If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you already know I’m trying something new over the next few months and documenting it here. If you’ve haven’t been reading along that’s totally fine. To bring you up to speed, I’ll be launching a bunch of new niche websites and trying to profit from them.

There are two kinds of websites I’ll be launching: 1.) E-commerce websites that generate income selling stuff. 2.) Niche websites published on the WordPress platform that generate income from advertising and affiliate marketing.

As part of this series I’m going to be documenting step-by-step how to launch a niche website using WordPress. Part of the reason I’m doing this is to help people with zero WordPress experience to be able to create their own website without the help of a tech person. The second part is so that I have a repeatable and documented process for launching these websites myself. After I get my website creation process down I will be able to launch WordPress websites extremely fast and extremely cheap in the future. I can even use the videos and training to give to outsourced employees so honestly this is going to help me as much as anyone else.

Full disclosure: Much of the inspiration for developing a step-by-step process like this came through my monthly Internet Marketing Advantage membership. In part due to this program, I’ve developed a much better understanding of how to put together a list of goals and accomplish them. Also, many of the product recommendations below are affiliate links and I will receive a commission if you decide to purchase the products. I use all of the products I have included affiliate links for and personally vouch for the quality of these services and products.

What You Need:

To get started with niche WordPress sites you need very little. Depending on the features you want, you can get almost everything for free. However, my process will require you to spend about $7 a month for hosting and a domain name that’s about $10 per year. If you want to follow my process exactly, you’ll also need to purchase a premium WordPress template for $127 that can be used again and again no matter how many websites you decide to put up.

Here are the exact products that I’m using for my WordPress website development process:

Domain Name: I use GoDaddy.com to purchase domain names.
Hosting: I use HostGator.com for hosting my niche websites. Enter the discount code “startseocompany” without quotes when you order and you’ll receive the first month of hosting free.
Custom Theme: I’m using a custom theme called FlexSqeeze Theme. However, you can also download a free WordPress theme to cut costs. I chose to use a premium theme for my niche websites because it has a lot of the features I’m looking for in a website. Also, I can use the same theme on as many of my own websites as I want.
Custom Skin: I will also be using a custom skin that helps save time with design. The one I’m using for future training videos is called Careers Skin and works well with the FlexSqueeze Theme. I paid an additional $9 for this skin.

Estimated Upfront Investment to Use this Process: $146.00

I encourage you to bookmark this page. As I go through the process of setting up a new WordPress website I will be turning the following bullet points into video links or documents that show you exactly what to do:

Module 1: How to Purchase a Domain Name and Set up Web Hosting

- How to buy/ register a domain name with GoDaddy (I didn’t create this video myself, but it does a good job showing you how to register a new domain name in GoDaddy.)
- How to set up hosting with Hostgator
- How to install WordPress with Hostgator
- How to switch your domain servers within GoDaddy
- How to Host Multiple URLs within One HostGator Account

Module 2: How to Upload the FlexSqueeze Template and Install WordPress Plug-ins

- How to install the FlexSqueeze Theme for WordPress
- How to Install a Free Theme for WordPress
- How to Upload and Install WordPress Plugins
- List of the WordPress Plug ins that I have installed
- How to Install and Activate a Contact Form Plugin
- Install and Edit the SEO Ultimate Plugin

Module 3: Tweaking Your WordPress Theme

- How to Optimize URLs / Edit PermaLinks in WordPress
- How to edit the Header of the Flexibility Theme
- How to change content within the Featured Section of Flexibility Theme
- How to add New Pages to WordPress Theme
- How to Change a Website Title
- How to Upload a Custom Skin to the FlexSqueeze Theme

Additional videos will be announced in the future as I perfect my little website launch process.

I hope this series is able to help a lot of people launch some attractive looking websites in the future.

This is part two of my series on building an e-commerce site from the ground up. As I outlined in the first post of the series, I’ve never developed my own e-commerce website before and am writing about the entire process here.

