Who makes the most money from SEO (2015 SEO Survey Results) (12)
Who makes the most money from SEO (2015 SEO Survey Results)
Hey guys,
So I recently did a survey to over 115 SEOs, 5 pretty easy questions.. The main target of the survey was to find out who was making the most money, and the results were pretty interesting.
Out of the 20 SEOs that made over $250,000 (I was in the $100k - $250k division, see this thread) 12 of them classed themselves as "Grey Hats" but almost all of them were using a similar strategy.
They were building very big sites, large indexed page count (Normally over 500) and putting only white hat links at tier 1, using VAs to guest post and do directory submissions, social profiles etc etc.. Then powering up all of their Tier 1s with a SH*T TON of black hat contextual links, things like Web 2.0s and Private Blog Networks as well as paid networks like SAPE & Links Management.
This was essentially buffering an in-between for the money site and it's darker links, lessening risk of being penalized substantially as well as having great websites anyway due to the large investment in the sites pages and word count, which makes the OnPage very good - Speaking of OnPage, a lot of them were using Silo Structure.
I asked a few more questions, and compiled all of the results into a blog post here: http://charlesfloate.co.uk/seo-survey-2015/
Thanks
- Charles
But SEO is dead 
Nice survey, thanks a lot!
I never even thought about using IFTTT for SEO. Does anyone use it for blackhat or greyhat? It makes sense to automate some common things like sharing on social media (then you can call it a "SEO tool" I guess ).
A lot of people use PBNs and links sure. But I also keep noticing expired domain redirect. Basically a black hatter buys expired domains, creates some crawled/generated text and puts it online in a way so that Googlebot and tools like Browsershots see the generated text content and regular user is redirected to a money page (either a 301 redirect or an iframe). A recent example is the entire Polish Google (google.pl) for all make money, loans and bizop phrases, both short tail and long tail. Whatever Polish phrase you use, at least 3-5 results of the first 10 are dominated by this one guy using many domains.
Google knows about this technique for at least 4 years but they do not seem to be doing anything about it. I even reported his sites (for webspam and breaking Webmaster rules) but a few weeks later this guy still dominates the SERP and noone seems to care... I guess I can start doing this as well if that's Google's approach.
Originally Posted by azureus
I never even thought about using IFTTT for SEO. Does anyone use it for blackhat or greyhat? It makes sense to automate some common things like sharing on social media (then you can call it a "SEO tool" I guess
).A lot of people use PBNs and links sure. But I also keep noticing expired domain redirect. Basically a black hatter buys expired domains, creates some crawled/generated text and puts it online in a way so that Googlebot and tools like Browsershots see the generated text content and regular user is redirected to a money page (either a 301 redirect or an iframe). A recent example is the entire Polish Google (google.pl) for all make money, loans and bizop phrases, both short tail and long tail. Whatever Polish phrase you use, at least 3-5 results of the first 10 are dominated by this one guy using many domains.
Google knows about this technique for at least 4 years but they do not seem to be doing anything about it. I even reported his sites (for webspam and breaking Webmaster rules) but a few weeks later this guy still dominates the SERP and noone seems to care... I guess I can start doing this as well if that's Google's approach.
I personally don't use this technique, but I have been using a different technique for higher budget stuff:
When going into a SERP, I'll scrape the first 25 results and pull off every expired domain from the top 25 sites on there (obviously removing the likes of Wikipedia, Amazon etc.. Just the niche specific ones).
I'll check through the domains, and any that are completely niche relevant (I normally get 10-15 nice domains) I'll pickup, then build a simple Wordpress site on it and get my VA to write a 2k word article.. Wait til the domain is indexed (either naturally or using a premium indexer), maybe add a few more links @ the domain (if I do this, it'll just be expensive, English-only SAPE OR HQ PBNs) then wait and systematically 301 each domain to my money site.
Results? Get links from most of my competitors that are ranking for my main keyword, and after 4-7 domains being 301'd, I hit top 3.. Once you get to over 10 you'll normally be #1
Done this for 100k+ MS Keywords as well, works very nicely.
Originally Posted by egorpe
I have a lot of friends making 6 figures from SEO year in, year out. Happy to include myself in this list too :P
Originally Posted by charlesfloate
I have a lot of friends making 6 figures from SEO year in, year out. Happy to include myself in this list too :P Or was it 2008? Don't remember exactly.
Can you explain this a bit more? How are the results in the top 25 expired domains?
Originally Posted by charlesfloate
I personally don't use this technique, but I have been using a different technique for higher budget stuff:
When going into a SERP, I'll scrape the first 25 results and pull off every expired domain from the top 25 sites on there (obviously removing the likes of Wikipedia, Amazon etc.. Just the niche specific ones).
I'll check through the domains, and any that are completely niche relevant (I normally get 10-15 nice domains) I'll pickup, then build a simple Wordpress site on it and get my VA to write a 2k word article.. Wait til the domain is indexed (either naturally or using a premium indexer), maybe add a few more links @ the domain (if I do this, it'll just be expensive, English-only SAPE OR HQ PBNs) then wait and systematically 301 each domain to my money site.
Results? Get links from most of my competitors that are ranking for my main keyword, and after 4-7 domains being 301'd, I hit top 3.. Once you get to over 10 you'll normally be #1
Done this for 100k+ MS Keywords as well, works very nicely. Originally Posted by hangman
And take a good number of those domains, then 301 them at your site - So you get authority from your own competitors
I've got to be honest - that was a very good guide.
Originally Posted by sogregory
damn this was a good read. read through all the links. I want to do something with SEO to wrap around my offers while I do paid traffic as well... I kinda of want to mix a lot of stuff up so there is like a buffer on my offers. I am interested in now trying to do this PBN game lol
Hey Charles, would you be interested in giving me some advice on SEO for my site? Can pay you $200/hour. My skype is max.entin.
Originally Posted by charlesfloate
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