I like to think of sites in these terms:
Tin - High risk, spammy type sites, main purpose is to generate links and traffic to your silver and gold sites.

Silver - Have decent traffic, generate some revenue, but don't use your best revenue streams. Take a few risks.

Gold - These are your money sites. High quality and minimize risk.

Tin sites will link to other Tin, Silver and Gold sites.

Silver sites link to Silver and Gold sites, but never to Tin sites.

Gold sites - Maybe link to other Gold sites, but never link to Siver or Tin sites.

Tins sites should be "remotely" hosted on other services like free hosting accounts, blog hosting, squidoo, etc. You can also use sub domains.

Silver sites should be hosted on the above, as well as sub domains.

Gold sites should be the "main" domain, and you should host these yourself. A Gold site can be anything from a single squeeze page/sales page, to a high quality content site.

NEVER link a Gold "main domain" site to a spammy sub domain site. However, use one way links from your sub domains to your main domains.

Don't be afraid to spam with using your subdomains. If they get booted/banned, just build more.

IMO, you shouldn't use any affiliate revenue streams AT ALL on your remotely hosted Tin sites. You're not paying for domains or hosting, so their only purpose should be to build links and point traffic to Gold sites. Don't have fingerprints that affiliate programs leave.

There's also more than one way to create revenue other than AdSense...

The best is to create your own product. With your own stuff, it makes it very easy to remove fingerprints. Also, you get paid instantly instead of having to wait to get a check, a big boost to your cashflow.

Then there's SearchFeed and the other smaller PPCs, CJ.com, Amazon, etc. SearchFeed will give you different tracking "affiliate" numbers if you ask, this will help remove fingerprints a bit.

Chart of Linking Strategies

This post won't get into blackhat linking strategies, but rather the type of sites that work well for link laundering...

You can use:
Forums, photo sites (think of your own niche flickr), sofware directories, myspace type sites, anything that has multiple users. Now, you "use" the "users" to get the blackhat/spammy links. This will insolate you and your site from the spammers.

Now use the site to send your Gold site(s) legit links and traffic.

I have two sites that I would consider GOLD sites.

The first one (AGOLD) is already making me money consistently (very very little). The second one is not making any money but is building traffic steadily naturally.

I think using your linking strategies, the traffic could get boosted and money could be made.

If I understand what we are trying to do hear is boost one another for quality sites. Is this true?

No offense to anyone, I know a bunch of you already and trust you....

What is to prevent someone from copying my sites, etc??? Am I being paranoid?

Thanks and blessings,

Ed

There's nothing to stop anyone from copying your sites or pages, except honesty, and legal and moral issues.

Then again, there's nothing from stopping you from stealing my sites.

To be honest, I'm not sure what you want me so say?

Kurt, as you know, it would be the paragraph above that would prevent me from stealing your sites!

>
>To be honest, I'm not sure what you want me so say?

I was just checking!

However, I'm guessing that part of what we are supposed to do in Bomb Squad is to give each other "boosts" for having a good site. Is that right? Then it comes down to trusting in the integrity of others not to steal you site.

That's all. Not looking for you to necessarily advocate one way or another. Clarifying. Thanks!

I'm like Kurt, there isn't any way to keep anyone from swipping your sites. All they have to do is look in the source code.

The truth is, if they want to bad enough, someone could swipe just about anything on the Internet.

Also, I don't know about anyone else, but I do trust the Bombers in this forum! There has to be a mutual trust going on in here for us all to benefit. From what I've experienced, that factor is already established.

Time will tell with the newer members though.

This being said, I think you will find that each member will help one another. When push comes to shove, it will only benefit them in the long run right?

Btw, remember what I said about the linking with QS in that email I sent you?

Well this is part of that linking strategy that helps boost that search engine to its full potential.

This particular site will become a major hub just like the other ones it gets its traffic from now. Its a matter of building a netwaork and linking strategy with sites to gain or reach their maximum potential...not just with the SEs, but also with monetization.

Right now it is a baby in the making, and still needs upbuilding.

Hope this helps....

Mary

>However, I'm guessing that part of what we are supposed to
>do in Bomb Squad is to give each other "boosts" for having a
>good site. Is that right? Then it comes down to trusting in
>the integrity of others not to steal you site.
>
>That's all. Not looking for you to necessarily advocate one
>way or another. Clarifying. Thanks!

I would like for the members of this forum to help each other out with things like Digging, bookmarking, etc. But that's up to the members here.