No doubt one of the most important factors dictating success versus failure is going to be the effectiveness of my link building plan. My first step is to outline number of inbound links that will be developed in the first 60 days of launching my e-commerce site. The domain I purchased is brand new and doesn’t have any existing links so I’m starting from 0 with this one.

The market that I’m entering, which I plan share after I’m further along in the process, isn’t too competitive from an off-page standpoint. According to Yahoo! Site Explorer, the website that has a strong hold on the number 1 position for my primary keyword phrase has 839 total links from about 35 unique domains. The company owns about 5 domains in the niche I’m entering and they are interlinked. This same company also happens to be the manufacturer of the products I’m planning to distribute through my e-commerce website so they’ve really got this niche covered right now. Still, I can’t find any evidence of an active link building campaign for the number one website, which leads me to believe I have the opportunity to exceed my competition’s back link profile within a few months of consistent link building.

The Plan:

I’m breaking my initial 60 day link building plan into four, two week blocks. I plan to continue building developing links to my property after the 60-day time frame, but I’ll worry the next stage when the time comes. Here’s what I’m thinking for my link strategy right now.

Week 0 – 2: At the time of writing, I’ve just finished the first two weeks of my link building plan. I’m starting out slow since it’s a brand new domain, but will be ramping up very quickly in subsequent weeks.

1 Ezine Article
1 Guest Post
1 Social Bookmark
2 Network Blog Posts
5 Directory Submissions
1 Twitter Profile

Week 2 – 4:

2 Network Links
20 – 30 Network Article Posts
4 Guest Posts
1 Press Release
2 Web 2.0 Profiles with Additional Network Back links
5 Directory Submissions
2 Blog Comments

Week 4 – 6:

3 – 5 Retweets
20 – 30 Network Article Links
10 – 20 Social Bookmarks
5 Directory Submissions
2 Network Blog Posts
2 Guest Posts
1 Web 2.0 Profile with Network Back links
2 Blog Comments

Week 6 – 8:

10 – 20 Social Bookmarks
1 Guest Post
2 Network Blog Posts
5 Directory Submissions
1 Network Link
2 Blog Comments

The Details:

In total, I plan to build about 135 links to my e-commerce site in two months. This number could be a little bit higher or a little bit lower depending on the number of directory submissions that are approved and social bookmarks that are indexed.

Network Links: When I refer to any type of network link be it a blog post, article post, or regular link I’m leveraging tools provided as part of the IMA membership program that I am a member of. This helps cut down the man hours associated with a link building program big time since I don’t need to look around for links or worry about getting approved for links.

Guest Posts: I will be contributing a handful of guest posts on high-quality and highly relevant blogs to my niche. I have already submitted some guest posts to blogs about saving money, eco/green blogs, and parenting: All highly relevant to my target market.

I’ve outsourced some of these guest posts and am even writing a few myself to speed up the process. (Guess my journalism degree is being put to use after all.) To find guest post prospects I’m looking for opportunities by searching in Google for mommy, eco, and parenting blogs as well as trolling MyBlogGuest.com for additional prospects.

Web 2.0 Properties: I’ll be creating mini link wheels with each of my web 2.0 properties, like Squidoo or free blog websites. The back links used to help prop up these web 2.0 properties will come from the network of links I have access to. If you’re not familiar with link wheels, watch the video below. This is the exact same strategy I’ll be using to build these links.

I’m not expecting link wheels alone to be able to get me the rankings I’m looking for. However, it is a key part of my overall strategy.

Questions? Need even more details, let me know what you want to know in the comments.

So I’ve decided to launch my very own e-commerce website. I’ve got some experience optimizing other people’s e-commerce websites, but I’ve never actually built one up from the ground up and am beginning to understand some of the complexities of releasing an actual online store versus a blog, affiliate or lead-gen style website, which is quite a bit simpler. In short there’s just a lot more to consider when selling real goods (like cost of shipping and product margins) versus digital products (no shipping, know about how much you’ll make with each sale).

