FROM IAN MASON, FOUNDER OF

HOW TO WIN AT SEO

I TURNED

INTO

$2200

$2,755,982USING SIMPLE WEBSITES

I’ve been making a comfortable, full time living for over 8 years now,

growing every year. How? I build websites, use SEO to drive traffic to

them, and make money by selling products on them as an affiliate. In

this book, you’ll learn exactly how I do it.

On these next pages, I will share stories of my euphoric successes,

and even my devastating failures that made me stronger. I’ll reveal

to you my actionable blueprint to help you set up websites and make

more money from them.

This book was free for you to download. All I ask is that you hit me up

on SEHabitat’s Facebook page and ask questions, share suggestions

or brainstorm with me and others in the group. When you finish the

book, post a testimonial on the Facebook page - I need your support.

It has been my dream for years to actually directly help people with

my own products instead of just continuing to stay anonymous. Yeah

money is great but it’s not everything, especially after 8 years.

Building the SEHabitat platform was step 1. Now I am creating fun,

engaging education to help supporters like you reach your goals.

-Ian

P.S. This is the first version of my book. I’ll notify you when I update it.

T H A N K Y O UF O R J O I N I N G M E .

H O W T O S E O F O R 2 0 1 3

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Chapter 1: I Almost Went Insane 5

Why I Wrote This For You 8

Chapter 2: Essentials of SEO 10

#1: Diversify Your Efforts 11

#2: Get right back up. 12

#3: Do NOT go to sleep. 13

#4: Build Links Intelligently. 14

#5: Don’t only rely on me. 17

#6: Quality Content = More Profit And Stability. 18

#7: Master Before You Outsource. 20

#8: Avoid Commercial Intent Keywords In Your Domain Name. 21

Chapter 3: How I Build Links For Profit 23

Boost Profit With Guest Posting 26

Frank: From Frustrating Failure to $85,000/month Profit 28

How To Win With Plugin Links 32

Trade Your Skills For Links 33

Link Bait For Traffic And Branding 34

A Real Life Example 35

My Typical Link Building Blueprint 36

Chapter 4: Your SEO Empire 40

Build Authority Sites. 42

How To Choose Your Niches 44

How To Choose Your Keywords 46

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

How To Scale Your Profits 47

Want To Get Rich? Get Organized. 49

Chapter 5: Find Your Own Way 54

How To Set Up Your Websites 56

Where To Learn 57

Where To Find Design Inspiration 57

Where To Get Cheap Premade Graphics & Code 57

Chapter 6: Helpful Tools And Resources 58

Cognitive SEO 58

SERPFox 58

SEOMoz Pro 60

Backlinks.com 60

GrindMetrics 61

Market Mongoose 61

Google Docs 62

oDesk 62

ScrapeBox 63

SEHabitat 64

List Of Helpful Online Communities 65

Point Blank SEO 65

Taking It Further 66

People I Want To Thank 68

My Challenge To You 78

I A L M O S T W E N T I N S A N E

1

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P A G E 6

I had spent the day at the gym; sushi at my favorite spot, then a bison

filet at my other favorite spot. It’s hard to do gymnastics after eating a

big steak with guacamole on it.

1am. Monster drink. Top Gear guys falling over and breaking things in

the background. Buying up sweet domain names. Haters gon’ hate!

The next morning, it was like the Hangover movies, except the bad

result is that you bought a ton of domain names instead of trying out

everything Bangkok has to offer...

Back then I was still building websites alone. No outsourced

designers, developers or even content writers. It wasn’t easy.

This became a regular occurence every time I got extra motivated.

I even followed through by working on the sites myself, but it took

so much time to keep track of everything that I couldn’t focus on

promoting them enough anymore.

I wasn’t just stacking $100s. I was stacking empty wordpress blogs.

Thankfully, I already had some successes... a couple sites netting

me a nice total of $20,000-$50,000 per month in profit. Pretty cool,

considering I started with $2200 I got from selling my Rob Allen bass.

But how could I multiply and scale unless I got my act together? I got

really stressed out and stopped working out. I became addicted to

Zone bars, harvest cheddar Sunchips and protein shakes.

