Blinkweb - Make Money Online Tutorial - Step 2

In my last post I talked about setting up an affiliate blog targeting a product or service of your choice. I have chosen Brad Callen's soon to be released website creation tool called Blinkweb. If you look at how I set up the blog called Blinkweb by Brad Callen you should be able to see which keywords I have optimized the posts and blog for.

In fact I am optimizing this post for the exact same keywords and I will explain why in a moment.

In step 1 I simply created a quick blog and posted a short article in order to get it live and indexed by Google. To speed up the indexing process I linked this blog to the new blog using the term Blinkweb in the anchor text of the link. Google crawls this blog frequently and follows all my do-follow links. The new blog showed up in the index on the same day. Now while it was in the index it wasn't showing in the serp's for any of the keywords I had optimized it for - most notably the term "Blinkweb". The only term it did show up for was it's URL name. http://callensblinkweb.blogspot.com/. (see image below)

Click to enlarge all images.



This confuses some of you still. You can be indexed and in the sandbox at the same time. The easiest way to understand this is to realize that while Google will acknowledge that it knows you exist - ie. indexing your URL - it won't necessarily index you in the serp's for related keywords - something known as being in Google's sandbox. This means that you can find your blog on Google by searching for your URL but not by using keywords. If you are sandboxed Google will de-list your blog from any of the keyword serp listings while it may or may not list your URL.

When Google has determined that your blog is legitimate and offers relevant content for certain terms it will suddenly release you from the sandbox and your blog will begin to appear in the keyword listings. These are the listings that you would like to rank number 1 for.

My new blog showed up in the keyword serp's on day two. It went from not-indexed for the term "Blinkweb" to number 3 in the serp's. (see below)



Over the next two days it dropped back to 5th and then today it has disappeared from the listings altogether. Does this sound familiar to any of you. I get a lot of comments from readers asking why they show up on the serp's and then suddenly disappear. The answer is that this has become the new normal with the current Google algorithm. I would love to give you an expert answer as to what is happening but I don't know myself - I can only tell you what "seems" to be happening from my own observations.

What seems to be happening is that fresh content plays a larger roll in serp rankings - at least for "busy" keywords - topics that suddenly get a lot of keyword hits. This means that when something new like Blinkwebs comes along there is a sudden fleury of blogs using that keyword. When someone queries the term on Google, it proceeds to build the list. Since there are no old established authority sites for the term everyone gets to play on an even field - at least for a while. In this situation the bot has it easy and simply lists sites based on it's on-page SEO (Is the keyword in the blog's URL? - in the blog's Title? - in the Post Title? - in the post's Text?) This coupled with fresh relevant posts will get your site on top of the index - at least at first. When fresh content slows down and G begins collecting more and more data regarding the keyword other factors begin having an effect on the listings - PR and backlinks come into play. Within a short time Google begins to re-order the list and in time it will settle down to the point that the page 1 listings will remain fairly stable. The back page listings are rarely stable and rankings can bounce around constantly. At least this is how Google has behaved in the past.

At present I have noticed a prolonged shake up in the serp's for old established niches like "Make Money Online" and the page 1 listings for these older niches have been in a state of constant change for several weeks now. This has all transpired at the same time as G introduced the "Personalized Results" serp's which no doubt has some bearing on all this. The end result however, is that it has become normal to get indexed, rank well in the serp's for your keywords, suddenly find yourself de-indexed, then a few days later suddenly appear back in the serp's but usually not ranking as well as you did in the beginning.

I guess I am trying to tell you to not panic if this happens to you. As long as you have a legitimate site then you will re-appear in the serp's but you may go through the disappearing act a few times before settling down. Just be patient and more importantly keep posting and securing backlinks.

Case in point.

This blog took 2nd spot in the serp's for the term "Blinkweb" the day after I posted my last article. It hung around page 1 for the better part of two days and then disappeared back to page 3 or more. Today it is back on page 1 in 4th spot. Now that it is back on page 1 my new blog has left the index. When it returns I hope to get it back on the first page along with this blog and anything else pointing to my site that I can. What I am going to explain now is something that I never see others doing and often wonder why.

Who says you can only have 1 spot on page 1?

I have touched on this in the past - if you are targeting a term then why not increase your traffic by simply ranking as many sites as you can on page 1 - this is especially true for affiliate marketing and when collecting leads. In most of my niches I usually have 3-4 different sites pointing to my money site in the top 10 on the serp's. I have had as many as 8 sites at once on the page and I have several with 6 sites. (Note: - don't do this with Adsense sites)

The reason for doing this is obvious - you will increase your traffic and ultimately your sales.

Since Blinkweb is a new program, page 1 on Google is up for grabs. The most relevant 10 sites will be chosen by relevancy, age, PR and most importantly who has the most relevant keyword anchored backlinks. You can assume the real Blinkweb site owned by the Callen's will probably be one of the top 10 sites but don't assume that they will be number 1. They should eventually as they will get the most anchored links in time but their site is new as well and can be outranked by older authority sites with better links - at least in the beginning.

Now what exactly am I babbling about? I am going to show you why backlinks are the key to everything when it comes to ranking well in the serp's.

Let's think about this logically. In time Google will run out of fresh content for a keyword like "Blinkweb". This is because there is only so much that can be written about it. In fact most of the 400 pages already indexed for the term have pretty much the same content. Every post reads much like mine - this is because the program hasn't been released yet and there has been no new info given about it from the designers. When Google runs out of fresh content it will start to rank the sites based on 1 factor - who are the authority sites? They determine this based on who has the most keyword authority which in turn is determined by who has the most links pointing to them with the keyword used in the link. Those who get links from higher PR sites will have an advantage over those who have low PR links but both will outrank all the other competitors that don't have relevant backlinks.