In this the first of a series of blog posts on the topic, I’m going to outline the system I’m using to launch my first e-commerce shop. This series will be used as a resource for myself as much as it can be useful to you if you’re considering your own store. This series isn’t meant to provide anyone with the “best way to launch an e-commerce website.” This is simply the process I’m using to set up the site.

With that in mind, here we go.

Why am I starting an e-commerce website?

For one, it will be a good learning experience to get a first hand understanding of the challenges associated with building this type of website from the ground up beyond just the SEO or PPC stuff. Second, unlike a blog where people come to gather information, the reason website visitors come to e-commerce websites is the look at products and buy stuff. I mean, from a webmaster’s perspective what could be better than that?

Selecting a Niche:

I already had the idea for my e-commerce website before getting started so I’m not going to cover the niche selection process here as there are plenty of great articles written on the topic already like this one by Pat Flynn.

I’ll share my URL once everything is up and running, but for now I’ll just say that I got my idea from a friend who used to own a brick-mortar store that sold similar products. Next, I did some basic keyword research and niched down product offering for my online store.

If I could give one piece of advice when considering what to sell online, make sure that other people are selling the product already. If there are a handful of webmasters selling the same thing, it’s safe to say someone is making money off of the concept. Simple, but this is a good rule of thumb.

What You’ll Need:

After you’ve figured out what you’re going to sell on your website. It’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of what you’ll need on the tech side. Since this is the first e-commerce site I’m putting up I’ve opted to use the e-commerce website blueprint that comes with IMA, the internet-marketing training community that I’m a member of.

The reason I’m going this route is because I get the e-commerce software, shopping cart, shipping modules, and videos for creating the website all-in-one as part of the course. However, if you’re pretty savvy on the tech side, you can get assemble find all of these for almost nothing.

I’ve provided a list of things you’ll need for getting started with your own online store below so you know what you’re getting into:

Domain Name: There are literally a thousand places you could get this. I usually use GoDaddy.com and have been happy, although the check-out process is getting really annoying.

Hosting: In the past, I’ve also used GoDaddy.com for website hosting, but I’ve opted out for my e-commerce site. Although I really like the customer service and support of GoDaddy.com, their hosting has gotten really, really slow as of late with other websites. As a result, I’ve switched over to HostGator Business Hosting. So far so good with these guys, but you can find literally a thousand hosting options by conducting a quick Google search.

E-Commerce Template/Software: As stated before, I’m using the custom software provided with my IMA membership. But there are plenty of free options for getting started. I’ve got a friend that swears by Joomla e-commerce templates. Admittedly, I’ve seen the inside of the Joomla CMS and it looks pretty easy to set up and has a strong community of support if you have questions so that might be a good option.

Shopping Cart: A shopping cart helps handle customer orders on an e-commerce website. Honestly, I don’t really any experience setting these up with the exception of the one I used for my own website.

Shipping Module: Shipping modules help you calculate charges for the shipping and handling of physical goods. I set flat rate shipping for all of my products to make things easier for myself initially, but will be setting up shipping that connects directly with the USPS website to give my customers better rates once traffic starts coming in. Here’s a resource I found to about shipping modules if you decide to go it on your own.
,
Whew! That’s it for this post. In coming weeks, I’ll cover content development and link building for my e-commerce site.

Back in July of 2011, I conducted an SEO test using the link building program Scrapebox with help from RankUply.com. You can read part one of this series here to get the details on my process.

Today, I bring you the results of this Scrapebox test. First we’ll take a look at the ranking report now versus back in July, 16th 2011 before the link building. Keep in mind that I’ve made zero on-page changes and haven’t added any additional content during this test that could affect traffic levels or rankings.

