Five SEO’s Secret Weapons

I think every good SEO must has some advantage over the regular SEO folks. These are the secrets that make them (and their clients) rank better in the search engines than any others. These are the secrets that they don’t want their competitor to know. These are the SEO’s secret weapons:

1. Owning a network of websites

Nothing comes in more handy than owning a network of websites for SEO. All of the websites should cover the most of the niche, and at least gain some weight in the search engines. Several huge advantages can be gain for this:

- Immediate boost of ranking for clients without spending any extra resources (time and money).
- Easily initiate 3 - 4 ways link exchange with potential links source, saving cost of purchasing links.
- Can run various trials on link placement, anchor texts and more kind of SEO experiments.

Yes. Building a large network of websites require much time, money and effort. And for better SEO benefits, the websites should be hosted in many separates location (in order to have different class C IPs). Mixing some prehosted websites (blogspot, wordpress, googlepages etc) are a good idea too. The most important note here is, don’t make your website spammy. Create actual, good content websites that would gain the favor from search engines. Else, it would do you more harm and good.

I believe a competitive SEO or webmaster should have this secret weapon under their belt. If not, go grab some cheap domains, or buy some cheap websites, host it on some cheap hosts and start building.

2. Grab that information edge

If everything you know about SEO comes from reading Aaron Walls’ book, or Rand’s beginner guide,or subscribing to those big name blogs, chances are you are just another regular SEO. These are the information that already available and digested by hundreds and thousands of other SEOs, none of it will gain you any advantage. So how to grab the information edge?

- Read as much information, as many blogs, as you can: Subscribe to the any blogs, no matter how small, how badly written it is (ahem), even if those blogs that only churn out 1-2 good posts in their lifetime (ahem again). Chances may be those good posts will prove worthwhile. Toprank’s big list is a good place to start.

- Open your mind: I’ve come across many people that despise black hat SEO techniques: “yikes, I better stay far away from these, else I would get banned”. It’s important to open the mind to all the skepticism. Read more of the black hat and grey hat stuff. Lurk in their forum, paid or free. By knowing more of the vulnerability of search engines will gain you more understanding of how search engines works.

- Own experiments: Don’t be afraid to use some of your own sites to do some SEO experiments. My previous post on link condom leaks is a good example of how one experiments can prove beneficial.

3. Get your army ready

One person’s resource can only do so much. Hence, it is all about leveraging: using people. Having a contacts of your most trusted link builders, writers and other freelancers is a powerful secret weapon to SEO.

This monster list by freelance switch should be enough for anyone to find their dream freelancers. But keep in mind that it is not easy to find a trusted, quality freelancer to work for you, because most of the time, money plays a bigger factor. Remember, if you pay peanut, you get money.

Instead, focus more on the quality of work, and then the responsiveness of the person (if he replies your email once every 3 days, cut him from the list). It’s a bonus points if you can build good relationships with them. This brings us to the next secret weapon.

4. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Yes. The old school ‘connections‘ stuff still works in the world of SEO. A small favor (e.g: mentioning your website with a link back) from someone you know or built relationship with, can be a big breakthrough for your website.

So, don’t shut the door on yourself. Visit and comment others blog. Join and participate in discussion of forums. Occasionally, email your fellow SEOs some greetings. Be nice to everyone, even those that asked for favor because you don’t know when you would need their favor back. Remember, no SEO is an island.

5. Hard work

Ok. Perhaps the final secret weapon is not so secret after all. But really, hard work always play a part. Shoemoney works 18 hours a day. Andy Hagans works 12 hours a day. And perhaps much more that we don’t know.

If these A-list SEOs are working their ass off, there are no reason why you shouldn’t. These are really their secrets of success. They kept telling us that, we just don’t buy it though. Why? Because we are too lazy. Hence the not-so-secret’s secret weapon, still remain as their secret.

So that sums up my list of secret weapons. What’s yours?