KhalidsLife.com

In my last post I mentioned I had invested “a few dollars” in new domains, actually its around $140. Each domain costs $10 and I know I can get them cheaper elsewhere but the service at UpBro.com is really good (touch wood!). I intend to build another network and become a website leader in a particular niche, offering content for all the smaller sites linking to one large user driven main site.

I intend to reveal more in due course but I wanted to put a question out to all readers. For a small content site (MFA), how many pages is ideal to rank well in the SERPs? I tend to find 3 pages with 500 words on each but I wanted to know what your takes was. Let me know!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

In a previous post about Off Site SEO, I mentioned the importance of backlink building. In today’s web world where competition saturates some markets, webmasters are finding it increasing difficult to find quality links at an affordable price.

Further to that, trying to sell links that don’t have a high pagerank is even harder…until now.

In steps TNX, a link network/marketplace that allows you to buy a high amount of links within specific niches without breaking the bank. And, you can sell links easily too!

For the publisher, TNX will allow you to earn money on text links, even on pagerank zero pages! For the advertiser, TNX gives you access to thousands of link spaces across hundreds of sites without you remortgaging your house!

As I write this, there is 23035474 links in the system with 32665656 pages indexed by the site. In short, this is not a trivial system that can be laughed at, this is a resource that provides you with easy access to quality link building.

The entire process is easy for both publisher and advertiser:

For the publisher…
1. Install the TNX code on your site.
2. Add your site to TNX system. We will approve it in 1-2 days.
3. Raise the number of links displayed on pages of your website (max. 4 links).
4. Create your own ad campaigns or sell TNX-points to TNX-system or other TNX users.

For the advertiser…
1. Create an Ad campaign following all 3 steps that are provided you by TNX. Buy TNX-points if you don’t have them yet.
2. Relax and watch for results.
3. Edit your campaigns or create new ones using your experience.

So how much does it cost and how much can you get paid?

Well, I’ve personally never used the site as I’ve been too busy recently, BUT, the results seem good. According to Jim Karter, a webmaster, he did quite well with the system!

Well, first of all I put it on a website which did not had much unique content but had a page rank of 4 and around 3000 pages indexed. I hope everybody know how easy it is to create such non-unique sites, but those sites do not get search engine traffic. But I did not need search engine traffic. I added the code from TNX in my template so the links were sold for every page. In one month, I made around 140,000 TNX-points.

So, overall what I got in return of a useless (because of it non-uniqueness) PR4 sites is:

1. Cash of $66/month
2. Around 3000 to 4000 PR0 and PR1 backlinks for my new sites. (I did not need higher PR link for my new sites right now)

TNX use a points system to pay webmasters, so instead of money you get points which you can cash in or use to buy links for your sites. Like a virtual currency, the moneytary value of your points can fluctuate, which can have a positive or negative affect on your earnings.

If you are worried about the negative impact of selling links, i.e. losing your rank, TNX has that covered too! Unlike other text link networks, TNX use a code that seemingly Googlebot doesn’t pickup.

Overall I think TNX is fresh, effective way of link building/selling and it is something I’ll definately be trying it soon! If you’ve used TNX, let me (and other readers!) know so we can get some honest reviews.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

The Rise and Rise of Kortaz.com

When I first began building sites for profit and dabbling in ppc revenue methods like Google Adsense, trickles of income began coming my way. My problem is that I become wrestless, I don’t like to wait. That trickle could become a stream, then a river and so on and so forth.

I wasn’t prepared to wait, and my first network of sites were sold for $50 each.

A lot of learning has occured since then and I now follow strict personal rules when considering selling a site. I plan for the future, I think about the short and long term gains and I don’t sell until I am sure I either need the cash or want to exit the market.

Proxy traffic is considered “trash”. Proxy users are generally people who want to bypass school filters, view adult content or get away with playing their favourite arcade game at work. The only company willing that offers good revenue and is willing to allow placement of their ads on proxy sites is Google Adsense, a network which I was banned from about a year ago.

Aside from Google, there’s Adversal and Adbrite, but both offer low payouts. Adversal did provide a few extra dollars per month for their non-intrusive pop-under ads so it is a network I’d recommend.

Getting a little off track, I bought Kortaz.com for $15 simply because I liked the name. Kortaz was originally a big site divided into smaller sections, including an arcade, funny videos feed, proxy and image host. The idea originally came about when I saw arcades making, say $10 per day, a video site $20, a proxy $5 and so on. I thought about combining them to create one large site that would generate revenue through each section.

Unfortunately it was difficult to market without a big budget, I hadn’t really thought it through properly, but being a businessman involves learning, so I’m glad I made the mistakes.

Knowing I could profit from proxy traffic, as I did by building and selling SneakOnline.com for $750, I turned my sites back to the trash nobody wanted (apart from us profiting proxy webmasters). I was bored with a proxy site as you couldn’t do much in the way of earning money, so I thought about a proxy listing site.