Current Google Rankings:

air traffic controller salary: 18 -8 positions
atc training: 7 +1 positions
air traffic controller training: – (no change)
becoming an air traffic controller: 31 (No previous rankings for this phrase.)
air traffic controller games: 31 (No previous rankings for this phrase.)
atc test: 31 (No previous rankings for this phrase.)
atc prep: 7 +1 positions
faa interview process: 6 No change in rankings.
atc trainer: 3 No change in rankings.
air traffic control test: 35 (No previous rankings for this phrase.)

Overall Keyword Ranking Results:

Improved: 6
Unchanged: 3
Declined: 1

From a keyword standpoint this test has shown a strong correlation with improved rankings.

Search Traffic:

Okay, a slight improvement in keyword rankings were experienced. But the real question is whether or not this experiment resulted in traffic gains from Google. Below are the number of referrals from Google over the last three months:

June: 597 visitors
July: 581 visitors (Scrapebox link building was conducted in the middle of July.)
August 1 – August 27th: 580 visitors (4 days remaining in the month of August.)

From a Google referral perspective, my traffic appears to be roughly the same. At the end of August there may be a slight increase in the number of visitors from Google, but no extreme change.

The Bottom Line:

You can’t deny that my sample set of keyword rankings have improved. However, from a Google traffic perspective not much has changed at all. At the very least, I can say that Google didn’t “penalize” my website in any way.

So there you have it. The results of a no BS SEO test. Got questions about any of the details of this experiment? Ask away in the comments section.

Guest posting is without question one of my favorite link building techniques in 2011. From personal experience, I’ve gotten a lot more direct benefit out of this form of link acquisition than any other source: including directories, article marketing, comment spamming, or just plain old begging other webmasters.

Why Do I Like Guest Blogging So Much?

Outside of soliciting personal friends or acquaintances for links, guest posting gives you the most control over inbound links to a website. Think about it. In most cases, you’ve got total control over the following:

1.) Anchor Text to Your Website
2.) The Domain the Link is Coming From
3.) The Page the Link is Pointing To
4.) The relevance of the content your link exists.
5.) The audience you’re in front of

To boot, this is considered a white-hat link building tactic that’s received praise from both Google and the SEO thought leadership as a legitimate way to develop inbound links to your website. If you’ve got a link type with any more upside than this, please let me know!

The Downside

And there is a downside. The big one is time. On the low end, I spend at least 2 – 3 hours per post I submit to another blog. In my opinion it’s time well spent, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy budgeting the time get it done.

Speeding up the Process

There are only a couple ways I know to speed up the guest-posting process. 1.) Offload the work to somebody else. 2.) Join a network that lets you find high-quality blogs/websites that accept guest posts.

Farm Out Guest Posts: Just because you want to build inbound links through guest posts doesn’t mean you need to do all the work yourself. You can hire out guest posts just like you would any other activity.

Just keep in mind, in most cases you’ll need to hire someone that’s a native speaker… meaning you’ll pay a bit more for the service. This is not old-school article marketing that can be farmed out at $2 for 500 words via Craigslist Manilla. Quality blogs require quality content and most bloggers won’t publish anything just so you can get the benefit of a back link.

Join a Network: One of the networks that have helped me locate numerous guest posting opportunities for StartSEOCompany.com is MyBlogGuest. This service matches people that need content with people that want to publish content.

Although this network is made up of people mostly in the internet marketing/SEO crowd, you’ll also find guest posting opportunities in niches like health or fitness if you’re willing to look around. This is a free service worth checking out.

My Little Trick

Here’s a little trick I came up with all by myself. While guest posting is great for relevance and anchor text, most webmasters only allow you to add a link within the resource box or “about the author” section of a document. As a result, it’s possible Google and other search-engines could devalue these links in the future if there’s too much abuse of the technique in the future.

Therefore, I’ve developed a little work around: Guest posting with a pen name. Let me explain.

Write a guest post. Create a dummy email address with the pen name of your choice. Next, insert the link to your website with desired anchor text into the body of your text.

Not all bloggers will allow links within the body content of guest posts, but most will. Review previous guest posts to see if this is the case. Now get out there and start building up your back link profile!

