SEO Strategy for a brand $75,000 website

I have been trying to come up with a SEO strategy for a website that I can not afford to get banned from the SERPS. The site has had over 2000 man hours of work put into building it over the last year. (between the labor and the graphic design I value the site at about $75,000).

The site is brand new and the traffic is starting to grow, but not from the SERPS. I am running several ad campaigns, which I am spending about $3,000/month on.

I need to come up with a strategy to get this site to climb up in the SERPS, without risking the chance of it getting banned.

I don't believe in white hat SEO simply because its hard enough to get a site to rank with black hat. So 100% pure white hat is out.

The site is "hopefully" going to go national but operates on a local level.

So I have to rank for geo targeted search phrases such as ... Dallas, tx blue widgets. So I will have a /tx/dallas page I want to rank...

Each local page has thousands of dynamic internal pages pointing links at it, which should get a huge boost.

My current plan is to build a massive network of content related websites. All of which, will be registered under different names and on different IP address.

I am thinking of just posting article after article of original "geo targeted" content on these sites and link them back to the respective geo page on the moneysite.

I don't plan to do much black hat backlinking to the "spoke sites" simply because I am worried that after I do the above for 50 different cities it will start to leave a giant footprint.

I am considering making building "spoke" sites to the orginal "spokes" and maybe hitting them with some black hat link building. But I am still worried the foot print will be to big for google to ignore.

Any ideas on what strategy you would do?

1. If you paid anywhere near $75,000 for a website, you got ripped off.
2. If you paid anywhere near $75,000 for a website and have no plan, you're an idiot. No offense.

Anyways, onto the show.
You said you want to becareful, but a niche network of sites is always a risk.
I'd just take things slow. Start with about 100 directories. 100 article submissions. Press release. Do about a dozen 2.0 properties. Then build links to all those links to build the quality of them.

I work SEO for a corporation and go just about 100% whitehat (other than a few experiements on some Web 2.0's) and while it might take a little longer to climb the SERPs than if you were blasting some site with 100K profile links, you can be sure the site will stay put despite any updates from google.

As far as getting spammy links involved, I would get those a few degrees seperated from your site. In addition to our money site we have about 7 micoblogs that all drive traffic to our homepage. To each of those I have a few free Web 2.0's and articles pointing - and these Web 2.0's and Articles are the ones I take chances blasting some links at. I keep it small and mainly just stick to free trials to see how the quality it, but that's as close to the main site that I'll touch with anything BH.

But as far as discounting "pure" whitehat? I think you'll be missing out if you avoid that.

On a daily basis I reach out to other webmasters, vendors, partners, etc. in order to dig up those quality links that equal 500 profile links. I spend my day emailing popular blogs looking for guest posts, contacting vendors and trying to get our link next to a testimonial we'll give for them, pitching articles at major media outlets - the list goes on and on. You may get 1-2 links in the time it takes Xrumer to blast out to 500K - but those are quality links that aren't going to disappear in the next panda update.

To me WH linkbuilding is more-so a public relations job in some aspects than internet marketing.

But as far as a strategy I think you're heading in the right direction - just make sure you're putting out decent content! Spun articles are crap and won't help build any organic links which is what you want.

jon_xx_x said:

1. If you paid anywhere near $75,000 for a website, you got ripped off.
2. If you paid anywhere near $75,000 for a website and have no plan, you're an idiot. No offense.

Anyways, onto the show.
You said you want to becareful, but a niche network of sites is always a risk.
I'd just take things slow. Start with about 100 directories. 100 article submissions. Press release. Do about a dozen 2.0 properties. Then build links to all those links to build the quality of them.

Click to expand...

He made it himself.

If your looking for hired help feel free to contact me.

@jon_xx_x: You clearly don't know what a good website costs.

Manual linkbuilding on quality/relevant sites with manual article writing will do no harm for your SERP's

Since you have already spent so much and are willing to spend more, here is the advice:

1. Hire an article writer - someone who knows the subject well in your niche. Get 40 -50 high quality articles.
2. Hire a VA to find the websites, webmasters in your niche and email them for guest post.
3. If you can get 40 high value backlinks per month on quality websites - you are golden. ( it will cost a lot )
4. Start building a network of sites and post high quality content and then point some links to your site amongst others.
5. Invest in social media.

My question - I am presuming this is not your site and you are an employee/consultant to get the work done. Can you please ask whoever commissioned this site what original plan they had in mind while spending 2000 man hours on a fucking website without any SEO plan ( it seems from your post - the idea was to get traffic from advertising but it is not working out ).

the_demon said:

If your looking for hired help feel free to contact me.

@jon_xx_x: You clearly don't know what a good website costs.

Click to expand...

Or maybe I clearly know how to not overpay?

imserious said:

3. If you can get 40 high value backlinks per month on quality websites - you are golden. ( it will cost a lot )

Click to expand...

lol what?

4. Start building a network of sites and post high quality content and then point some links to your site amongst others.
5. Invest in social media.

My question - I am presuming this is not your site and you are an employee/consultant to get the work done. Can you please ask whoever commissioned this site what original plan they had in mind while spending 2000 man hours on a fucking website without any SEO plan ( it seems from your post - the idea was to get traffic from advertising but it is not working out ).

Click to expand...

High PR blog network is obv the idea here.

Expertpeon said:

lol what?

Click to expand...

He is absolutely right. If you can get high authority backlinks within your niche, you're golden no matter if you're getting 1 backlinks or 50.

I personally know a guy who create an iTunes app just to get a backlink from iTunes website and that backlink was worth it, seriously! That single backlink worked wonders for him.

bk071 said:

He is absolutely right. If you can get high authority backlinks within your niche, you're golden no matter if you're getting 1 backlinks or 50.

I personally know a guy who create an iTunes app just to get a backlink from iTunes website and that backlink was worth it, seriously! That single backlink worked wonders for him.

Click to expand...

No, the costing a lot part is what made me laugh.
You can pay for niche blogposts (or even find free ones that want you to write for them) very easily.

People have been creating plugins/apps/freethemes for years to get tons of backlinks... nothing new about it.

4trsuted said:

Manual linkbuilding on quality/relevant sites with manual article writing will do no harm for your SERP's

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Exactly

And they have been penalised for using these.
Nothing can beat content backlinks.

And as far as content cost is concerned, why do you think people are ready to over $100 per quality article.. Check out the prices..

Expertpeon said:

No, the costing a lot part is what made me laugh.
You can pay for niche blogposts (or even find free ones that want you to write for them) very easily.

People have been creating plugins/apps/freethemes for years to get tons of backlinks... nothing new about it.

Click to expand...

Manual backlinking is the way to go, try to hire and outsource it