Hit and Run SEO Strategy?

I am sure people have done and discussed this before, but I am not sure what keywords to search for..

I am building an e-commerce looking affiliate website using WPZonBuilder etc. The website is lepman. I cannot decide if I should just black seo the heck out of it and make some profit until google penalizes me or should I invest money and time writing up unique product descriptions and so on? Everyone is talking about how google is tracking down on affiliate sites, but when do they really catch up with you? 2 weeks? 2 months?

What do you guys think?

Oh yea, I own ScrapeBox and IBP. If I decide to go down the black hat path I will probably use these.

Appreciated!

I'm not sure if anyone can help you here. What you are asking us are two business models, each of them can be profitable (if you make it right).

First business model is "doing everything safe" - you create high quality content and build high quality, diversified link profile. Your rankings improve slowly, but the chance of being penalized by Google is lower (yet, it is fat from 0).

Second business model is building links of lower quality, using content that is not that great (but it still does its job). This is much cheaper, so you can do it on a bigger scale. However, the risk of being penalized by Google is much higher than in the first business model.

The biggest mistake people make when deciding is believing that one option is more profitable than other. "Fast-food stand" can be more profitable than a "fancy restaurant" (much lower operating costs with many clients), but the risk can be higher (if people suddenly decide they don't want to eat fast food anymore). However, there is a risk with "fancy restaurants" as well (what if people suddenly can't afford it anymore?), you should never forget that!

Which one you should choose? It depends what kind of person are you (will you make a "fast-food stand" or "fancy restaurant"). Each model can be profitable (if done right) and more experienced marketers use both models at the same time on different sites, all with the intention to diversify the risk.

Hi Jacob,

Great analogies. I trust myself as a programmer, but not a great blogger at all. I think what I really want right this moment is to get the fast-food stand up and running. The income I generate(hopefully) from that would go towards the "fancy restaurant". The question still remains though - is it even worth to do the "fast-food stand" type of website right now since google might penalize the site after a week? I wish I can do some programming work for someone to show me how the fast-food approach is done "right".

I appreciate your response as it got me to think more about the bigger scale...

If you have the time, why not just test it and go with your gut? If the spam works, you have a system to rank sites quick even though they'll get penalized. If the spam doesn't work, you can always try the more legit way.

Jared255 said:

If you have the time, why not just test it and go with your gut? If the spam works, you have a system to rank sites quick even though they'll get penalized. If the spam doesn't work, you can always try the more legit way.

Click to expand...

Yea, I guess why not? I will just pull in product descriptions from the manufacturer and start getting backlinks. Thank you for your advice!

lepman said:

Hi Jacob,

Great analogies. I trust myself as a programmer, but not a great blogger at all. I think what I really want right this moment is to get the fast-food stand up and running. The income I generate(hopefully) from that would go towards the "fancy restaurant". The question still remains though - is it even worth to do the "fast-food stand" type of website right now since google might penalize the site after a week? I wish I can do some programming work for someone to show me how the fast-food approach is done "right".

I appreciate your response as it got me to think more about the bigger scale...

Click to expand...

I believe that Jared255 already answered your question well, I'd just like to add one thing: Black Hat methods still work, otherwise all black hat-ers would become white hat-ers. This will (probably) never happen. However, the real question is - do you know how to make it work.

Since you are a good programmer, it may be good to start a JV with someone who knows how to rank sites. If that is not an option for you (or you don't know anyone who would be willing to start a JV with you), just start building links and you'll see where it goes. You can still change your strategy later.