GSA Best Practice (Part 2 - Project Structure)
AlexR
Cape Town
A follow on from:
What I am going to do now is outline the various projects you should have and why.
1) Contextual - we have this as a seperate project so you can build tier 2 links to it, as well as set a higher PR and adjust it's importance depending on your link building success.
2) Contextual Tier 2 - these contextual links should be fixed URL's so it makes sense to build up the strength of these pages.
3) Directory - same reason as contextual, the reason we keep it as a seperate project is that you can increase and decrease importance depending on links gained.
4) External Blogs are external sites that you have setup with a link and article to your moneysite that you manage. Generally, we are looking at hubpages, squidoo, tumblr, etc. These are good pages you have so you want to build up their strength. This is why we have a PR filter and low OBL as you want good quality links to these pages too.
5) Home - you want to build the most links to the homepage of your site. They also need to be good quality links.
6) Landing Pages - you want to get some deep linking to your site, but have less links than your homepage. so if you have your other key pages here, it will keep it looking natural, as not everyone will always link to your homepage!
7) Web2.0 - these are the GSA Web2.0 sites. We need to manually check that the links are created or capchas are completed (as most of these use recapther, so you need to manually complete these!). They only allow one link per web2.0 per email address you use. So when your email get's blacklisted, you just update here, clear the target URL history and get another set.
I am going to give some detailed screenshots, about which platform (e.g. blogs, trackbacks, indexer, forum,etc) to use for which project, but I first want to get some feedback from the regular users about this structure and if there is anything to add! (No point spending ages on the detail if I am missing something major!)
Comments
I than tried it again by just linking to the main page only and only putting 5-6 different anchor text I ended up ranking within a week and sticking there. I've been following this for about 3-4 months. Every site has ranked just fine. A couple times though i'll see a site fall off to oblivion but a few days later it comes back stronger and than it sticks and I know at the point I can pretty much stop working on it cause it will stay there. This has been done on 50+ sites.
Since I mainly work in a Small Micro niche field. I have been using GSA enough to know that around 500-600 Verifieds and i'm indexed and ranking in the top 20 Around 1000+ and i'm on the 1st page around 1500-2000 I'm top 3. It's been generally the same for the past 50 Sites. This has even got me on the 4th page for a very big keyword that totally happened on accident. And i'm still moving up.
I also might be different here but I just throw all my projects into one Project I don't seperate them like you and several others do. I than Have a T2 Than I have a General T3 That links to all the T2 Projects I actually got that from Anon So I won't take credit for that.
Those are just my two Opinions.
@seo_projects These keywords range anywhere from 15,000 competing pages all the way up to 2.2 million. I try not to go any higher than that. The only settings I use is Pr1+ Less than 50 OBL's I've tested it with PR2+ pr3+ I saw good results from all 3 but obviously the higher the PR the longer it takes to get links the longer it takes to rank. But every site i Ran the PR3 filter all ended up being a PR3 site. Same with the Pr2 and Pr1.
@James All of the 1500 Were T1.
Hunar - it would really shed some light if you could give us an idea of how many exact matches/month your microsites are targeting. And thanks for sharing that.
I just put up a microsite on Sep. 3 targeting about 3500 exact matches in a very competitive health niche. By Sep. 21 my rank shot up to page #3 for 4 different keywords. I have only used articles and web 2.0's with no tiers. Started with 20 submitted/day the first week, then bumped it to 40 submitted/day second week, and then bammo, multiple terms on page 3, and it's sticking.
Always great to hear success stories
@global the links I mentioned are all verified.
@Hunar - very cool - thanks for sharing that. I usually play in the middle of the pool, around 5,000 - 15,000 exact matches. Right now I am testing some new microsites at different levels. I believe I know what you are saying about the terms that are getting popular.
As for me, I'm spending a little more time than normal doing keyword research. There's been a lot of fallout since April 24, and I sense a lot more opportunities in the deeper end of the pool.
1) What kind of pause settings do you use - how many submitted/verified then pause for how long?
2) What services/platforms are you using?
3) What kind of content are you using - if you use articles/blogs
4) You wrote: " But every site i Ran the PR3 filter all ended up being a PR3 site. Same with the Pr2 and Pr1." This means every site you ran the now lower than PR 3 filter, your money site ended up with a PR3? Also, is the PR filter the domain or page?
Global, thanks for this again. I do have some questions for you too:
1) When you talk about contextual, what services are you talking about?
2) What do you mean by "fixed URL's so it makes sense to build up the strength of these pages. " What do you mean by fixed URLs?
1) I don't use any type of pause settings. I let the program run none stop 24/7.
2) I use all the platforms Except for the Indexer(whois Type Sites) And the Referrer
3) I write the content myself for now and than spin the heck outta it. But I did used to use a service like Kontent Machine but their price is just way to extreme for me 37$ a month for something that doesn't make you money it's more of a time saver. Just doesn't justify the cost to me.
4) Yes every site I ran specific filter on the PR on the money site raised according to the PR i was running. For Example If I Set up a campaign targeting only PR3+ sites when a PR update came out that site was now a PR3 and So on with PR2 and PR1 Filters. Now here's where you could debate PR Vs Rankings. I honest could careless about the PR of my site unless I plan to flip the site. As long as it's ranking and generating money I don't really care.
And I mainly only do wordpress sites. and I've tested this with Main Page and doing a Post and than running the post through GSA and even the Posts got a PR3 Rank while the HomePage Stayed a PR1.
I have a feeling that google is doing something funky with sites. Like If your homepage is Penalized that the rest of your site will not be. Like they are treating each page/posts essentially as their own site if that makes sense? For example I have sites where the home page is penalized yet I can continue to make posts and rank those and they are not penalized. It's Weird but the more and more i test it I see that becoming more and more True.
1) "The only settings I use is Pr1+ Less than 50 OBL's " (QUESTION: this PR 1 is the page PR or Domain PR?)
2) No pause settings
3) Every service except Indexer and Referer
4) No checking of competitor's backlinks (as this will disregard your PR filter)
5) General Anchor at 2%
6) Nor URL Variation
7) Anchor Text variation at 10%
Some further questions:
A) Am I right to say you have 5 keywords and use that as anchor text too?
C) If you put your PR filter as 1 (I'm assuming it's page not domain), what kind of links do you get - you won't get any article or guestbooks or web 2.0s right? I'm assuming most would be blog comments? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Please add any other important thing to the above list of your guidelines for your sites. Thanks.
thanks
Mike
You made me thinking about starting to point GSA to my money site directly ( I never do that though ) I use Magic Submitter for my tier 1 links.( but it's expensive 67$/month!).
Do you use only GSA for your link building campaigns? or you have some other tools to help you out ?
If the answer is yes, is it really working and ranking your sites ?