There’s not a whole lot to say about directories that hasn’t been said, which is the main reason I haven’t touched the topic once in the one year plus of blogging that I’ve done. I mean really, what’s left to write about this archaic SEO subject? You submit to them, wait a few weeks (or months), and some of the submissions will grow to be inbound links to your website. In general, I find the process to be one of the most mind numbing and soul crushing experiences imaginable.

Of course, there is software out there that can help eliminate some of the pain associated with the submission process. One popular solution is a nifty tool like Roboform among others that are available. But even with these aids directory submissions take forever. Which in my opinion, leaves you only a couple logical options for directory link building at any scale:

1.) Farm out directory link building to one of the literally thousands of directory link building companies out there.

2.) Hire an SEO guy in a foreign country to manually submit to top-tier and on-topic niche directories.

Farming Out Directory Links for 14 Cents

If you want to begin to dabble in outsourcing a few of your SEO tasks, a great place to start is with the lowly directory link since it’s so time consuming to do yourself and relatively inexpensive to farm out. The most program I’ve that provides you with the most control over the submission process and is affordable is a program called Directory Maximizer.

Directory Maximizer will submit your links to free directories of your choice for 14 cents per submission. If you want them to respond to the approval emails it’s going to cost 19 cents. I recommend schlepping out the extra four cents to avoid having to click confirmation emails from these directories.

The following are what I view to be the benefits of outsourcing using the Directory Maximizer service:

Automate Email: They create a new email address using a pen name of your choice to submit to directories. Directory Maximizer also takes care of the confirmation emails that come back from directories after submission.

Submit over Time: Instead of blasting directory submissions all at once. You can pre-schedule the number of submissions that can be made over time. This allows you to make your directory link building appear more natural.

Detailed Reports: Best of all, Directory Maximizer tracks when and where they’ve submitted your website. This information can be downloaded anytime and leads to much better accountability. You can download a example of one of these reports here.

In conclusion, this is the first and hopefully last time I ever write about directory links. Directory submissions are boring, mind-numbing, and generally not worth the time and frustration doing it yourself. Get someone else to do it.

So you want to start blogging for clients? It can work. But if you’re expecting to get even a handful of clients in the first 6-months, I’d say you’re setting the bar of expectation pretty high. It could happen. But for most of you, it won’t.

But don’t be discouraged. Blogging for clients does work, but it will take time and an enormous amount of effort to build up the the kind of traffic required to generate enough traffic and qualified leads through your website, particularly in the pursuit of SEO, PPC, or web design clients.

So how long will the road become? It’s different for everyone of course. But my bet is that it will become a pretty damn long, dark, and lonely path. Especially while you’re just getting started and no one is paying any attention to your little blog.

You see, unlike other markets where publishers might know next to nothing about SEO, you’ll be publishing content alongside other SEOs and internet marketers. Many of whom have a few years head start on you. This makes generating traffic to your blog more difficult since you’ll be fighting for tid bits of long-tail traffic for quite some time. Fighting for the scraps is where we all must start I suppose.

Taking the Plunge

So you’ve decided fight the up-hill battle, take on the world, and dive into blogging for clients. If I haven’t scared you off yet, I commend you. You’re either utterly determined to make your business work or clinically insane. (Both can be advantages when starting your own client-based businesses.) And here’s a bit of advice if you do decide to go ahead with it.

In my opinion, one of the most important points to remember when blogging for clients is that it doesn’t necessarily pay to be the smartest guy in your given industry even if you are. Think about it. Who’s going to read advanced SEO content? Probably guys that already know a thing or two about search-engine optimization and aren’t likely to ever need your services. It might feel nice to get a comment or a retweet from an industry vet, but it probably won’t improve your bottom line. Nope. More often than not you’ll be much better off creating content that’s geared toward the novice.

