General SEO

You know you need a domain with lots of old links. You can buy a new domain and build links to it over time, or you can buy an old domain that already has links.

There’s plenty of ways to find old domains and websites to purchase, here’s a couple.

Aside: like most things SEO, we start our search on Google. Spend some time thinking of searches, it’ll pay off.

1) Look for dormant accounts
First, look for dormant accounts. Websites that aren’t being used or on the verge of expiring; you can sometimes make a decent offer and pick up a site that someone’s not using anymore. So how do you find them? Google for terms that you would see on websites that are old, out of date, not being used, or have their accounts suspended.

Keeping to our generic mortgage theme, here’s some examples of searches you can do for sites:
- account suspended mortgage
- under construction mortgage
- (C) 1999 mortgage

and so on. The better you are at finding innovative searches the better you’ll be at finding sites that other’s haven’t picked over.

Keep in mind that this isn’t a high success ratio endeavour. You’ll have to spend some time looking, and a lot of time making offers, only to get declined. It’s work and takes some effort (well, it’s not real work though - this is SEO and it’s not like the rest of the world who actually do have to work for a living while we’re screwing around on the internet). In any regard stick with it, they are out there.

I’ve got a friend who offered to buy an old site. Owner wouldn’t sell. A few months later, the owner’s transmission died and he needed the cash. Site sold!

2) Scrape old directories
Google for directories in your niche. Download a copy of Xenu link sleuth and politely! scrape the old directory. That’ll tell you two things. First, any dead links may be indicative of dropped domains - domains not registered any more but with some good old links. Secondly, it’ll show you sites that have been around for a long time.

3) Connect with the industry
Go looking for hosting companies that specialize in your niche. Chat them up, strike a deal so that they let you know if any of their customers are going to drop their website. Maybe going out of business or whatever. Work out something like a $500 payout for the domain owner, and the hosting company gets $100. Whatever - keep your ear to the ground in the niche.

I do hosting for my niche. And a few years ago (before age was a factor in the algorithm) I bought a domain from a fellow who was retiring, for like $500. That’s about what it was worth at the time since it was listed in the DMOZ directory (DMOZ is a good directory to get a link from if you can). Years later it’s now sitting in reserve, I’m shortly going to turn it into one of my flagship sites. And I wouldn’t sell it for less than $20K.

4) Watch the digitalpoint forums
The sites for sale in digitalpoint are full of crap, low end sites, and fraudulent sellers. But every once in a while - and it’s rare - a great sight comes up that’s underpriced. I’ve seen sites probably worth a grand or two sell for $100. Not often mind you, but when they do they go for the buy it now (BIN) price within minutes. So you have to watch.

In summary, keep your eye out for old domains. They can be an easy way to get a ready to rank site.

We’re trying something out right now. I’ll not go into detail on everything I’m experimenting with but I’ll disclose the generalities.

I’ve just set up a blog for one of my kids. We’ve repurposed an old, pr5 well established (gov’t and .edu backlinks) children related site for this. In the blog he’s going to do product reviews of things like toys and video games.

The intent? To get free stuff. At his age, that’s worth the work and is very exciting.

He’s writing some sample reviews right now to get the blog primed. After that I’ll show him how to approach toy and game manufacturers with a request for product reviews. Hopefully some of them will respond with some free stuff.

I’m curious to see how well this does. I think there’s some potential since we’re starting with a well established site and it’s very grassroots. What’s more grassroots than a kid reviewing the toys? I think there’s some potential that I may have to delve into social media as well to help him promote this. Not sure I have time to enter that arena, but will consider doing so later. It’s worth noting - this is one of the ways I learn things. Try stuff that’s outside of what I do. I don’t care if I win or fail on a lot of these things, I’m in it to learn. This project may lead me into social media, and area I don’t know anything about. And that may (or may not) have some spinoff in my main line of work.

I remember the first time I experimented. Previously I was too staid to do anything other than mainstream. But near the end of the digitalpoint network (I’ll let you google that - it was a grey hat technique from a few years ago that worked for a while) surge I finally got on board. I bought a large website for the ‘weight’ and bought another business related website to receive the return weight from the network. The end result? I made like $20-$30K in three months for an outlay of $1500. That wet my whistle, that’s for sure.
The network eventually died and I’ve let the sites sit after cleaning the network off. A few years later, I now have a really old directory website and a really old, not bad ranking, business website that I’m going to put back into production later this year or early next. Win win win.

So don’t be afraid to do the same thing. Grab an old domain name and try something goofy on it. What’ve you lost if it flunks? Not much.

When you’re out in the wild rummaging around for links or looking at what others are doing to rank there’s a few tools you can use to get a sense of what’s going on with a site.
First, remember that searchstatus plugin you installed? That plugin gives you a small @ symbol in the bottom right corner of your browser. A right mouse click on that symbol will bring up a menu.

1) Checking who links to your competition:
Visit your competitor’s site in your browser. Next, right click on the searchstatus plugin symbol (the @ symbol at the bottom of your browser). Choose ‘Show Backward Links’ -> ‘Domain external only’ ->’Yahoo’. This will show you the first 1000 pages that link to your competitors. Visit those pages. This seems straightforward, but actually looking at the pages that link to your competitors can tell you quite a bit about why people are linking to them, how they are developing links, and frequently other websites that they own.

