Please Note: PBNs and many SEO tactics still work. Since Google has been cracking down on PBNs, we have started to focus more on building businesses that rely on long term traffic sources. 

The team has been busy kicking off, and/or preparing for, their experiments as part of our commitment to run 100 experiments within the next 12 months and share the findings right here for free.

Below is an update on seven experiments that are underway!

Youtube Rankings Experiment – Matt

Find out more about this experiment here.

INTRODUCING: OPERATION FRENCH BAGUETTE

The first market and niche I’m going after is ranking in google.fr for French guitar keywords.  I recruited the local French guitar-man, Max, to assist me in this experiment.  The conversation went like this:

(Actual photo of me lying on a couch.)

Here’s what I did

First, we did some keyword research to find some keywords that would make sense for us to do videos on.  Since Max can play the guitar, it seemed like a good bet.

Next, we filmed 3 short guitar videos that were 1-2 minutes each.  I edited the videos in Final Cut Pro.

I then created a new youtube channel with a keyword rich title and  uploaded the edited videos and used keyword rich titles for them.

Lastly, I ordered three 500 word guitar articles written in French from Fiverr to be added to each of the videos in the description.

I built 1 link to the channel and 1 link to one of the videos so far.  I’ll start drip feeding links from NoHatMedia’s French PBN network later this week.

If history tells me anything, I can assume that the French SERPs will surrender pretty quickly to my tactics (Yeah, I went there… sorry Max).

INTRODUCING: OPERATION JANET RENO

For my second market and niche, I will be choosing to rank local plumbing videos in the US.  I’ll be creating a brand new channel for this.

I chose local US business keywords because that’s my background.  I create local lead generation sites in my own business.  One thing I’ve been curious about is the conversion rates and scalability of ranking videos in localized markets.  I want to know if these type of videos can actually generate calls and how easy they rank.

This week I’ll be creating 5 plumbing videos targeting 5 different major US cities.  I’ll buy a Twilio phone number for each video (I use Joe Troyer’s calling platform ACT for this) and redirect the calls to my phone number.  I’ll easily be able to see if the videos are generating calls once they rank.

INTRODUCING: OPERATION – I HAVE NO F-ING CLUE YET

Next week I’ll be adding another channel for a different keyword set.  I haven’t decided on the keywords yet, but it will probably be something with a ClickBank affiliate product.

One thing I wanted to test was a super juicy tip I got from my friend Kapil (let’s pretend I didn’t just use the phrase “super juicy”).  He suggested that I 301 redirect an expired domain to one of my videos.

That never occurred to me to use a 301 redirect on something besides a domain, so it was a super intriguing idea to me.  I would like to test a few different variations using this tip.

That’s it for this weeks update.  Stay thirsty my friends. 

Viral Content Experiment – Nate

Read more about this experiment here.

Part of the Nohat Digital Internship focuses specially on creating and promoting viral content. Over the last week each intern has created 6 pieces of viral content: 3 list articles, 2 news items (including 1 video), and 1 article format of their choice.

Overall the content has been exceptional, and the interns have produced curiosity evoking headlines, images, and posts. But there is clear room for improvement…

I made some tweaks to the viral training module. I wanted to emphasize that it doesn’t matter how great your content is – If you don’t make it compelling enough to click and share, no one will know it exists. For example, take a look at the following headlines:

Top 10 Mind-Blowing Inventions That Will Shape Your Future

VS.

These 10 Mind-Blowing Inventions Will Shape Your Future

The first version is a solid concept, but the minor headline tweak makes it more “relatable” for the reader transforms it from an interesting headline, to a “must-click”. Taking the extra time to craft an amazing headline and select an eye catching photo can make an enormous difference in sharability, click throughs, and profits. But this is only a part of the equation…

The next step is Viral Promotion. How are we going to share? Where are we going to post? Who is going to read our viral content??

Tune in next week for more details!

Le Experiment: Testing the Waters in Google.fr – Max

Find out more about this experiment here.

So Hayden had told me about this 4-page French site he’d started about a year ago. He’d built a few links to it and then had given up on it to focus on other projects.

I thought I’d give it a look to see if the site in question would be a good fit for the experiment… “Sacrebleu!” (Note that French people actually never say that), this website is a potential monster.

Currently the site is ranking 15th for a LMS 5000+ & CPC 10$+ keyword. It’s also on 2nd and 3rd pages for quite a few other juicy keywords. Remember that this is after only minor linkbuilding efforts…

Now the plan is I’m going to add content and have some articles modified (they are not super well written nor seem to be optimized), and will build 15-20 links in the next month. We’ll see how that goes- I’m pretty confident we should see some good improvements there.

As for the site I will start from scratch, I’ve selected the niche and ordered some content to start with. The idea here is to build a pretty large authority site. Since the Sandbox is as harsh in Europe as it is in the States, I am not expecting to have a great lot to share about this site before a good 3-4 months.

That’s it for this week. À la semaine prochaine!

Going Loco in Foreign Markets (Mexico) – Jorge

Read more about this experiment here.

Max and I have identified the 2 main keywords we will go after for this experiment.

The keywords have very high CPC in the states, but for Mexico the CPC is 8 times lower, BUT the competition is much lower also.

The potential to make money outside of Adsense is great. Ranking the site on the first spots of Google will open the doors for different ways to monetize. The next step is to finalize the keyword research to identify as many long tail keywords as possible, and then order some content!

Authority Site ROI Case Study/Experiment – Greg

Find out more about this experiment here. This experiment is going FANTASTIC! Content added to both sites is earning $s, despite no link building. Early signs indicate that adding content to existing sites is a fantastic way to boost earnings and work around the Google Sandbox! Find out the most recent detailed earnings and rankings update here.

Building Money Sites on Expired Domains – Tommy

Read more about this experiment here.

I have identified the 6 expired domains (similar PA/DA metrics) that will be built out and have matched the sites’ original topics.

I’ll setup hosting and do a blank WP install this week to get things kicked off.

The next step will be to dig in with some keyword research and target KW’s with similar competitiveness so I can get the content ordered.

Mastering SEO in 45 Days from Scratch – Scott

Read more about this experiment here.

One week in after publishing the page for the experiment I’m running steady at just over 4/5 tacos (thanks for your tacos everyone!). So far I have a few applicants that have found the page and emailed in without any real promotion which is awesome.

I’m still 4 weeks out from kicking off the experiment so I have plenty of time to get out there and drum up some interest, which I plan to do in the coming weeks via social media and maybe even some forum posting.

My goal for this coming week is to hit my own social network and also get the guys down here to do the same.

The NoHat 101 course is nearly ready to launch ans we’ll kick it off with a post when it is! If you think you or someone you know has what it takes to nail SEO and authority website traffic generation in 45 days check out the experiment page below and shoot me an email at scott “at” nohatseo.com telling me a little about yourself, why you want to learn from us and anything else you think is useful for me to know.

That’s it on the experiment update front for this week, we’ll keep you updated same time next week!

Questions and comments are welcome!

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