I didn’t want one of these topsites nobody visited, so I managed to find a free script that offered something more unique - a links lister with sections and a hit counter for each link. The only change I made was to randomize link orders. Kortaz, the web proxy list was born.

Originally I offered free placements to all and a few lucky people were “Featured” (premium placement) for free. A link back to Kortaz with the anchor text “web proxy” was always required on the homepage if you requested a free link.

As the number of submissions and backlinks grew, so did traffic. The hit counter beside each link, along with a few testimonials, was proof to webmasters Kortaz provided great traffic, all for $6-$10 per month (I changed the price to attract people during difficult times).

I managed to profit here from two things. The first was that links rotated randomly so each featured and non-featured link got time at the top of the pile in their own sections. Secondly, there was some negative press about the biggest proxy listing site, proxy.org, using bots to imitate traffic and click on Adsense units of sites listed on the site.

However, as the site grew, so did the problems. The script was designed for heavy use and would max out after 2,000 outbound hits, I couldn’t integrate automatic Paypal payments and so on. I managed to hire a great coder for $50 who developed the site as you see it today using a free web template (why waste money if you don’t need too!).

The new design was rolled out and I put some contextual advertising and Adversal popunders on it, afterall it was “trash traffic”! I managed to get the stage where the site was earning around $150-$170 per month. It was doing well and I had a small money-maker on my hands.

Traffic was excellent, with the site ranking first in the SERPs for “Web Proxy” and on the first page for a number of other terms. This was simply due to the high number of relevant backlinks accumulated over time (slow but steady link building).

My reason for selling - I needed cash, I have student debt and bills to pay. I was sad to see it go.
I decided to list the site on Sitepoint.com with a price tag of $2k. I didn’t think it would reach this because nobody likes proxy sites but I was surprised it was sold within 48 hours. I think I could have gotten more but you learn. I think the strongest selling points were the SERPs positioning and the private link sales, i.e. no reliance on an ad network.

Building, establishing and maintaining Kortaz.com was one of the best experiences I’ve had online. I turned a domain name into a profitable website, I learned about SEO and link building and I tasted success.

One man’s dirt is another man’s foundations and Kortaz.com was exactly that. The owner didn’t want the domain and a lot of webmasters don’t like proxy traffic. I took two negatives and turned them into a positive - all in under one year.

I hope you learned a little from this story, good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Definition of Niche: a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it; “he found his niche in the academic world”

In today’s World Wide Web, where each keyword becomes a market and every webmaster is a vendor, simply having one stall doesn’t cut it anymore unless you have a truly unique product to offer. According to Verisign - the digital infrastructure authority that manages Internet domain names such as .com - there were 153 million domain names registered in 2007, up 27% from the previous year.

For many of us budding entrepreneurs, creating the next FaceBook or YouTube idea is simply something we probably won’t be able to achieve, or fund for that matter. It’s not that we’re unable to think of great ideas and market them, it’s that these sites are a one-of-a-kind and generally very successful or huge failures.

You are rolling a dice hoping for that success, but for many, the odds of 1 in 6 are too slim. Entrepreneurs are risk takers, but we like to invest wisely. Dominating a niche in an attempt to become the king of one sector seems like a viable choice… and it’s working for me.

The benefits of dominating a niche include the following:

1. You’re concentrating on one sector so your knowledge of it is enhanced, thus your website’s content will be too.
2. Each site is targetting a different keyword in the same niche so you are spreading yourself well over one area.
3. You will automatically have relevant backlinks available to each other as each of your sites will be in the same niche.
4. Linking to each other helps boost your overall SERPs, as they help pull each other up the ranks.
5. Adding a new site and targetting another keyword will be easier as you already have an established network setup to help it get indexed and ranked quickly.
6. By establishing yourself and building strong foundations in one area, you are making it harder for others to compete.

I’m sure there are additional benefits to dominating a niche, but these are probably the most important. However, there can be downfalls too:

1. If the niche you are targetting already has this operation in place it’ll make it much harder to compete.
2. If the niche does’nt have many paying advertisers, having “all your eggs in one basket” will probably not convert to the profit you were hoping for.
3. The content is limited so spreading it over a huge network of sites may not be easy. For example, news about “tattoos” is rare so spreading this over 10 tattoo sites won’t be a walk in the park.

Overall I think dominating a niche, providing you have researched it well and have a viable business model, can be a success. At present I am doing this and have 3 sites in the same sector, adding a 4th by the end of today. It’s a proftable operation that is earning me money, and my aim is to have 5 sites targetting 5 different keywords and ranking in the top 5 of the SERPs (tongue twister I know)!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

The “No Follow” attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments due to comment spam. As time passed, websites began using this in other areas, such as text links, to ensure their pagerank (PR) was not being leaked to other sites and to stop search engines indexing external pages.