If someone has a very good article, we should help them digg it. Getting on the first page of digg can lead to a great number of incoming/one way links, an essential part of SEO. Bookmarks can have the same impact.

But, I can't make anyone actually "do it" and taking action is up to each member.

Karsten

If you look at those patterns in Kurt's illustration very closely and see how each link to the other, it is awlful hard for the SEs to call it arbitrage...especially Google.

The best way is to use all of these types of strategies.

To get the best results, link your adsense sites to related sites, then to a silver, and then silver to gold if you have one.

I know I link my adsense niche sites right on the index page of QS in my sig.

Plus I use all of the strategies in that chart for other sites.

It's been up for some time now and I've never been banned yet.

Of course I don't call the way I am linking "link laundering" lol.

Hope this helps...

Mary

Link laundering sites are outside of the tin-silver-gold network, for the sake of this discussion.

They are intended to clean blackhat links. Let's say you're using blog comment spamming software. Instead of the comment links pointing at any of your whitehat/gold sites, these links point at a link laundering site. The link laundering site then points at your whitehat/gold sites.

Types of sites that make good link laundering sites are:
Forums
Wikis
Image upload sites
Social bookmarking sites
Article directories
etc.

Hmm...I appreciate the explaination. Thanks!

I didn't realize article directories and forums could be used to launder links for Adsense sites.

I think that is because I normally don't post my Adsense site links in any of the type of sites you mention. That is probably due to them being white hat sites.

I'm sure this will change once I finish designing some of the blogs I have in mind.

I bet I could get lots more traffic if I did.

Karsten,

I'm PMing you about the other stuff. I'd prefer not to post the info in this thread.

Mary

Since I have been out of the country, i printed out this thread to study how linking works.

If I understand correctly, we never want to link silver sites to tin sites. The graphic though shows silver sites that DO link to tin sites.

Am I missing something?

Thanks and blessings,

Ed

Hi Ed,

The chart is merely a pic of possible linking strategies, and isn't a recommendation to use all of them. It's main purpose is to get folks thinking about how sites can be linked.

From a pure PageRank point of view, you would want to link every site to every other sites (circular, closed circuit, recipricating), as this would theoretically generate the highest PageRank for all sites. Linear/open circuit would generate the lowest PR.

However, the circular-closed circuit-recipricating also leaves the most fingerprints and would create the lowest TrustRank.

Also, depending on how many sites you have, you may want to link silver to tin every once in a while. There is no single best formula and the chart is not set in stone.

if the sub-domain gets banned, doesn't that affect the main domain? If so, then you wouldn't want the sub-domains on a Gold site, right?

Blessings,

Ed

Hi Ed,

Best case scenario - Cross link:

subdomain.tin.com => www.gold.com

Where tin.com is on a different server/IP.

If www.gold.com gets banned from any linking sub.tin.com does, then link:

sub.tin.com => competitor.com

This will get your competitor banned.

I'm not saying to do this, only pointing out that if Google banned both sites, the "linker" and the "linkee", then all we need to do is set up our own domains and ban our competition.

You sly dog you.

I was thinking about something like that not too long ago.

Uhumm...not that I'd do it either ...

Mary

Hi Mary...

I should clarify...My point wasn't to sabotage the competition, it was that if Google did ban a site because of what Ed said, it would lead to some very unsavory behavior.

This type of sabaotage is known as "Google Bowling" and Google has been working hrd to prevent it.

Na, I understood where you were coming from. I just found it funny because there are some webmasters and marketers that would like nothing better than getting their competition banned.

Btw, I wrote a couple of articles on G bowling on my blog last year I think. I didn't care for the practice then, and don't now. It's too dirty for me lol.

Mary

http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=201512

Also if you have audio on your site here is a unique way to get links...
http://andrewhansen.name/seo/sweet-new-link-building-strategy/

I have not had a chance to put into use yet and have no association with either but thought others might benefit from info.

Bob

LW are not a miracle strategy. And I don't really use them to create "wheels", just a way to add more third-party resources. You need to bookmark them and submit RSS, etc.

Think of them as buffers, and/or use them as buffers is a good idea.

I also suggest using random linking patterns and not the "typical link wheel" linking structure.

Again, they are NOT a miracle, but give more choices when using Bookmarkdemon, etc., as they give you more URLs to bookmark without spamming just a few domains.

EDIT: changed "are a miracle" to "are NOT a miracle". My fault.

but its a pain in the ... to go back and remove the linkwheel linking...its something you throw in into the mix...