For the last 6 months we have been working on the following two websites.
Ezestore was a small website with very few pages and links, there weren’t any penalties or anything dramatic to deal with except for some annoying, minor technical issues; so it was a basic website but it was clean.
Here is a snapshot from Semrush – you have to pay to see certain details but this free version offers enough data to let you see what we actually did for ezestore; you can sort the columns to see different data.
http://www.semrush.com/au/info/ezestore.com.au+(by+organic)
There are no tricks involved. This is data open to any member of the public to see. We have nothing to do with it – it is genuine data.
The bottom line here is that quotes equal money!
Screenshot 1 This shows the amount of quotes received between 15 October 2012 and 15 November 2012. These were the previous 31 days before we got the first order. As you can see there are 27 quotes showing.
Screenshot 2 & 3 Here it shows the number of quotes received from 13 April 2013 to 13 May 2013, the last 31 days before writing this post. As you can see the amount of quotes has risen to 55.
What this information basically means is that sales have doubled now! Imagine that, we can double your sales!
Next;
http://www.semrush.com/au/info/supercheapstorage.com.au+(by+organic)
This particular website got hit by just about every panda update, to then be thrown of the cliff by penguin on 24 April 2011. It was in a terrible state when handed over to us to deal with. We enjoy a challenge and were delighted to get the opportunity to proof ourselves. We want to explain what it is we do exactly and how we can help your website, and sales, improve. We have included the screenshots as evidence and so the results can be seen very clearly. The graphs shows that we can also work for a site that has crashed and burned and seems beyond repair, in these cases we actually do a lot more adding and replacing rather than repairing.
There were many technical issues to resolve before we could even get started. For the technical elements we ask Andre (Reflex Networks) to help out, and he always does a fantastic job at very affordable rates.
It took around 6 weeks to complete our work which included the most important on-site seo requirements and the creation of 75 new pages. Mid-way through March all the on-site work was done. So although we had already started with the first few link building batches in late December, it took until mid March before we could finally spend the budget on link building exclusively, and we kept pushing on with the link building during April too - and a lot of the results are still coming in.
Here is a snapshot from Google’s webmaster tools where you can see the single most important keyword for the website above, Supercheap Storage, is STORAGE. They started at 0 impressions caused by penguin penalties – and now as you can see they are back on top!
As briefly as I can I’ll explain how we achieved this. Supercheap doesn’t just involve one storage location; it’s a collaboration of six storage facilities with five different owners. First we created six authors, one for the site as a whole, and five for the owners. Then we added 75 new pages under the author names according to the areas they cover, there were around 10 to 15 pages for each author and 30 for Sydney, as this is where 4 of 6 the location are.
Next we created 6 sets of public profiles, including Google Plus, social accounts and blog post sites that were linked to their own set of new pages. We added 5 blog posts for each, and last, but not least, lots and lots and lots of blog commenting. This is particularly important because there are high quality, related, genuine blogs out there and they are very strict about which comments they approve, which makes it hard to get the comments to be turned into actual links – for the competition of course, not for us, as this is exactly what we have been doing for years!
Our work has involved a combination of cleaning up on-page issues, adding new pages and setting up profiles, but above all getting lots and lots of genuine, high quality, natural links from related blogs. These are real blogs, managed by real people with real readers, with real value and so on; that’s why it works; genuine quality blogs exist and we know how to get links from them.
Here is an example of one Supercheap Storage facilities; the Gold Coast location;
Starting from 21 December when we got the first order up until 14 May – that’s today
The top keyword for that location is ‘storage Gold Coast’ and it went from #25 straight to #1!
It just can’t get any better! Sorry to brag, but to bring a site that got hit by penguin back to the top in pretty much a straight line is just very impressive. I don’t write as many seo blog posts as I should, but I do read other seo blogs; 99% of seo ‘professionals’ these days still haven’t figured out what they need to be doing differently since penguin; I worked my magic for these sites and here is a snapshot of the proof below.
We did this for 12 terms, (as you can see on the graph) and that is just for this 1 location. They have 6 locations, of which 4 are in Sydney making ‘Sydney’ itself an extra set of keywords.
I could provide you with heaps more screenshots, but I don’t need to – just follow the semrush link for yourself. It is public and anyone can look, we have nothing to hide and we are proud of the work we did. See the results here;
These are the different pieces of the puzzle required for SEO, post-penguin.
Luminous SEO specialize in affordable, quality SEO. We use the same tactics as most other seo-companies but we are different because we aim for a higher level of quality, and we do it cheaper than them because we are based in a low cost country. This isn’t simply a sales pitch but my favourite seo tactic; a few months consistent affordable quality SEO, as well original content as genuine links at affordable rates. It beats fancy-expensive and cheap-crap in any market at any time again, again and again!
