October 21st, 2009 | 
Author: I feel the urge for a new challenge again! This challenge is going to be me trying to get a brand new site indexed and ranked in Google’s top 10 for a few competitive keywords within 5 months from today.
“Big deal, I can do that already!” You might be saying, but here is the twist..
I will not…
- Use any form of article marketing to get backlinks.
- Do any form of blog commenting of any kind.
- Contact any web publishers asking for backlinks or exchanges.
- Use any linking schemes or backlink scripts of any kind.
- Use any blackhat techniques whatsoever.
In fact, this is going to be the extremist form of white hat promotion of a brand new site that anyone could imagine, it will be so white hat that Matt Cutts will be very proud of me!
I will be…
- Writing unique content for my site.
- Using video on my site.
- Using audio on my site.
- Using link bait in the form of giveaways on my site.
- Ensure that every piece of content on my site will be about creating a buzz in the niche I choose!
- Publicizing the content on my site using forums, newsgroups, press releases.
- Getting all my on page SEO spot on.. (Internal linking structure, usabilty pages, META stuff etc..)
Before anybody asks, there is absolutely no way that I will give out the URL of the site to anyone for the obvious reasons. In fact everything will be done with brand new hosting, pen names etc.. It will be untraceable for the super sleuths out there
I will be detailing every step I take here in this thread though and going into more detail on my 100 bucks challenge blog.
Here is a list of initial steps that I will be taking..
1. Locate a good, competitive niche.
2. Buy a brand new domain and new hosting for it.
3. Sign up to as many niche relevant forums, newsgroups, web 2.0 groups as possible (facebook, twitter etc).
4. Start posting regularly to those forums to build up a reputation.
5. Research the niche inside and out to determine biggest problems, anxieties, tips in fact everything that makes people crazy in that niche.
6. Create all forms of content around the buzzy topics.
7. Get analytics, webmaster tools etc all set up.
8. Submit to a few highly respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo.
8. Start promoting my site in a non-spammy way on all the forums etc..
9. Write and release press releases.
10. Build a mailing list.
11. Try as many viral methods as possible.
12. Wash, rinse and repeat..
This is purely about letting the content on my site go viral and attain backlinks the natural way. This is about doing things the way Google would really approve of! As things start to develop then I am sure the plan will have to evolve and I am prepared for that.
My next post will be about the niche research that I will conduct.. Stay tuned! In that post I will detail how competitive the niche’s main keywords are and the criteria I used to find it.
That is quite a list of things to do for a single site. I’m very interested in seeing how this turns out.
I’m assuming from the list of “I will not” items, you are implying that these techniques are somehow being frowned on by google.
Or is it some other reason(s)? Or are you just eliminating those techniques to test the strength of the techniques you will use?
I’m asking because article marketing and blog commenting are always recommended and touted as the best ways to get ranking.
Correct Rob.. I haven’t suddenly dropped article marketing or anything but I am using this to test the potential of doing things the way that Google want in their Utopian world. i.e. getting links from viral techniques. The challenge really is creating content that has the “wow” factor so that other webmasters want to tell their readers about it = backlinks to my pages.
A very interesting blog post. What would you say was the most common problem?
Could you explain ‘Non-spammy’ promotion of your site on forums. It seems like every site you see on forums are spam. Thanks.
Hi Eric, yes I know what you mean and this is exactly what I try to avoid. What I mean by “non spammy” is more about getting some respect from other forum members first. It is about getting people to enjoy reading your threads or answers to posts. Once you have a good reputation other members will take notice of what you say on the forum. When you achieve this respect then you can start promoting articles that you have written on your site to them.
It isn’t as difficult or as time consuming as it sounds and there is a very definite series of steps that can be taken to get to the point where fellow forum members respect and enjoy your writing.