Black hat SEO is a topic that has been getting a lot of media attention, as of late.  The term black hat SEO refers to manipulating Search Engine results using “unethical” means. Here’s more info on the top from Wikipedia.

A couple days ago, this article was published: Sequoia Fails to Spot Milanoo’s Black Hat Tactics Before Investing.  It details how a fashion start-up, Milanoo, backed by the most well known Venture Capital firm, Sequoia, engaged black hat tactics to rank itself for 4 keywords:  “cheap dresses” (rank 2), “evening gown” (rank 1), “cheap wedding dresses” (rank 1), and “summer dresses” (rank 2).    In terms of Google AdWords spend, these 4 terms and spots are worth $200K/month.

It’s quite an interesting read and makes you question how you can successfully compete with someone engaging in black hat.  (In case you’re wondering, I consider the SEO Matrix methodology white hat.)

So, are only the more daring, budding start-up sites engaging in black hat techniques?  Certainly not!  The New York Times published a great article just two months prior on the wide use of black hat by well known Fortune 500 companies. […]

The SEO Matrix is a SEO strategy that I created and have been tweaking over the past 6 months or so.  I’ve found it very powerful, since it touches upon all 6 levers to successful SEO strategy.

In fact, in my recent case study, Case of the 300K Site, the only SEO work I did is create 4 SEO Matrices.  In this article, I will explain how the SEO Matrix is constructed and why it’s so effective.

Creating a SEO strategy is essentially designing a backlink infrastructure pointing to your site.  In designing this infrastructure, there are 2 key buckets of questions to address:

• What are your backlinks? Do you want social bookmarks?  Forum links?  Blog posts?  Article marketing?  Similarly, what’s the proper mix?

• How do your backlinks interconnect? Which web properties link to your site?  Which link to each other?  How many tiers do you have?

The SEO Matrix is a 4 tiered design, with links (I call these vertices) spanning 8 different types of site categories and that randomly interconnect.  Here is a diagram to help you visualize the SEO Matrix.

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This is my first live case study.  In this case study, I will build and grow an autoscale, autopilot, value-add site from scratch.  The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate techniques in real time.  With the exception of coding the initial site (these activities are tabulated under day 0), everything is done in real time, including domain registration.

The subject of this case study will be a a niche jobs search site, built off the Indeed API.  Indeed.com is an established jobs search engine of US-based job opportunities.  They have a publishers program with an API that allows our site to pull the job results.  For job seekers that click through to Indeed, we will also get paid as a publisher.  A nice added bonus, eh?

Our niche job search site will focus on clerical jobs.  Within clerical jobs, we have 3 sections: 1 for accounting jobs, 1 for bookkeeping jobs, and 1 for auditing jobs.

Now, how does the autoscale work?

First, upon launch, the site will have 300,000 pages.  Note, this does not mean all 300K pages will be indexed by Google.  It only means a Googlebot will find 300K unique pages across our site.  Here’s how I came up with that estimate. […]

A couple days ago, I posted an article about autoscaling via an API.  (I suggest you read that article first, as it provides some context for this discussion.)  In this article, we’ll examine a site that adds tremendous value, is on complete autopilot, and gets all its content from other sites.   The unfortunate thing is… it doesn’t autoscale.

The site is HousingMaps.  Have a look.

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The key take-away from a number of very popular business strategy frameworks is to FOCUS.  This includes Porter’s Five Forces, Blue Ocean Strategy, Bowling Pin Strategy, etc.  This same principle holds true for SEO strategy.

Like myself, I assume you are also a one-man team.  You have a lot of priorities, and so your time and energy is limited.  You may want to conquer your niche, but to do, requires focus.  In conducting SEO, take down a handful of keywords at a time.   Once you have them ranked high, or at least with upwards momentum, expand your list of keywords.

To help myself focus, I use 3 tools (pretty much on a daily basis).  They are all free. 🙂  […]

Search engine optimization is a subject that requires continuous study and practice, because Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithms.  However, there are basic principles of SEO that hold true.  I call these  the 6 levers to SEO.

Whenever you read about specific SEO tactics, it helps to anchor that discussion against these 6 levers.  You want your SEO strategy to span across all 6 levers and not focus on any single one. […]

So, imagine this situation.  Your page finally got ranked for that keyword.  But, now it’s stuck.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a simple and easy way to move up the rankings for your keyword.  Do a search for your keyword and scan all the listings before yours.  Maybe even look a few pages back after your listing.  Look for any page that allows commenting, which can take the form of a blog post, news article, forum thread, etc. […]

Okay, so now that you finally have your site up and running, tweaked it to your heart’s content (at least, for now), it’s finally time to play the difficult SEO game.  (If you haven’t even been indexed yet, get the Google indexing guide). In a nutshell, SEO involves getting your site ranked for targeted keywords.

For competitive keywords, this can be tough.  In fact, even for low competition keywords, if you aren’t well versed with SEO, it can be a difficult and frustrating process.

One technique that can be highly effective is the use of “link bait.”  As Matt Cutts defined it, link bait is anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”  To be more specific, link bait is the creation and distribution of a very sensational web page (located on your site) in hopes that it will go viral and generate countless links back to your site. Here is more info on link baiting from Wikipedia.

Let’s examine at one of my favourite examples of link bait in action–the case of the 13 year old and 2 hookers.  Piqued your interest? 😀 […]