ASK FOR A SEO QUOTE!
Many blogs do manually review every comment, especially the very best blogs do so. Some blogs might instant approve but later on moderate the comment and reject if deemed not up to standard. When you do blog commenting, take the time to read the article, write a comment that contributes value to the either the article or the discussion:
How to construct a blog comment
How not to do
Using name or keyword
A majority of all open blogs will ask for basic submission details such as name, email and web-address before you can post your blog commenting. To increase your approval rate use a name, not a keyword/keyword-phrase. You can take your chances in blogs where you’ve seen that other people used keywords instead of names but even then you cannot be sure that it is iv-fact ok, the blog moderator might have switched comment policy just the week before and will now not approve the use keywords in the name field. I you need to use a keyword/keyword-phrase then I would suggest that you use a name for at least the first comment you do in a blog, if that first comment is a approved then you could go for a keywords in the next one, my theory.
The e-mail
Use a direct email, some blogs/forums will not accept open email addresses. So use a direct email such as name@your domain, this can indeed make a difference.
Problems with approvals – common explanations why
1. Are you blog commenting on old pages?
Sometimes you might experienced that some of your comments gotten approved but some just have not, the reason will in some blogs and not that rare be that you have posted on an old page which is no longer attended o maintained. When you are using newer pages these might not have gotten any Page Rank (PR) status yet but they might later, if you have a look at the older pages in the blog you can estimate an average of what a page would gain in PR, check Google index pages by using the Google search field site: http://……..
This is the manual way of checking for a website’s pages but there are also programs that you can use, one of the advantages of using a program would be that you can extract a bigger list of pages and get a better overview of the average PR, another benefit would be that you had a larger sample of pages that you could analyze in order to determine which pages that could have potential of receiving higher PR.
2. Different sections in the same blog – different commenting rules
In some of the bigger blogs on the web, you will find that they hold several sections with under categories. These sections do many times have a different moderator operating independently with different blog commenting systems and guidelines. This can lead down to that some sections will approve comments, while some will not. Some sections will give dofollow links while other sections will have the nofollow attribute in place etc. Just comment in these sections that proven worked before.
3. Have the Blog that have turned off the blog commenting option
Some blogs will have the commenting option displayed but how hard you might try, you will just not get your comments approved, the simple explanation will many times be that the blog has just turned off the approval function, It might not even been in place from the first time. Some blogs will just make a post with no interest in a further discussion. Check the latest month’s blog-posts and if you cannot see any comments on these, then I believe it’s fair to assume that the blog function is not active, just move along to another blog.
4. Are you in the askimet SPAM filter
If you are posting in a blog and a white screen pops up after hitting the submit button, then you are probably in a spam filter.
Register in Blogs/Forums
Many blogs and forums will require that you first register in order to be able to comment, this is an easy and usually fast process and once that you have an account it will be easy and fast to post comments that will be instantly visible.
Fill in your email-address and username and the blog will send out a confirmation email that usually will require activation within 24 hours, or the link will become invalid and you will have to redo the process.
Some blogs will hold your account request in moderation mode, and be clear that if this is the case, they will take the time to review your request and not all requests will get approved, however only a very small numbers of blogs manually review.
Set up your account profile – get links
Once you have registered an account, I would advise if that you take some time to fill in some profile details, such as biography and picture, at least. This for TWO main reasons;
Additionally, some profile pages will also let you link out to social media accounts such as Google PLUS, LinkedIN and Facebook etc.
Methods of getting dofollow links in registered blogs/forums
In blogs that requires registration, there are some strategies to get dofollow links; you have to find out which strategy/strategies that are applicable for each blog/forum you intend to use, some will approve of one or several strategies but some just one.
In a blog/forum you will also have to examine which method that actually gives dofollow links, within the same blog, one or several methods will give dofollow links while another method will give nofollow links, also check if the link is java scripted.
I have sorted the methods, the first four methods which are most likely to stick and will usually not require that you produce a high quality comment to get approved, just stay on topic and make an addition to the discussion, if you are not overly promoting, then you should be fine:
Link-drop in blogs/forums
To link-drop in a registered blog/forum is widely accepted, more accepted in registered blogs then ‘open’ blogs since the first mentioned category usually can prevent SPAM attacks a little better by having a registration process before you can comment. Why many blogs accept link-drops have to do with providing a valid link with a comment will only be of gain for the readers. With a valid link, I mean that you refer to another web-page with content that brings something of value to the discussion, fact sources or news updates will usually pass.
