Well, sort of… last week, Dave told me he was going to start putting an effort back into the blog and asked if I could perhaps post something to help people with launching e-books..
I had to decline the request, simply because - to put it frankly - I see my tactics as being roughly equivalent to what our original fan sites were about this time last year; in fact, Dave actually had a tough time convincing me to host my new sites with him because I didn’t want to give him access to my traffic stats… That’s how anal retentive I’ve become over sharing an exact game plan with anyone - because it makes money, and it’s just to damn simple to replicate.
That being said, I think it would be ok for me to share some lessons I’ve learned along the way, such as how to structure your offers and some PPC tactics.
I’m not sure when I’ll get around to actually posting them; I’m off to the Mayan Rivera for a week on the 15th and I’m in the middle of building yet another e-book, so my time is a tad stretched.
One observation I can make, however, is the crazy mojo Dave’s web hosting business seems to have. I’ve heard a number of high-end SEO companies claiming they will only work on sites at least 2 years old, and up until recently I thought that was total hogwash… however with the recent reworking of his website, Dave has actually had “great success” with his target terms.
While the terms aren’t exactly super competitive, he doesn’t really have any targeted text links or any real keyword placement besides a mention in the title tags - however, his site has been around for a good 4+ years now, has a dmoz listing and a few links both freely given and forum based.
We also noticed something similar when we did some work on our multiplayer hacks website a few years back: methods that simply didn’t work with our new domains would easily bring long-term sites to page 1 of Google.
Personally, I think this is more complex than simply having an old domain, and we are testing this theory with an affiliate site we are pitter-pattering around on for now. Within a few months we hope to have a clear answer on how much domain age is actually a factor in this.
I’m quite certain that domain age is a very important factor, however where I’m not so certain is whether you can simply buy a 4 year old domain that’s been sitting dormant or parked full of ads and have the same effect as a site which has been indexed with some content, when in fact a number of these parked domains appear almost banned from Google.
That being said, we bought a domain that was a few years old for our site and had a design completed around the middle of last week. Hopefully it will work out, and I’m sure Dave can keep you informed on how things go.
Peace out!