2) Checking the history of your competition:
Let’s look at their site over a period of time. Again visit your competitor’s site in your browser. Right click on the search status plugin symbol and select ‘Show in Archive.org’. That will show you snapshots of their website over time. Simply click on a variety of time periods and have a look. Like checking the backlinks there’s no defined thing we’re looking for, we’re just snooping. Seeing what’s up. Maybe nothing, or maybe we see something that’s changed over time.

3) Use Google for references:
Google your competitor’s name and website. See who’s talking about them. I’ve used this to find a ‘testimonials’ section of an SEO company - the SEO company that is doing the work for one of my competitors. Now I know what I’m up against and the techniques they use to get ranked (ranked below me mind you ).

4) Who owns their IP address?
Bring up a DOS prompt. Enter the command ‘ping yourcompetitor.com’. That will give you their IP address, it looks like 123.123.123.123 (four groups of up to 3 numerals seperated by periods). Write this down. Now visit this site: http://ws.arin.net/whois/ and enter in that IP address. Now you know who owns the IP address. In many cases that will tell you where they are being hosted.

5) Check their domain registration information:
Visit whois.opensrs.net and type in their domain. This will show the underlying registration information for their domain. The ownership can in many cases be interesting. You’ll also find the age of the domain. And don’t forget to look at the nameservers. Those nameservers will be on another domain, like ns1.someotherdomain.com. That someotherdomain.com may either be their hosting company, or it may be another related website. In any case the nameservers can sometimes provide additional connections to other websites.

6) Who else is on the same IP (part I):
Type the raw IP address into your browser. On shared servers that will take you to the first website listed in Apache. And that website is typically the ‘owner’ of the IP address. That may be the hosting company. It may just be another site on a shared IP. Or again, it may be a related website.

7) Who else is on the same IP (Part II):
Go to MSN and search on ‘IP:123.123.123.123′, replacing 123.123.123.123 with your competitors IP address. This search will list all the sites that MSN knows that exist on that IP address. If your competitor’s have their own server, you likely just got a list of every site they own.

Who else is on the same IP (Part II):
As in number 7, but run the search up one or two IP address and down one or two (i.e 123.123.123.122 and 123.123.123.121). Servers normally get IP addresses in blocks, so again you can find related websites using this technique.

That’s some easy snooping!

The second thing you’ll need if you’re doing is an attitude adjustment. Let me state the following:
- You are in business to make money for yourself.
- Google is not your friend. Google is not ANYONE’s friend, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Kiss their ass at your peril.
- there is no blackhat or white hat. There are only techniques and levels of risk.

Let’s address the first point. You are in business to make money. I’ll assume you also run an ethic and moral company because you’re an ethical and moral person. That doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you carry on about how you’re making the world a better place with your website or how content is king, or natural links are best. If you’re going to connect Google rankings to ethics, you’re in the wrong place.

Secondly, Google is a publicly traded company. They are required to make money for their shareholders. Not have a hugfest. Or ‘do no evil’. MAKE MONEY FOR THEIR SHAREHOLDERS. Their interests are their interests first, not yours, not ‘organize the world’s data’ or any other crap. Ignore this at your peril. If you think a company that cows to China’s dictators, scrapes and republishes entire websites and will ban entire websites at the drop of a hat is your friend, you’re in the wrong place. Google is using your web site to make them their billions. Turnabout is fair play.

Their is no blackhat and white hat. And if there is, blackhat is NOT illegal when used in an SEO sense. Nor is it immoral, unethical or bad for the web. Blackhatters for the most part do not ‘hack’.

White hat means you abide by Google’s terms of service. If you feel the need to do that, reread my second point above. And if you still feel the need to be a whitehat, go hug a tree somewhere else.

Black hat means two things. First, black hatters do not abide by the search engine’s term of service. (Again, nobody’s forcing you to abide by any publicly traded companies arbitrary terms of service). Secondly, they tend to find holes in the search engine’s algorithm and exploit those holes. Blackhatters also automate tasks. They set up hundreds of websites to churn and burn where a white hatter will run on one only.

Of course, there’s a very large range between the two. What I do, and what I’ll be talking about here is how to mostly look like a white hat, but to also test some grey hat stuff. I don’t do true blackhat (honestly, I’m not smart enough to stay ahead of the search engines. I prefer to build so that they come to me instead).

In that large grey range of course are very large tolerances of risk and reward. Where you fall in that range should be a deliberate choice, as mine was. However you should also dabble seperately outside your range in order to learn and grow. It’s worth noting that Google continues to change the line where white hat is. You can find yourself a grey hat one day having done nothing different - Google just decides what was OK today was not OK tomorrow.

If you’re just getting started out with SEO, stick to white hat as much as you can. The time to learn grey is not on your money sites or on any sites where you have a trail.

The very first thing you’re going to need if you’re doing SEO is the searchstatus plugin for firefox. Don’t ask a lot of questions, just make sure you’re using firefox as your browser, then click on that link and install the plugin. You’re going to use it. A lot.

The search status plugin gives us some details about the links related to whatever page we’re looking at - both inbound and outbound links. If you’re doing SEO at all,you should be making heavy use of this plugin. I use it all day everyday.