If you on the other-side intend to link to a website that is selling a product, then it’s up to the blog-moderator to decide if your comment is to be deemed as too promotional or not. Generally to improve your chances of being approved use blogs that are within your website’s niche and contribute with a quality comment.
Below will explain two slightly different methods, they are separated because some blogs/forums will have a nofollow attribute on HTML coded links but naked URLs will in-fact be do-follow, it will go the other way around as well.
A general advice when using link-drops is that that the first blog comment that you make in a new blog/forum, don’t link-drop. Some blogs/forums will moderate your first comment and some will block your account if they deem you to be potential spammer. If you intend to make a lot of comments in the blog then I would also advice not to link-drop in every comment, this might raise spam warnings sooner or later.
Making comments in blogs has been used as a SEO strategy for a long time. The intention has been to get back-links to your website in order to raise Page Rank and/or raise selected keyword-phrases for your website in search engines. As a bonus from this strategy you could also drive in direct traffic, but the main purpose of this SEO strategy has always been about the link you would get back to your web-site.
If you were to look around in SEO forums about link-building, you would often see people referring to this strategy as one of the easier ways of getting back-links to your website. This kind of statement shows that their SEO knowledge is lacking regarding to this particular SEO strategy. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it that is important.
To use this blog commenting effectively for SEO purposes there is more to it than to just post a comment in any blog, chose quality before quantity. I’ve always believed and implemented this and after the Penguin update 2012 this is truer than ever.
Do not under-estimate the blog research; it is a time-consuming, but crucial task.
To give you a picture of how time-consuming it can be to find just a few good SEO friendly blogs: when I collect a list with 15,000 blog domains, I will run them in a program which will show details such as domain PR, page PR and outgoing links, but the most important thing is that the program also indicates blogs that are ‘do-follow’. From the list, around 200-600 will show ‘do-follow’, the other thousands and thousands of blogs all have the nofollow tag. But the program can only check for some of the technical aspect, there’s more to it than just that, so now comes the time-consuming task of manually checking them for criteria such as:
After this has been checked I might have a list of 50-100 left that are good to use, I do however have a list of blogs that I’ve collected over the last 4 years so I would only be adding around 15-40 new ones from a research of this volume.
After this I will manually start with the blogs that the program showed as ‘no-follow’, and these will be in thousands. I can’t possibly check all so here I’ll have to go for combinations based on experience of what might be a possible usable blog. I will often base my decision on domain Page Rank, page PR, page-title etc. When searching the blogs that the program showed as no-follow can be described as fishing; sometimes I will get lucky and draw in the big catch.
You will need blogs related to your own niche
I’ve always believed in quality when it comes to blog-commenting as a SEO strategy, the selection of the blogs is important; you want to get links from related blogs with good page rank. However, if you have a small niche, there’s just not going to be many related blogs that fulfills the criteria of a SEO friendly blog. Some of the blogs you might find might not even want to approve your comment if they see you as competition.
Sure, related blogs is the best ones to comment on, but one important factor not to forget when trying to strengthen your website’s link profile is that you get links from different IP’s.
Broaden the selection of blogs by using authority blogs that have pages that are related to your website. There are quite many blogs that have under-sections that will suffice. For example, let’s say that your website is about yoga; expand to blogs for women and health blogs.
TIP! If you are operating within a small niche, guest posting can be a good SEO strategy since there will be more sites available giving good back-links for a good written article.
Final Words
Using blog commenting as a SEO strategy after the Penguin update comes down to quality in terms of selecting which blogs to post in and that you also contribute with a quality comment. The biggest job will be the research that you will have to carry out in order to find related blogs and pages for your specific niche.
The upside is that at this point you just have to follow your list and write comments, and the average quality of the links will be very high, that’s when and how all of the blog research pays off big time. That’s when and how you can get a lot of good links fast and easy.
FINAL TIP! Don’t forget to get links from different sources not just from blog commenting, in order to raise a strong healthy link-profile you will have to mix it up, and I will say it once again, quality is the key.
There was a time when Google was not around to dictate the use of links and keywords to affect the outcome of results in a search engine. At that time, surfers would follow a link from a directory to your site, a directory that Google currently operates from: its very own, DMOZ. Surfers don’t make use of directories as much as 10 years ago to locate sites. However, these directories still have their importance as a linkage source for search engines to locate links. Hence, they remain in place, in the realm of the World Wide Web.
Links from a directory must be related to your site: that is extremely crucial for Search Engine Optimization. To have an association a directory requires relevant elements on the tree structure of the categories, each page the listing are categorized, as well as the titles, descriptions and keywords to be similarly categorized and interrelated.
