I joined this forum after reading Kurt's WSO on WF and really appreciating some of the concepts. I was hoping to get some feedback on a strategy I'm pursuing for my micro sites. Here's what it is, in a nutshell:

- Register and exact keyword match domain for my niche which is relatively uncompetitive.

- Put a Wordpress site up on my new domain with a static page full of good, original content, and then a sub-page up with a longer-tail version of my main keyword (which internally links back to my main page for my targeted term).

- Right when I launch it, submit it to digg and stumbleupon to get it indexed (usually takes 4-5 days for my sites to get indexed this way).

- Do link-building mostly through article writing. I submit a new article everyday to Ezinearticles and GoArticles for each of my sites, sometimes linking only to my main domain and sometimes linking to both my main domain and my sub-page.

- Every couple of days, I comment on a few blogs with my links and then do some social bookmarking for my main domain as well (usually to 3-4 sites like delicous, mixx, propeller, etc.)

..And that's basically it. I've seen medicore results so far using this method, though I'm probably just not being patient enough. My oldest site has been indexed for about 3 weeks. I have 6 sites indexed total for really soft niches. Most of them are ranking in positions 8-15 which I find don't do much for me in terms of revenue (because the top spots get the most clicks, obviously).

So my question is, what should my plan of attack be beyond this? I know I need to get into some tin / silver / gold type strategies with all the web 2.0 properties, but it's really overwhelming. Can anyone suggest a simple plan to pursue, keeping in mind the nature of my niches (pretty long-tail, uncompetitive)?

I'd really appreciate the input!

Thanks,

Joe

Hi Joe,

The only thing that's truly over-whelming is the feeling you must do everything now.

You're already doing the hard part, which is writing. Now, instead of posting every article on EZA or GA, put some really good stuff on Squidoo, Hubpages and some of the other premium social sites.

Link to these sites using resources in Think Links.

Grab your RSS pheed from EZA and GA (if they have one) and submit it to all the. Also, install BlogBomb and add these pheeds to BB. Submit your BB pheed also. Do the same for every resource that exports an RSS pheed.

For any site that doesn't have an RSS pheed, make one using RZZ Tuel. Add it to blogbomb.

Bookmark your best articles, which you posted on the various premium 2.0 sites.

Sign up for a few profiles in think links. Link these to a camauflage page in turn links to other profile pages.

Again, if you think about this all at once, you'll get over-whelmed. Instead, tackle each step one at a time.

Then I pinged the lense, bookmarked it several places, and pinged those bookmarks. I'm going to continue on by creating more silver properties for this site and a few others, then focus on my tin sites that link to my silver properties.

Quick question:

My gold sites are all hosted w/ their own domains. I have a bunch of content up and am monetizing with adsense. These are the pages I want the traffic to and rankings for.

On my first lense, I placed just two links to my gold site (both contextual, I tried to make it very informative and non-spammy since I heard squidoo is really cracking down as of late). Any other links you'd automatically place here.. perhaps to another web 2.0 / silver property?

BTW - Shot you a PM, you can move the contents of this thread to the "goals" thread if you'd like. I didn't realize where it was supposed to go at the time .

This forum doesn't have a "merge threads" option, which makes for more work for me to "move" threads.

Also, be careful of how you link to Squidoo. I have heard from more than one credible person that they got their account banned for "improper linking". You may want to set up a few camauflage pages, get a bunch of links to those pages, then link the camofauge pages to Squidoo lenses.

Don't forget to create and submit RSS pheeds. RSS pheeds need to be thought of as blogs, sites and pages...You need to create as many pheeds as possible and submit them to the various directories, and ping them when they update. IMO, RSS is the single best linking method, as other "scraper" sites can pick up the pheeds and use them on their sites, creating links to your sites.

Don't worry about exact numbers of links on a lens. It's more important to have tons of legit lenses, each with different amounts of links. The "art of Bombing" means there are no "automatic" links. Instead, you have a bunch of lenses using different links and ammounts of links.

As far as AdSense, IMO, you're better off not using AdSense UNTIL you have traffic. And then, only use it on the pages that get most of your traffic. If a site has 100 pages, chances are 10-20 of those get 90% of the total traffic. Put AdSense on these and use the link juice from all the other pages to point to the traffic/money pages.

>Thanks for the response. I started by creating a Squidoo
>lense for one of my sites. That site just got indexed and is
>ranked 40th for a marginally competitive term, I think it'll
>be a big earner for me.
>
>Then I pinged the lense, bookmarked it several places, and
>pinged those bookmarks. I'm going to continue on by creating
>more silver properties for this site and a few others, then
>focus on my tin sites that link to my silver properties.
>
>Quick question:
>
>My gold sites are all hosted w/ their own domains. I have a
>bunch of content up and am monetizing with adsense. These
>are the pages I want the traffic to and rankings for.
>
>On my first lense, I placed just two links to my gold site
>(both contextual, I tried to make it very informative and
>non-spammy since I heard squidoo is really cracking down as
>of late). Any other links you'd automatically place here..
>perhaps to another web 2.0 / silver property?
>
>BTW - Shot you a PM, you can move the contents of this
>thread to the "goals" thread if you'd like. I didn't realize
>where it was supposed to go at the time .

I also made use of your tag hack while setting up my squidoo lense, although I could find only 8 or so relevant tags that were indexed. My lense is pretty quality, I exported the contents of it just in case it gets locked or something but it definitely shouldn't.

One other question that I'm not sure of. For the tins sites / camouflage pages that will be linking to the silver sites, do you worry about making them topically relevant to your silver and gold sites at all, or are they just links? Seems like with the camo setup all we're really after is just the links?

Good camauflage is the main thing. However, it's often possible to add a relevant keyword or two so the page is "semi-reevant".

Again, the first thing is to make the page look like a personal blog...

Something like this...If your main keywords are "weight loss", try you may add a paragraph:

---------------------------------------------
I've been kind of bitchy since I've been on my diet to lose some weight, so I found these funny videos to make me laugh.

Funny Youtube Video

Funny Youtube Video

Funny Youtube Video

--------------------------------

Then try to "hide" a relevant keyword in the page title and other areas. But make sure your "page" is camoflauged well. For your page title, use more keywords:

"Videos to cheer me up from trying to lose weight."

After this, you still have "fake spam" comments you can add, as well as fake "adsense", where you can sneak in a keyword or two (or 3 or 4 or 5).