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P A G E 7

Then my biggest advertiser/merchant I sold for went bust suddenly,

AND they owed me $12k for that week. I never got that $12k.

Great. Being the noob I still was, I reactively switched to Adsense. I

went from making $50k/mo to... wait for it... can you handle this? ...

$3k/mo. That’s three thousand dollars per month. Some people would

love to have that but when you made $50k the month before, it kindof

sucks. Bigtime. Almost as much as your girlfriend buying groceries for

you and offering to pay part of your rent 6 months later...

After months of suffering in the deep dark pit of Adsense monies, I

stumbled upon a product similar to what I used to sell. I had serious

doubts about how it would sell, as it was an alternative.

I added it to my site in January 2007 and made $280 on top of the

adsense money. I added more promotions, tours and quality related

content to my site. February, $1900. March over $7000. April, around

$12,000. I plateaued around $26k/mo in profit and eventually sold the

project to an investor for high six figures.

SEO has always had its ups and downs. Every time Google does an

update, the complainers talk like it’s the end of the world, but...

There are big winners too and for 9 years, I’ve managed to keep most

of my sites on the winning side, netting me enough money to live

comfy and buy fast loud man toys like cars that spit fire or massage

me and my wife. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t feel qualified to offer

anyone advice about SEO and making a real living online.

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P A G E 8

I’m 26 and started this 8 years ago, and I’ve bought my fair share of

$2000 courses about how to make money online. It burns when I say

that. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I think all of us have gone

through that discovery phase and uh... tuition.

I am writing this book/memoir/course by request from my great friends

and customers in the SEHabitat community.

When I started SEHabitat, my target audience was guys making

around $50k+/mo, managing 5, 20, 50 or more websites.

Basically guys in my situation who were sick of managing all that link

building and SEO work in Excel spreadsheets. Imagine checking to

make sure your backlink you paid for is still on the seller’s website...

Now multiply that times 500, 1000 or more. You get the picture. It’s

better if it’s automated and you just get an email with any updates.

But I was wrong... When I started running ads for SEHabitat on

Facebook, everyone from newbies to agencies signed up!

They usually had 1-2 websites they were working on, and wanted to

see if my software could help them.

Well, if you don’t know much about SEO and are looking for a magic

push-button that makes you millions, I’m sorry but it doesn’t exist.

Why I Wrote This For You

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P A G E 9

I’d have my virtual assistant push that button ALL day while I swing

around on olympic rings along the pacific coast.

I realized I have a chance to help people AND potentially make

more money by providing more value. The coolest part? Actually

communicating and making friends in my audience for once instead

of being that invisible SEO guy. Money is only so much fun. I have to

create and feel like I’m serving a real purpose.

But living this dream wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t put in the

years of work building my SEO empire.

I’m now building a software-as-a-service company, SEHabitat; and

working on more educational material to help potential customers the

knowledge and experience I use every day to build profitable sites.

Let’s get started!

E S S E N T I A L S O F S E O

2

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P A G E 1 1

In this chapter I’ll take you through what I believe are the things to

focus your efforts on going into 2013.

If you’re experienced, you’ve probably heard most of it before because

it’s common sense. Other parts, you may never have heard of, and

might seem weird, but they are working for me, so I will share them

with you.

My goal is that you can pick up at least ONE thing from my course

and make more money as a result.

I’ll include some step by step later but for now, memorize these rules

of a successful (meaning highly profitable) SEO:

#1: Diversify Your Efforts

I cannot emphasize this enough. If you put all your eggs in one

basket, and Google decides it doesn’t like that basket anymore and

throws it in the river, ya done goof’d.

• Make and grow multiple moneymaking sites.

• Switch up your strategies on different sites.

A good friend of mine was a succesful SEO affiliate. He wasn’t huge -

his peak was around $20k/month, and it took a few years to build up.

To my horror, he lost it all when Google’s Penguin came pecking.

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P A G E 1 2

I remember many times I suggested ways he could diversify, and told

him I was doing the same to protect and hopefully grow my profits.