Knowing that this "Niche" is new also tells me that I don't need a lot of backlinks to rank well and even less if I was to procur high PR backlinks.

So...

I was fortunate to get 4 links to my last post in which 3 of the 4 links used the term "Blinkweb" in the link. One of the links came from a PR4 blog and another link came from a PR5 blog. Apparently 2 high PR links with keyword relevant links is enough for 4th spot at the moment.

The new blog Blinkweb by Brad Callen was fortunate to get 9 Blinkweb links. Several are from high PR blogs and all the links have keyword relevant anchor text. When it re-appears it should rank well. If you clicked the last link above you would have landed on the new blog's Technorati page - currently a no-PR page. It now has a PR4 keyword relevant link pointing at it. If I was fortunate to get a few more high PR links pointing at it then there is a good chance that it might make page 1 of the serp's as well. That makes 3 sites possible.

While we are at it - I mentioned that I have 4-5 high PR sites sending this blog and the new blog backlinks already. What if those blogs were to get a few high PR, keyword relevant backlinks of their own? They could conceivably make page 1 as well - hell that would make 9...

This isn't likely to happen but what will happen is that I will have stronger backlinks all the way down the line which will increase the strength of the keyword authority for the 2 sites that are the ultimate recipients of all this strong link juice - this blog and the new blog. If you get both blogs double indexed then you can easily occupy 4 of the 10 spots on page 1. You will get more than your share of traffic.

This is how I mount a campaign for every niche I target if it is a new topic.

Yes - most of you are not "Fortunate" enough to get 4-5 high PR backlinks. I realize this but want to mention that very few of your competitors are that fortunate either. If you were to create hubpages and lenses and post several articles and send links from some of your existing blogs then you would find that 4-5 low PR links using the proper keyword in the anchor text would get you ranked well compared to most of your competitors who have few links and even less using the keyword.

I noticed a surge of hubpages and lenses created in the last few days for "Blinkweb". I suspect a few of my readers have decided to jump on this niche and good for them. Most are using the hubs and lenses to send links back to their money site which is good but don't forget to build links to those hubs and lenses as well. Don't just get links for your main site - get them for all the sites linking to your main site - spend more time building keyword authority and you won't need as many links to rank well. Your competition will be busy getting hundreds of PR0 non keyword relevant links from do-follow blogs and low link juice bookmarks.

Don't panic if you aren't on page 1 in a week. Be patient and build authority. This isn't short term blogging. If your product or service is a winner it will produce sales for a while albeit usually more when new. If it takes a month to rank on top you will still have a decent run. If you keep building links you will hit page 1 - after an initial burst most of your competition will stop getting links - they either give up or they make page 1 and don't think they need to do any more work.

I have yet to find a product that I couldn't get on page 1 for. Some took longer but in the end every one made page 1 simply because I never stop getting backlinks and backlinks for my backlinks and backlinks for those backlinks as well. My main money site in any given niche may only have a dozen or so quality links but each one of those links has a dozen quality links of its own and so on. I hope you get the picture. If you build a hubpage to send link juice to your money site then build two more to send link juice to the first hubpage. Don't be surprised to one day find all three hubs on page 1 for your keyword.

Ok, a long post to tell you to work smarter and not harder. You don't need thousands of links - you just need a small number of really good links. You can get them by building up several interlinking sites from different venues - hubpages, articles, squidoo, technorati, social sites etc. Any page that links to your money site should be strengthened with keyword relevant links of their own. This pays off by ensuring your main site makes top ranking and more often than not you will rank several of the support sites as well. I do this all the time and have seen the difference in traffic when I get 3-4 sites on page 1. Btw, once you get 1 authority site on page 1 it makes it easy to get other sites on the page as well. Use it to link to new sites.

Keywords

If you read the two blog posts on the new blog you will notice some of the keywords I used. Aside from "Blinkweb" I used the term "Review", "News" and "Video" in the blog description and posts along with "Brad and Matt Callen". Experience has shown me that the quickest way to get traffic is to use "Review", "News" or "Video" in a blog post. When people can't remember the product name they will use names they remember like "Brad Callen". I don't just want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb". I also want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb Review", "Blinkweb News" and "Blinkweb Video". These are terms that will be searched for in addition to the main keyword.

In fact...



The screenshot above is from my statcounter stats and lists the keywords used to find my new blog. Notice what long tails were used?

I normally write really long posts in order to get as many long tails indexed as possible. In a case like Blinkweb I don't have to. It is an affiliate product and as such there will be a limited variety of keywords used when searching for it. A term like making money online may have hundreds of related long tails used in queries but a term like "Blinkweb" is never going to be searched for using more than half a dozen terms. It doesn't require a long post to optimize half a dozen keywords.

At the time my Blinkweb blog was ranked number 1 for "Blinkweb Review", Number 2 for "Blinkweb News" and in the top 3 for "Blinkweb". Not bad for a two day old blog.

The more keywords you rank for the more traffic so don't just target the obvious main keyword.

There you have it. I told you internet marketing is a numbers game. The more traffic you get the more money you make. The best way to increase your traffic is to rank as many sites as you can on page 1 and target all the relevant keywords - not just the main one - with each site. Remember this is possible when dealing with a new product because there are no pre-established authority sites. You can become the authority site if you are fast, SEO properly and most of all build links faster and better than every one else. Yup - it is work but more importantly - it does work.

That's enough for today. I will be adding some pure SEO posts over the next few days which won't teach you a thing. I need a real "Blinkweb" post and a few other pages so just ignore them if you are a regular reader. I will continue this tutorial in a few days after the serp's hopefully settle out a bit.

Till then,

Cheers

Griz