But Brett (you might be thinking), don’t you have an SEO blog and sell services/products on it? I sure do partner. The key difference is that I try to offer services that align with the kind of products and services my audience might need. For example, I’m not selling SEO services. I’m providing white-label reseller SEO services to other SEOs that might need a helping hand outsourcing some of their work instead. Big difference.

Not Your Flavor of Soft Drink?

In short, if slogging it out in the blogosphere isn’t your cup of tea don’t worry. Blogging is just one way you can attract new clients to your business, certainly not the only way, and definitely not the fastest way to get a new client. But if you’re utterly determined to make this thing work, blogging can be a nice long-term play to attract more interest in your business.

Meet The Author of Search Engine Optimization Secrets: Danny Dover

Much to my initial chagrin, Search Engine Optimization Secrets isn’t available on the Kindle. However, after receiving the book via snail mail, I was happy to have the content delivered in a more traditional textbook format as some of the sample SEO templates would have been hard to decipher on my fave reading device.

The reason I decided to buy Search Engine Optimization Secrets for about $35 is because of the author Danny Dover, formerly of SEOMoz fame and more recently the Senior SEO Manager at AT&T fame. Essentially, I wanted to see how the big boys conduct website audits and how Dover structures SEO reports for the biggest companies. Anything else I learned would just be gravy on the mashed potatoes so to speak.

As Dover points out early in his book, this manual is not for beginning SEOs. If you don’t know know what a robots.txt file is you should probably start somewhere else. But if read this blog, you won’t have anything to worry about.

Holistically, the book begins by covering the basics of SEO, which are always good to review. Stuff like Robots.txt files, sitemaps, and site architecture is addressed here. Next Dover moves on to explain how to pick the best SEO tools, fix search engine penalties, and use alternative search engines like YouTube to drive traffic to a website. I could go on, but you’re better off reading the book’s details at Amazon. I’m going to give you what I think makes Search Engine Optimization Secrets unique to other SEO books on the market.

What’s Different?

One thing that makes Danny Dover’s book so different from other guides is his understanding of the business side of search-engine optimization. Dover is acutely aware that it’s not always the best SEO that gets the most clients. More often than not, it’s the most well connected and business savvy consultant that makes the most money and Dover isn’t afraid to say so.

The second portion of the book I found tremendously valuable was the Answering Hard Questions from Clients portion of Chapter 7. Here Dover explains how he responds to a few of the open-ended client questions that can be hard to explain. Things like:

Why Should I Care About SEO?
Why Should I Go With You When Company X Charges Less?
If You’re So Good at SEO, Why Don’t You Rank #1 For “SEO”? (I love this one.)
How Do I Improve My PageRank?

Any of these sound familiar?

Finally, Dover provides an example of his comprehensive SEO site audit. For experienced SEOs, there’s probably not a whole lot of new information you’ll find here. But I think it’s always interesting to see what metrics top level SEOs use when conducting a full website analysis because I’m a geek.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a “magic bullet” to help you rank #1 in Google for everything in two weeks, you won’t find it here. However, if you’re SEO that works with clients regularly and are looking for a no BS road map to help step up your game, I give this book my full recommendation.

This is the results post or part two of my SEnuke review. In part one, I outlined the metrics I was measuring for this test so I recommend reading that first if you haven’t already to get up to date.

Okay, so I’m actually pretty happy and surprised with the results I got out of this SEnuke test. Of the 10 keywords I was tracking, most of them showed strong improvement. No, I didn’t go from zero to position one for some crazy term like “make money.” But at a high-level, the test worked and showed visible improvement across my tested keyword set.