In the end he just stuck with that one site, and when it lost 90% of its

revenue, he had to unload a lot of luxuries and start looking for a job.

This sad turn of events could have been prevented by diversifying. As

I write this though, I’m talking with him about a strategy to get his site

ranking and producing income again.

#2: Get right back up.

You will get knocked down. Never go to sleep on your business

though. You can pick it back up and come back stronger if you play it

smart and stay unemotional. At least you don’t have to daytrade!

Rankings will always fluctuate. The closer you get to #1, the less they

tend to fluctuate. When you’re #1 you tend to stay for a long time.

If you get kicked from top 10 down to 400-500, don’t give up on that

site though. Sometimes it will bounce back. Another buddy of mine

had huge site making six figs/mo. Google killed it in 2007. It JUST

came back in early 2012 and is making bank again... You never know!

“But Ian, I don’t want to wait years hoping my site comes

back... and I can’t imagine continuing to work on it in that

time with the chance of little or no results!”

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If that’s what you’re thinking, then just 301 redirect to a new domain

name and leave the site the same.

If you have any links that you can control, change them to link to the

new domain as well since 301 only passes some of the link juice.

Within a couple weeks your site should regain much of its rankings.

How long will it stay? I don’t know. It seems to be different for each

site.

Sometimes the rankings stay for good. Other times the site loses rank

again after 30 days. That’s the game and if you’re gonna make money

in it, you have to adapt quickly and take action.

Bruce Lee said, “do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you

shall find a way around or through it.” In other words, you should adapt

to any situation quickly and without hesitation if you intend to succeed.

#3: Do NOT go to sleep.

If you bust your ass with huge focus, you will get results. They could

be lifechanging if you play your cards right, work smart and dedicate

yourself to your goals.

But when that success comes, especially for those of us who first saw

it in high school or early 20s, we tend to relax, kick our feet up on the

desk and well... get lazy.

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P A G E 1 4

We dream of that success and the feelings that will come with it;

the freedom to do what we want whenever we want.

When we get a taste of that lifestyle, for some reason we as humans

start to act like it will last forever.

I’ve made that mistake in my past. So have many of my friends who

had success in many different industries. But we didn’t let that be our

end. It was just a temporary downtime.

Try not to make the same mistake. Always Be Building! ABB! Ok not a

great acronym like Always Be Closing, but it’s even more important.

#4: Build Links Intelligently. Don’t Fall For Magic Button Scams.

Year ago when blog networks started to become popular, guys who

used to do the outsourced work for SEOs started to build companies

around it, and eventually became big service providers with forum

threads all over the popular marketing forums like WickedFire,

WarriorForum, BlackHatWorld, and others.

Some yielded results - I know because I used a couple of them

heavily at that time to get new sites ranking fast. But in spite of

the tremendous hype, extremely impressive diagrams and special

formulas, most of these services are a useless waste of money.

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P A G E 1 5

But since I’m always learning and testing, I’m always looking out for

any new link services or link building methods that seem like they

should work.

Just be careful with your money when it comes to outsourcing your

linkbuilding to someone else, or it could be a quick $100-$300 down

the drain for crappy spam links from oversold, outdated sources.

You want the magic words of link building? The truth? Well here it is:

If you want to be #1 and make tons of money, your job is to acquire

the most contextual links from the highest quality unique domains.

Just have more than your competitors and you should be good.

I still see sites with almost no social signals ranking top because

they have the most unique domains linking to them contextually. This

means their links are in sentences in the content of sites.

Here are a few link placements that work well for me right now:

• Guest posting (very effective these days, and also one of the

cheapest methods)

• Contextual links: Writing 2-5 sentences with your link in there

and placing it on an established relevant site

• Adding my link to real blogrolls with other legit related sites,

not the blogrolls full of “china wholesale” and other spam.

• Links on legit resources pages full of other authoritative sites

I would like to be associated with.

