". I've tested this. I've seen jumps from page 9 to page 3 from 1 brand link from an expired site. Which keyword went up the most? The one in the title of the article with the brand link.

Want to rank on google? Just create contextual do-follow brand links from articles targeted to the keywords you want to rank for.

But the truth is. If everyone knew this then all the SEO sellers providing big complicated services with a billion tiers and supreme ultimate diversification would go out of business.

Ranking is simple, but it's not easy.

Rather spend a lot of time trying to refute you, I will put it simply:

1. Velocity is a way to get a penalty and is one of the primary factors I considered when making this guide.
2. You can rank with links other than contextual.
3. Yes, contextual are most efficacious to rank.
4. I have ranked several KWs with a such a method.
5. The point of the guide is to give a newbie something actionable.
6. No one is brainwashed for giving a guide which attempts to avoid common SEO pitfalls.
7. I am open to see someone else post a guide which addresses the common mistakes SEOs make when starting out.


Now, to explain how this ranking blueprint came to be....

Rather than beat a dead horse, or explain the nuances of ranking (Velocity, Anchor %s, Competition levels, Existing Back link profile, ect) I decided to make a very actionable blueprint to rank. Some of the steps you discredit are designed to be exactly what you called it, filler. No other ranking guide was anywhere to be seen, so I got to work and put steps in place to attempt to give a newbies simple steps which are easy to follow without getting lost.

What is missed is the fact that you stated a way to get a penalty would be an extreme and inconsistent amount of links to trigger a filter, which is exactly what the guide is designed to prevent. That very same filler has a very important role. Indexing, filler, and velocity, ect.

Tell a newbie on day one, 'Build hundreds of links, all contextual, do - follow and you will rank'. What does the newbie do? Exactly that. 100's, if not 1000's of Contextual Do - Follow links, and he ranks, before getting penalized.

Or, newbie can build a handful of do - follow contextual links, add filler links for velocity, as well as add some other link building resources to rank.

That is how this guide came to be.

This is not the 'MOST EFFICACIOUS WAY TO RANK EVER!' Nor is it 'THE BEST SEO PLAN EVER!'

It is something far less direct. It is about giving someone new actionable steps in which they can experiment and learn without as much risk as they figure things out.

I never said this is exactly how I rank every site.

I was clear to state that no one in the marketplace or in the SEO industry builds links like this, to avoid newbies from spending money.

The entire method is designed to get a site actually ranked, with steps which require them to work, and to avoid common SEO pitfalls.

It sounds like you know SEO. Look behind the literal steps and see the velocity and instructions it gives. If you want to tell me 'Velocity + Contextual + Learning Yourself' is not going to rank you and teach you SEO, I guess I better pack up my bags and go home. This is built for a newbie to have something actionable and to learn without spending a load of cash without getting slapped.

I welcome your step by step guide which can accomplish:

1. Easy to follow
2. Actually works
3. Avoids common pitfalls
4. Requires little start up funds
5. Teaches someone how to do SEO

If you take being right, or being wrong, or how you rank vs how I rank out of the equation, you will see this guide is putting the carrot in front of the horse and teaching fundamentals and principles to rank and learn SEO. It forces the newbie to figure things out without a budget. Guess what? It works and it will teach someone SEO.

I posted a guide designed to target the aforementioned. Someone can figure this out by starting with this guide and testing. I am glad you know enough to recognize the pitfalls. It does not discredit what the guide is doing and what it is avoiding doing by being structure the way it is.

Thank you for your time to flex your knowledge and prove that you know about SEO. That is exactly what the guide is trying to teach. Hopefully I will get a PM in six months from someone who started here and said, "Man, some of those links were a waste of time! I skipped step X and saved so much effort!" If I get that, I did my job. Someone learned how to rank.

 

[splishsplash]

Rather spend a lot of time trying to refute you, I will put it simply:

1. Velocity is a way to get a penalty and is one of the primary factors I considered when making this guide.
2. You can rank with links other than contextual.
3. Yes, contextual are most efficacious to rank.
4. I have ranked several KWs with a such a method.
5. The point of the guide is to give a newbie something actionable.
6. No one is brainwashed for giving a guide which attempts to avoid common SEO pitfalls.
7. I am open to see someone else post a guide which addresses the common mistakes SEOs make when starting out.

What I'm saying is your plan is grossly overcomplicated and not focusing on the meat and bones of what causes you to rank. Contextual, relevant, branded PBN links are all you need. Failing that you boost up your web 2's to rank them for your keywords with contextual tiers using tools like fcs/gsa. An alternative is guest posts. Take a look at arganrecords. All he does is guestpost after guestpost. He's killing it. You don't see him talk about adding in nofollow comments for natural diversity.

It's very hard to get a penalty unless you're really blatant. You don't get a penalty because you only have strong contextual backlinks. The algorithm doesn't look at sites and determine "Oh wait, this site doesn't have enough diversity! penalized!"

The whole "consistent velocity" is also UNNATURAL. What NORMAL site gets 5 backlinks per day, every day?

A real site might get no backlinks for 3 months, then all of a sudden get 1000's in the space of 2 weeks, then nothing, then another 1000 a week later. That is natural.

You'll potentially get penalized if you get 1000's of crappy backlinks. You'll *definitely* get penalized if the anchor text is all exact. I've not tested pushing the limits of penalization in terms of 1000's of links, so I can't say for sure.

What I can say for sure is you definitely do NOT get penalized in any way for having a lack of "diversity" or for not having a consistent link velocity.

If I have a real, legitimate blog about, let's say gaming. I might be writing every day. No one is linking. All of a sudden one of the obscure games I wrote about becomes popular and I get an influx of traffic/links. That is natural. That is how real linking works. Just like the stock market. Companies don't get smooth consistent investments every day. It comes in peaks and troughs.

I welcome your step by step guide which can accomplish:

1. Easy to follow
2. Actually works
3. Avoids common pitfalls
4. Requires little start up funds
5. Teaches someone how to do SEO

I could tell people exactly how to rank with a minimum of startups funds, but I don't want more competitors.

That's just not how the world works. Unlike most here, I have no hidden agenda, nothing to sell. I'll just tell it like it is. What benefit is there to me in creating 10's of thousand of competitors?

If I gave away my hard earned secrets to 1000's of lazy newbies who just want riches hand to them on a plate and I ended up homeless, I bet not a single one of them would ever help me. They'd drive past me in their sports car and never give it a second thought.

So, no, I won't be writing an easy to follow anything for newbies. Pointers in the right direction are what people get. The rest is up to them.

I never said this is exactly how I rank every site.

You haven't really learned how to rank sites yourself yet. Just 4 weeks ago on your journey you're still trying to get your sites ranked and money flowing in.

When you finally nail it, you'll look back on this post and laugh at what you thought you knew, and all this talk about diversity, no-follow comments and natural linking profiles.

And when you do start hitting 5-6 figures per month the last thing you'll want to do is come on here and spill your guts.