Below are the keywords I tested for the website RecreationAviation.com along with each one of the keywords’ movement over the past month in Google. I checked my current rankings with Rank Checker from SEOBook.com:

recreation aviation: Current Rank: 1 – Movement: +4
remote control airplanes: Current Rank: 52 – Movement: +81
remote control airplane: Current Rank: 95 – Movement: Previously not ranked.
rc airplanes: Current Rank: 150 – Movement: Previously not ranked.
rc airplane plans: Current Rank: 41 – Movement: +11
rc airplane schematics: Current Rank: 1 – Movement: None
rc model airplanes: Current Rank: – - Movement: None
rc blimps: Current Rank: 45 – Movement: +97
rc battery solutions: Current Rank: 1 – Movement: None

It’s safe to say that SEnuke was the driver behind these improved rankings. No other link building was conducted for this website. No content was added either. Unlike other campaigns/websites that I’m actively working on, there aren’t any moving parts to this website, which makes it easy to isolate the reason behind the ranking shift.

Organic Traffic

We know that specific keywords improved, however, let’s take a look at the organic numbers from all major search engines to see if actual traffic improved as well:

November: 296 visitors
December: 242 visitors
January: 269 visitors
February: 267 visitors <--- SEnuke test conducted this month.
March: 312 visitors

Whether or not SEnuke had a direct affect on improved search traffic in inconclusive. Although, the numbers do suggest there was a small improvement in organic traffic as a result of this test.

Details:

For this test I was optimizing for the keyword phrase “remote control airplanes” in much of the anchor text to this website. If you’re interested, feel free to look over this spreadsheet to see where all of SENuke’s inbound links were developed from.

I hope this review helps you decide whether or not SEnuke is right for you. The results certainly beg for additional testing on other websites.

Got additional questions about this review? Let me know in the comments.

In my ongoing quest to provide legit SEO software reviews and case studies to help you find out what works and what doesn’t, this week I’m reviewing of the popular SEO software SEnuke.

In case you’ve never heard of the product, SEnuke is a pay-per month software service that helps develop inbound links to websites. SENuke builds links from web 2.0 profiles, submits and spins content to article directories and blogs, adds social bookmarks to 32 websites, and creates/submits to RSS feeds. Finally, it pings search engine’s to let them know about all this new content.

You can get more details at the official SEnuke long-sales page.

Recent Algo Updates

I think this is the perfect time to test out this software. Google recently announced what’s being called their “Farmer” algorithm update which is affecting the rankings and could possibly diminish the value of backlinks from article directories and other web 2.0 properties essential to the success of SEnuke.

I’ve also read rumors that Google might be coming down hard on profile links in 2011 as well. If so, the effectiveness of link building software like SEnuke could be in real jeopardy.

But there’s only one way to really find out whether or not this software works and that’s to test it. Here we go!

The SEnuke Case Study

For this case study, I’ll be experimenting on yet another one of my graveyard websites: RecreationAviation.com. The intent of this website was to generate Adsense money plain and simple. I’m happy to say that it still makes enough money each year to cover the cost of hosting and domain registration at GoDaddy so I’ve kept it around.

Like my previous Xrumer test, I’ll be looking at two metrics to decide whether or not this case study is deemed a success: 1.) Improved rankings for a select set of keywords. 2.) A boost in organic traffic.

Current Keywords and Rank Being Tracked in Google

recreation aviation: 5
remote control airplanes: 133
remote control airplane: -
rc airplanes: -
rc airplane plans: 52
rc airplane schematics: 1
rc model airplanes: -
rc blimps: 142
remote control blimps: -
rc battery solutions: 1

Here’s the raw organic traffic for RecreationAviation.com over a three month period. This is from all search-engines, not just Google.

November 2010: 296 visits
December 2010: 242 visits
January 2011: 269 visits

A Few More Details

Here’s a few more details about this test that might be helpful. I’ll be using the following anchor text variations for link building: remote control airplanes, RC airplanes, and RC helicopters.

All links that are developed will point to the homepage for this case study. In total, I expect to build over 250 direct links to this domain.

Just like my previous tests, I’ll provide an update with the initial findings in about two weeks. At this time I’ll be sharing a spreadsheet that pin points each of the links that were built for this for website so you know exactly how this software operates.

Let me know if you’ve got any additional questions and I’ll do my best to answer them in the comments. Until then, do you have any experience using SEnuke? If so, please share them in the comments below as well.