One of my greatest tools in my SEO tool belt, is watching played out niches. Most people try and avoid these as they are far too competitive to even bother with. And for the most part they are right, most of the time I fall flat on my face and never get past page 2, sometimes onto the bottom of page 1 with my websites. But generally I’m not even bothering to monetize these sites. So why am I spending hours of time SEOing a site for zero profit?
Well, Fun mostly. But ontop of that, To learn SEO tactics that I have never seen before. To see how the “pro’s” are gaming Google, and to learn from my failures. Kinda funny however, That tackling a tough niche is basically setting yourself up for failure. But it almost pits one SEO tactic against another. For example if I go into a niche that the top results are heavily reliant on Linkwheels, Then I go in guns blazing with Profile links. And then I can really see how Google treats different tactics when it comes to ranking. See how many profile links it takes to take out a website that has three 6 spoke linkwheels etc. Of course there is more going on then just Linkwheels, But it is interesting none the less.
There is a limit however. There isn’t much point going after phrases like “Buy Viagra”. That just isn’t going to go well for you. But it doesn’t mean you can’t sit back and take a look at how they are ranking. For example the number one result for buy viagra online for me is this site here : http://www.buyviagraonlinenow.com/. Now if you analyse the backlinks, you will see that this person has setup a huge mini-net of websites (All with good domains). And they are pumping content onto every one of those sites. Obviously for someone beginning out (Or really even seasoned veterans), buying 2k domains to give this a go isn’t really viable for most niches. But it gives you a hint that Google is definitely looking favourably among mini-nets now. Especially ones with alot of content.
If we move back a bit, and take a look at some of the more emerging niches. Something that is exploding right now is “Watch **** Movie Online”. Replacing **** with any movie you can think of. As it gets closer to the release date for that movie, the SEO stakes get higher and higher, and people are using crazy tactics. The good thing is that most of the people ranking for these terms, are usually blackhat in nature. Or are at least CPALead’ers who are using Linkwheels, Profile Links, etc. So let’s take a look at a keyword that is starting to grow bigger, that being “Watch Toy Story 3 Online”.
First result on my end is http://watchtoystory3.net/. So let’s go with that.
As I look through the backlinks, I see that alot of the links are “Profile” links. But not only that, they are of fairly well known sites. More then likely the links this person is using is from a Linkpack that Angela or Paul from Warrior Forum sell. It isn’t just forum links, these are real legit sites.
Interestingly enough, There is a few sites listed that are like “Scribd” or “DocStoc” for example : http://www.slideshare.net/watchtoystory3/watch-toy-story-3-online. These are basically documents, but they have click-able links. I am not actually entirely sure whether google can read those links inside the document… I checked the Cache of Google, (Type into Google = cache:http://www.slideshare.net/watchtoystory3/watch-toy-story-3-online), and it does seem like it can see them. If it can, then good tactic, Going to have to start using document/PDF sites more often.
There is also some Social Bookmarks mixed in there (Diigo, Spotback etc), which is slightly interesting. Because I remember using sites like these a while back. And I thought they really did nothing. I’m not talking about big ones like Digg, Mixx, Reddit etc. But these smaller ones never got indexed, never showed up in backlink checks, never really did anything. So maybe things are changing?
Moving back to the Google results page. I can also see there is a number of Web 2.0 pages in there. Both blogs and article sites seem to be listed. To name a few :
- http://watchtoystory3online6.blogspot.com/2010/03/watch-toy-story-3-online-for-free.html
- http://www.articlesbase.com/movies-articles/watch-toy-story-3-online-download-now-free-2339578.html
- http://watchtoystory34.ning.com/profile/JohnieRiddle
- http://johnie4riddle.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/where-can-i-watch-toy-story-3-online-for-free.html
- http://sites.google.com/site/watchtoystory3online6/watch-toy-story-3-online-for-free
And the list goes on.
If you check some of them out. 80% of them seem to point to http://watch-toy-story-3-online.net/. Which is ranked 6th on my screen for the keyword “Watch Toy Story 3 Online“. Checking his backlinks, They all look to be Web 2.0 links. But not in a linkwheel formation, they are just simply linking to his site. Seeing how he is 6th, maybe he needs to mix up his strategy a bit? Could possibly introduce links from places outside of Web 2.0 and article sites.
And really the list goes on. You don’t want to sit here for hours reading too much into it, because really, Google can be a fickle bitch. Google can boot you from the SERPS, and at the same time rank someone else number 1 using the same tactics. But it goes a long way into showing you what works and what doesn’t, and what Google is really loving at the moment in the way of Backlinks.