The keywords for your market, products and/ or services are determined by Google. When someone searches the web using your keywords, the search engines will find related links directing to your web page before displaying it. Therefore, the more related links you have pointing to your website, the higher you will rank for them in Google.
The links produced by manual directory submissions will gain value and acceptance from Google, and not just links from ANY directories. Google only indexes links from well maintained directories and these directories usually review your website manually and approve it before posting a link for you. So, your web site needs to have the best layout and content to score high approval ratings.
There are thousands and thousands of directories out there to use, but to acquire Search Engine Optimization-friendly links from free directories, only 1,500 of them can produce good quality links. To summarize, there 500 of these directories that belong to the top tier, another 500 that are reasonably good directories, and the last 500 are fairly average directories.
It is easy for Google to find out if a web page is a directory and whether or not the directory is looked after by deploying their mathematical algorithms. The (good) directory owners, therefore, provides constant maintenance and review in order to be indexed by Google. Google do not keep the pages of directories in their index if they uncover too many copied listing, and we have a list of these 1,500 directories which we use for submissions.
Although google submissions used to be the first step for a fresh web site, that is no longer true and effective. Nowadays, you must possess a minimum Page Ranking in order for Google to approve a large proportion of your directory submissions. As directory submissions is not a secret link building strategy there is a significant waiting list in most of these directories.
If you have at least Page Rank3 and this is the first time that directory submissions are carried out for your website, you can notice very significant and impressive outcomes submitting to 1,500 of these directories. We can perform a few hundred manual directory submissions for you in a day, but most of them will be put in queue for evaluation.
Any link building process is an enduring strategy; they are usually laborious and lengthy. Directory submissions are no different. Directories that are at the higher end of the spectrum continue to remain unsurpassed as each submission is evaluated. And only after your site satisfactorily assessed, the submission will be approved and a link to your website published within it. This is the link that Google can trace. With this method, you are ensured of a large quantity of high value links, and that is crucial for any link building and Search Engine Optimization strategy.
I’m really excited to finaly write this post; our blog commenting service has just had his biggest upgrade. We started offering this service 3 years agao and we have grown consistently. We have now truly reached a very professional level, which comes all together in our new package; the premium package.
It’s a combination of 2 blog commenting packages;
50 total-PR – mixed package – $125 • we use only names, no anchor texts – homepage links 50 total-PR – anchor text package – $250 • ALL anchor text keyword links The best package is of course the combination of those 2 above; • 50+50 total-PR blog commenting combination package = 50 total-PR – mixed + 50 total-PR anchor text • 50+50PR-BC – combination package –> $125 + $250 = $375 :: DISCOUNT -> $350
100 total-PR – about 35-60 high quality links – most of them with anchor text link !!
50+50PR-BC – premium combination package – $350 Daniel has been consistently keeping track of sample keyword rankings; he would do a little keyword check when the orders come in, keep record and process the order. Then next month when the next order comes in he would check again; we have consistently see significant increases in the keyword rankings, most sites would reach for the 2-3 keywords they give top #1-#5 rankings within 2-3 months, depending on other seo value the site has and the strength of the competition.
We’re very confident about the results we manage to achieve for you; we’ve been watching them!
Yet, as you can see in the price difference between mixed and anchor text, it does takes us that much more work to get anchor text links, the lower average PR resulting in much more comments/links for the same total-PR is just 1 of the many factors.
What counts for you is that combining these 2 packages keeps the total cost low, thanks to the cheaper process of mixed blog commenting, while more than half of the links will be anchor text links, if possible even deep-linking.
It’s a very well balanced blog commenting package to get as well quality as quantity links.
So this is the result of 3 years research and development; a very powerful link building tool with a proven track record to get keyword rankings up, and still at a low fixed rate.
I still advice to keep on mixing in other link building tactics, just because of it; 250 semi-automated directory submissions is just$25 – do it, just to keep the flow going.
Despite the hit the article directories took from the Panda update, as Google came up with much better filters to de-index scraped and spinned content, most article directories did lose lots of indexed pages which dropped their overall seo-value, but it’s not like Google eliminated the concept of article directories itself. It’s just even more important to do what we have been doing all along; quality over quantity.
Last but not least; I’ve been hiring people in Singapore; native English blog commenting writers, they’re more expensive to me, but still reasonable eastern prices, versus the very expensive western prices, while we did improve significantly thanks to our new team in Singapore.
We’re ready to offer you this quality natural link building service at a steady ratio in large amounts for a very reasonable price -> blog commenting service
So we’re open for orders now; I’ve also updated the online order pages, so if you want you can go online or reply for our standard excel order details template.
50+50PR-BC – premium combination package – $350
Best regards,
Michiel