Whilst he “No Follow” attribute may stop PR leakage, links are still counted towards the overall backlink count, which is what you should be targetting. In my post Off Site SEO, I stated “I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines.”

Regardless of whether these links are “No Follow” or not, they’ll still be counted. Sure it would be beneficial if they were “Do Follow”, but it is not the deciding factor.

Here are some important notes regarding the “No Follow” issue…

1. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves. In short, it doesn’t look good.

2. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Both Yahoo and Google have been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. Proof from Search Engine Journal and Jon Warass.

Before reading this, ensure you’ve followed all my tips for On Site SEO. The next stage is to get your site indexed fast! These are just some simple techniques, but as Tesco’s say, “Every little helps”.

Sitemap – Upload your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site.

QUIT – Use this tool provided by BlueHatSEO.com to get your site indexed within 24 hours.

Add Url – Manually add your site to Google’s search engine

Backlink Building

I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines. By relevant I mean on sites that relate to your niche, so if you have a health related site you want links on other health sites. Easier said than done!

Remember, don’t rush this stage and have all your links with the same anchor text of Google will smell a rat. Take your time and mix it up, even doing deep linking, i.e. linking to a sub page and not the home page.

The following are not all the techniques but just some simple ones I use…

Directory Submissions – An old fashioned, labourious task, submitting your site to directories can take a long time. Google it and you’ll find someone to do this for you in no time!

Social Bookmarks – As previously stated, having your site bookmarked is like buying permanent backlinks, except they are free! If you get your site on the front page of a popular social bookmarking site, you’ll automatically get at least 100 backlinks from other sites who have found your content and like it!

Link Exchanges – Getting your site linked to by an older site in the same niche and giving a link back will benefit you more than them, so try it. E-mail the webmasters, don’t say your site is new just say you both have quality content and your visitors will benefit from each other’s information.

Wikipedia – This is heavily monitored and they do use “No Follow” but the links are great for getting your site indexed and they are counted as strong backlinks. They key to getting linked is by writing quality content and putting it in the “External Links” section. For example, if you write an article title “Why protein is important in your diet”, add it to the “External Links” as “An interesting article on why protein is essential in your diet”.

Forum Signatures – I’ve got over 2,000 posts at one Webmaster Forum, each containing my site’s links with their targeted keyword as the anchor text. That’s a possible 2,000 backlinks, just for being a forum member.

I split my Search Engine Optimisation program into three main areas; On Site SEO, Off Site SEO and Backlink  Building.

This is the first of three posts about SEO and my aim is to help you understand the basics that often go unnoticed. Why take my advice? Well it’s free and to prove it works here are two examples of my recent achievements…

Kortaz.com ranked 1st for “Web Proxy” 

TattooLettering.net ranked 2nd for “Tattoo Lettering” in one month 

I’m not an expert and I don’t have all the answers, but these tips do help me so they will help you. So, what’s my advice? Well let’s begin with the meta tags…

<Title> Tag – Keep this your targeted keyword. If you are wanting to rank well for “Diet Plans” then your title should be exactly that, nothing more. Don’t confuse search engines with “Free and Simple Diet Plans and Weight Loss Assistance” if that’s not what you’re targeting. For my blog, my title is “Internet Entrepreneur Khalid Al-Khames”, so people know who the blog belongs to.

<Keywords> - Keep this to a maximum of 10 keywords, let’s not try to target anymore than that. I’ve never ranked a site 1st for more than 3 keywords, so 10 is out of reach, but keep a few extra in for choice. Use a keyword search tool to find other popular keyword terms

<Description> - Short and sweet, keyword inclusive, for example “Diet Plans and Diet Information by DietPlansUK.com”
Secondly, the content…

Articles – Your site should have at least 4 pages with 500 word articles that are keyword inclusive, for example “Simple Diet Plans”, “Vegetarian Diet Plans”, “Bad Diet Plans” etc etc (notice how they all have your keyword “Diet Plans” in them). Article headers should use <h1> tags too!

Links – Your internal links should be keyword inclusive and use the description tag too. For example, “Simple Diet Plans” should be “Simple-Diet-Plans.htm” and not “sdp1.htm”. If you are using a CMS like WordPress, use SEO friendly links by editing the hyperlinking in your control panel.

Sitemap – Get yourself a free sitemap, just google it.

Robots – Ensure your site has a Robots.txt file too

Images – Ensure your images have SEO filenames and use the alt description tag too. For example “Diet-Planner.jpg” description “Diet Planner”.

Social Bookmarks – Sharing our findings is all the rage these days, with sites like Digg, Netscape, Stumble Upon and Technorati having millions of users. Although most of these sites use the “No Follow” tag, it is still worthwhile getting backlinks from these sites. Add a Social Bookmark button(s) to your site because if you get, even 1, submission by a user each day, that’s 31 new links every month.

I hope this helps, good luck!

Khalid.