Anything New on "Successful Site in 12 months"

Curoius about recent changes and actual results

[cfeagin]

I just read Brett's post...

"Successful Site in 12 months"

[webmasterworld.com...]

This post seems like timeless advice, but I am curious if there would be any changes made to it - now that it is 2 + years later.

It would also be interesting to see how many people actually followed the advice and their results.

Thanks for all the great information in this forum.

[Brett_Tabke]

Aside from updating some of the specific engines mentioned (Lycos, hotbot...etc), I wouldn't change much there today. It is all still applicable.

There is another article around here from a year ago that asked about the same question.

[trillianjedi]

how many people actually followed the advice.

I do - it's become part of my design ethos now.

and their results.

Every single site has been very succesful.

TJ

[HarleyGuy]

fundamental business practices are timeless

[Jack_Hughes]

I have followed the advice and it has worked exactly as advertised. SEs love content ;) we've had a lot of success recently with timely articles on topics currently in the news (for our area of interest) and the articles quickly became the hotest things on the site. we will be doing more.

it is really hard (nay impossible) to predict which topics will be popular. so, rather than worry about it, just create the article and see how it flies. if it is popular create another and then another and so on around the topic. eventually you'll end up with a nice bunch of articles you can then bunch up into a mini knowledge base on the topic.

worrying about single keywords, and how you rank on specific keyword phrases I have found to be largely futile activity. as somebody on here once said, if you can track all of your keywords, you're not targetting enough of them.

[GranPops]

Still works for me, despite all the changes since November

[ThomasB]

I think this guide will be valid for a long, long time! As long as SEs try to value high quality content sites that people like the guide will work. There are always changes in ranking algos, but Bretts guide is definetly what you need to know if you want to create a succesful site anytime now or in the future.

[shrirch]

Followed a lot of what the guide has said and have not followed some thing, purely because of choice and a need to short circuit the process a little bit.

What has worked for us.

1) Theme pyramids. Start with high PR at the top, then moderate PR inbounds at the middle of the pyramids and links from the top directly to hot nodes at the bottom of the pyramid.

2) New content on a regular basis.

3) Very extensive use of mod rewrite

4) User added content / communities

3 sites in the last 6 months and the traffic varies between 2K-20K / day.

Keep in mind, I'm a bit lazy and there is only so much one person can do. So, we did have to prune Brett's article down to about 5-10 essential and 15-20 "when we get around to it" action items.

[phantombookman]

I was absolutely clueless when I came to webmasterworld - I did not even know PR existed!

Following the guidance of Brett's cornerstone article and reading the posts of those experts here who generously give their time and knowledge I now have Google #1's on loads of my target phrases.

Thanks to Brett and everyone else
Regards
Rod

[Essex_boy]

Same goes for me without that article I was lost.

Thanks Brett

[brotherhood of LAN]

Should work next year too Brett, no sign of those theme engines yet :)

[annej]

Would a more theme based engine really change anything? Seems to me Brett's advice would be just what we need for theme based.

I started using these guidelines a couple of years ago and am totally happy with how all my pages are doing now. But I just reread Brett's article and I have GOT to start putting up more pages. I notice he mentions that over and over.

[BigDave]

I consider that article to be about "stick to the basics", or at least make sure you have the basics down before you start worrying about getting to the fancy specific things.

The whole point to following that advice is to build a site that will weather the changes in the algo. It's about building consistant traffic, not about how to be number one for a choen keyphrase.

Even if a couple of the points aren't really on target in any particular month, they are worth doing because it might make a difference to Google next month.

Yeah, I think that it's pretty much timeless advice.

[kovacs]

Well said... like a lot of people, I've had (and still have) my fun with more aggressive optimization strategies, but you while the money is good for a while, you inevitably get stung and have to start over again. On the other hand, high quality, clean and ethically promoted sites will bring the cheques in for years to come, and you can sleep easy at night knowing that your traffic will still be there when you wake up.

[cyberprosper]

I beg to differ. The "cleanest" most useful site I had was totally gone after Florida. I would not sleep easily at night if I had to rely on ANY site now.

[creative craig]

Since becoming a member two years ago, every site I have ever designed or worked on I have used the information from Bretts post, timeless classic :)

[suggy]

I stumbled upon Brett's post in March last year. Then my site had 15 uniques a day. 6 months later it had 1000 and continues to grow and grow. And, that's for a part-timer. Brett - I owe you a beer!

It's the only advice you need to start out. Everything else is mere fettling.

Suggy

[grant]

The one thing I would amend to Brett's article is that while keywords in the domain make you look like a fly by night operation, it forces link partners to put the keyword in the anchor text when they are linking to you.

As we can infer by the power of Google bombs, keywords in anchor text are rather important.

[suggy]

You can always put the keywords in the page file name and getting links with your keywords in the anchor ain't that difficult: Banner + ALT enables you to do pretty much anything; pick an obscure name that requires explanation in brackets - eg. flubberlubber.co.uk (for dates who don't diet).

Suggy

[blaze]

One of the things neglected by that article is the purchasing of inbound links pointing directly to your content website.

It's completely valid from both an SEO and a fundamental business practice to pay other companies to refer customers to your content.

First and foremost you want to buy links from quality websites which are relevant to your content and will direct worthwhile traffic your way.

Also, I felt that there wasn't sufficient warning about linking to quality websites only, and ensuring that you continue to link to quality websites.

After all, if you can master two things: good content and great linking, you are 75% of the way there..

[Jack_Hughes]

forgive my ignorance, but isn't anchor text the text displayed to the user for a given link rather than the URL the link refers to?

So, for instance:

<a href="URL">link text</a>

Is the anchor text the url or the link text?

[suggy]

Strictly speaking you're right Jack, though it all seems to count.

My theory is that the URL element also counts - how many times do you see it highlighted in search results?! Plus, the ALT tag for linked images describes the link and I therefore believe it to have a similar effect to anchor text.

Cheers

Suggy