Planning Ahead for Link Building

"Before I start a site I will have a look at the whole neighbourhood around that subject. Sooner or later I will stumble across 'nests' of quality sites adjacent to my proposed space. Quality means in this sense that they may be quality in the way that they link out, or the way that they are linked to by an authority site, or in some other way.

Before I even start on the site, I will consider how to integrate a honeypot for those particular sites that might encourage them to link to me. Once my site is active, I will try to make them aware of that section." stever

Mine your Logs

"Analyzing 1-hop queries (visitor arrived via Google, looked at only the landing page, and left), finding clusters of terms that the landing page simply could not have satisfied well, building content to address those queries, redesigning the original page to link conveniently and naturally to the new content, and then letting the stats tell me whether I successfully created a bunch of 2-hop queries or not.

If I can analyze the logs to arrive at a per-page theory about incoming visitor needs, and then prove that theory by building content and confirming revised visitor behavior, then I'm pretty sure I'm building a valuable information source -- even if it's only recognized by individual visitors going after specific queries." ronburk

Build Value

"Get inbound links from Universities, *.edu websites." fischermx

Love your Site

"So make a site('s) and love it like your child , feed it and you will see when your child grows it will be a goldmine for you." Paki_no1

Tight Niche, High CTR

"I have noticed a lot of small things that can have a huge effect on the CTR. As someone mentioned earlier, niche pages work best - this means breaking down your hierarchy into more categories if needed (and possible)" CainIV

Increase CTR using Tightly Focused Pages

"For my 2� worth of opinion, I'd add that the difference is often how tightly focused each page you put up is. Look, your goal - beyond getting lots of traffic - is to have ads shown on your pages that are truly targeted to your topic on each individual page. Looking around the web, I see lots of pages with very generic AS ads showing. I'd bet a lot that they're the ones getting 1% or less CTR. If someone got to your site from a search engine where they searched for 'red plastic widgets' and your page is about all kinds of widgets, sure, a few will probably click your AS ads. But imagine how many more would click them if your page was all about red plastic widgets (and nothing else). They'll either buy from you, hit the back button, or click one of your highly targeted AS ads that should also be about that type of widget.

So my advice (as someone who averages well over 25% CTR on 11 sites) is to post pages that are extremely focused on one product, idea, or service. Don't stray. If you're tempted to transition into a related topic, put up another page about it! I'll bet your CTR shoots way up if you're stuck in the 1%-3% range right now." Swebbie

Traffic from Forums

"... most of mine [traffic] comes from forums etc and other sites linking to me because I have some very useful unique content on a bunch of sites / subjects. And I get 100 dollars a day average, over two years with only 1200 uniques, or 3.5k page views daily.

Good useful niche unique content pays." Nitrous

Useful Unique Content

"Average 3300 daily page views, and 3000 dollars monthly.

For two years.

Secret is GENUINE useful unique content on a few different subject niche / hobby sites. And I seldom add or update anything.
And google search hates me." Nitrous

Ad Placement

"on the few micro sites I am running (just start up things - special interests of mine) where I have placed the ads in the left hand column, the CTR and CPM have been huge - sometimes 10 times or more my usual placements of leaderboard or right hand column - this seems to me to be the hottest spot, other than stuff right in the middle of the page or 'content'." webpro00801

Test, test

"biggest pearl of wisdom i can give is the following. ...

test, test and test some more.

the google adsense hot spots are spot on .. just keep testing." OddDog

Paid Advertising

"I am currently making more off of paid and offline advertising than I do with free search result placement. Sometimes with some good serps, I make more that way. But my point is if search engines die, my business will still be there and flourishing.
Without search engines, I am making just below 1,000 a day profit.

When I see those update threads I just want to cringe.... Most people put their eggs in one basket and have no one but themselves to blame for that.

Its the free search engine traffic that got me started. But I did not let it stop there. I poured a lot of that back into paid online advertising and offline advertising.

I guess the bottom line, is to make your three year plan be as if free traffic is the thing of the past. That would be my advice.

I am doing so well in affiliate marketing that I am about to jump to the other side of the fence and actually have affiliates working for me.

Bottom line: DIVERSIFY Sites and Advertising Sources." JaySmith

Diversify

"As long as you diversify your sites AND your advertising sources, I can only see the money growing. You will never hear me cry in any of the SE update threads... The main reason I won't is that I treat those results as gravy." JaySmith

Watch your Back

"Continue to keep one, two or three steps ahead of your competition at all times. Ride new trends, even create some new trends. Always look back in the rear view mirror because there will always be someone there to take over your spot as 'hub' of whatever." davewray

Content with Personality

"Sites that put a unique spin on a topic or add personality tend to attract more repeat visitors." Margarita

Become a Niche Authority

"I fell into my niche by accident. I'm at the top of the serps not by SEO, but by simply having worked on my content, become an authority in my niche and generated a lot of regular traffic. In my case there is no shortage of quality advertisers willing to bid to be on my site. I'm also an adwords avertiser so I know what the keyword normally costs, and I'm getting WAY more than that!" david_uk

Niche is Evergreen

"It's my opinion that a carefully crafted niche site can run almost on autopilot, with very little, if any updating, and remain profitable for years." ken_b

A Content Source

"People email me info and I add it to my site. Works great, draws a bunch of traffic, isn't really that much work. Pays modestly well." ken_b

Write Articles on the Fringes

"But there may well be some aspects of your topic that are seldom discussed, or even thought about. Stuff on the fringes, stuff you might not see on every other site in your category.

Now go look at your site, are all those aspects you thought up there?

Now sit down and write, or rewrite, some relevant pages." ken_b

Good Keywords

" use your imagination.

What if you were an advertiser, for what kind of clicks would you be prepared to pay money?

The answer is that advertisors are likely to pay more money for clicks from people that are ready to order their products. People that are ready to order products are people that just have been informed properly by a quality content website and are satisfied by the information they received. So my advice would be to write an online article about something you are a real expert on. Really try to write the best article on the entire Internet about this topic. Be specific and targeted. The more you focus on very specific details, the better. In the meanwhile, be sure there are enough advertisers related to this topic.

If your article is ready, publish it and paste your adsense-code. You might find your high paying keyword this way. It worked for me..." humblebeginnings

Reinvesting AdSense

"All my money gets put back out to writers so they can write me more interesting articles." rj87uk