SEO Case Study – 4 Sites: 3 Weeks 2 Days Update

Hi mates!

I’ve decided to give a quick update on my small SEO experiment since there is some progress that I’ve made so far with my sites.

I’ll be quick and short here, since I’m extremely busy with lots of offline stuff and cannot devote that much time to my online activities. Each day I’m only working when I have a chance, usually during night time. SEO takes a lot of time, since I’m doing lots of stuff manually, like rewriting articles etc.

Ok, to the point, what I’ve done in the last 9 days since my last update post:

1. Video Marketing Campaign

I’ve heard a lot of good things about video marketing, how it helps with long tail keywords and so on, and decided to test it for myself.

I’ve went to Fireworks and created a basic background image for my video, with a catchy test on the top and call to action on the bottom (with my URL). Next I opened Windows Movie Maker, added some insirational audio and simply wrote several slides of text with a couple of related pics. Like, “do you struggle with?… I had the problem…until I found… visit my hhtp to read my success story…” – pretty simple and basic stuff. Total video length is about 1.5 minutes.

Next, I’ve simply repeated this for the rest of sites, slightly remaking text (based on my main keyword) and URL in call to actions. It doesn’t take much time to re-do the video once you have one. Video rewriting lol

Free site to distribute videos: TubeMogul.com

I’ve registered to TubeMogul and ALL the sites that it distributes to. During 3-4 days I’ve submitted all my 4 videos, then bookmarked my video page on main video sites like YouTube, and sites that give me keyword rich anchor link. If you’re interested, drop me a comment and I’ll list all the video sites that allow you to place your keyword rich backlink instead of simple URL link.

Unfortunately, my videos seemed to be too promotional, so TubeMogul closed some of the sites for automatic distribution. No problem, I’ve submitted to these sites manually, yet TubeMogul is still a huge time-saver and HIGHLY recommended for your video marketing. Just don’t create too promo stuff, it’s better to show your face and voice in the vid, seems they like this sort of vids more.

2. Creating a satellite mininetwork for site #3

This strategy is very popular one for dominating the vertical in SERPs as well as avoiding the sandbox effect (when you place all the backlinks to your main site only and G may sndbox it for too “fast & hard” promotional efforts.

Initially I planned to use this model of SEO for all my 4 sites, but eventually when I started rewriting articles for each of my satellites and got a little bit lazy and crazy about so much of manual work… I’ve only created several satellites for the site #3.

What’s the concept? Easy, we create a simple related article on several platforms:

1. Squidoo

2. Hubpages

3. Weebly

4. WordPress

5. Xanga

and more, if you want to.

Each of the satellites links to the main site, and they can also be interlinked in the so called “wheel”. So far, I created a squidoo lens, hubpages hub, blogger blog and also placed quidoo RSS to hubpages and Squid and hubpages RSS to Blogger blog.

I’ve added 2-3 links from each of my satelites to main site, with main keyword and 1-2 long-tail variations, and added URL links as well to appear more natural. I also linked my satellites to other pages on my site (that in turn have inbound link to my domain with my main kw).

Pretty easy, but it took me around 20 minutes to rewrite article 3 times ! for each of my satellites, total I’ve made 3*3 rewritings…too much of work! Why 3 rewrites? Simply, I’ll use them in mass article submission to feed my satellites with lots of links from article directories.

I still need to finish this network and bookmark all the satellites and do article submission campaigns. No time for that still… )

3. Sites #1 and #4 were not in top 100 still – what I did to see them in top 100 next day?

After I gave up temporarily on creating my satellites network, I’ve started adding simple backlinks to all my 4 sites, since I only had 1-2 hours to work online, and I still want to get my sites to the top 10 FAST.

After some backlinking, I checked my sites positions, and found that site #1 and #4 weren’t even in top 10 (video marketing didn’t help)… What to do? It definitely takes time for the links to become “valuable” in the G eyes, but I cannot wait, so I implemented a good old PPC trick to my 2 sites. I’ve added several links TO the trusted resources that I found for my sites’ main keyword (from my sites’ blogroll), and I also added related YouTube video to my sites (Fast Tube plugin is good for that). I pinged my 2 sites and added some backlinks to my sites, which I do every day spending 20-30 minutes on that.

The next day, it was Tuesday I believe, I’ve seen BOTH of my sites in top 100 already. 2 days later, one of them jumped to top 20. Use this strategy if you want to create a good “first” impression in Google’s eyes for your new site and get ranked faster than usually

4. Adding backlinks manually – each day

Yes this is a routine, and it takes time. At least 20-30 minutes until you start to hate this silently ))) I’ll be short here – blog commenting works damn well, especially on blogs related to my sites theme. Some of blog domain have PR up to 7, some of the pages I leave my comment on have PR 3-4. What else do I need? )) I’ll do a separate post about this maybe, how, what etc… Now it’s my only activity with my sites. I’ve done blog commenting during the last 4 days, and I see the progress in my ranking already…

OK, to the rankings:

Here are the rankings for site #1:

It’s in top 100 for 2-3 days only, but my presell page ranks high for long-tail variation of main keytword – not bad!

Site #2 SEO rankings:

My best performing domain so far – high rank for main keyword and one of the inner pages is ranked for all 3 longer-tail variations of my main keyword! See the recent jump in rankings from 60+ to 10+ position.

Site #3 SEO rankings:

Despite my video marketing efforts and satellites creation, the site sticks to the page 5 of G still… Will push it a bit soon

Site #4 SEO rankings:

This baby didn’t want to appear in top 100 for a long time, now thanks to the YouTube trick and some backlinks it’s on page 2 for the plural version of my main keyword (that gets some good traffic as well).

Ok guyes! Now I’m finishing this post, I’ve been pretty detailed in what I’ve done so far, nothing’s hidden, no “secret” tricks used. I’m now making a serious changes to the whole way of working online, this is due to my busy and unhealthy lifestyle and new goals and major shift in the vision of my business and life…

I hope to write about it in the future, since it’s all still in progress… The work goes on, the progress is good so far, and I hope to make it to page 1 of Google soon

See you soon with my next updates and tactics I use to promote my sites! Stay Tuned!!

Related posts:

1. SEO Case Study – 4 Sites: 2 Weeks Update
2. SEO Case Study – 4 Sites: Basic Competition Analysis
3. SEO Case Study – 4 Sites: Current Rankings
4. Case Study 1 – “GuyGetsGirl” Campaign Results For 2 Days
5. SEO Sites Experiment