• Links from widgets and plugins (that’s a more advanced topic)

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P A G E 1 6

Here are my favorite tools for link building:

• CognitiveSEO or Ahrefs for analyzing inbound links of your

own site or your competitors. In many cases, these tools can

help you save money, simply acquiring links from the same

sites your competitors got them from.

• SEHabitat for organizing my link building efforts and keeping

track of their costs (including recurring monthly payments if

applicable, etc.).

It also helps me see which of my strategies are yielding the

biggest profits. I just look at my charts and easily make a

decision.

• Since I’m still working on integrating rank tracking with

SEHabitat, I have to use a 3rd party tracker. I use SERPFox

because it’s very simple. Many people like SERPBuddy,

AuthorityLabs and others.

There isn’t much more to it. The rest of it is hard work and creativity.

Link building is still the beating heart of your rankings, so the more

creative you can get, the better chance you have to succeed.

No matter how great your content is, it can’t even go viral or get

natural backlinks if nobody sees it; and nobody will see your content if

you have no rankings and traffic.

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P A G E 1 7

You get traffic by building links. Just make sure you are providing value

to visitors too. Doing so will increase your chances of a solid business

stemming from your projects.

Real life example: I’m about to start offering website setup service

packages on my web hosting affiliate sites. I expect to do pretty well

with a lot of work and fine tuning.

Don’t let affiliate commissions blind you to creative ways of building

your own business from your traffic.

#5: If you’re new to making money online, don’t only rely on me. I’m just a friend sharing his tricks of the trade.

If you’re totally new to making money online, you are confused

reading my book, and I suggest you start from the beginning with my

7 Free Video Lessons. I strive to do my best to help you make lots of

money with SEO, but I’m not the be-all end-all, nor is any other self-

proclaimed expert.

I am always reading up on the latest changes in Google’s algorithms,

searching for new ideas and angles for tasks like link building; finding

new tools to help me do my work faster and more effectively.

You should do the same if you want to become a multimillionaire.

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P A G E 1 8

#6: Quality Content = Less Frustration, More Fun, More Profit And Stability.

I’m thrilled to be saying this... These days, more and more of my

competitors are those sites which actually have well thought-out,

informative, beautifully presented content.

With that said, you still have to diversify with multiple sites. Things

change so often that your $30k/mo site could dip to $20k/mo in a

weekend due to an update that didn’t go great for you.

If you had multiple sites, chances are one of them would have gone

up some to balance it out. That often happens to me.

In the first penguin update, one of my high quality sites went down

but a newer, far inferior site started KILLING it and has been since.

Thankfully the other site also recovered most of the way but has

plateaued for now.

What makes quality content?

I could give you the vague Google version that is rehashed

everywhere, telling you to write for your audience.

You already know that. So, I’m going to list specifics about what is

working for me right now. Adapt and improve, my friend.

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P A G E 1 9

• Definitely use more than 1000 words on your pages. This

helps you get traffic from more longtail searches and probably

is seen as an authority signal in Google’s algorithms.

You don’t have to split things up into tons of separate longtail

pages anymore. Just a well presented, helpful and informative

resource will do fine.

• Format your content nicely with appropriate headings,

bolding, quotes, images, charts, graphs, etc.

• Informative sidebar (not just using the sidebar for menus and

ad banners, but info tables, signup forms, comment forms,

etc)

• Some kind of social activity - ability to register for an account

on the site, or even something like a form to submit product

reviews.

It’s all stuff you probably wish you could be rewarded for doing anyway

- creating high quality resources that actually help people.

Thankfully that is being rewarded right now, and the trend will

probably continue to improve for at least the next year while lazy

spammers fall in the rankings.

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P A G E 2 0

#7: Master Before You Outsource.

You know those guys?

...the guys who are so obsessed living the 4 Hour Workweek lifestyle

and outsourcing everything that they never make money?

I believe you cannot start a brand new business that way.

Your results will either be $0, mediocre or just... never as good as the

guys who know the biz inside and out.

These outsourcing guys never learn enough about any component of

their business to be wise enough to hire the right people and manage

them effectively.

They waste money hiring the wrong people and telling them to do

things that don’t matter. Even worse, they don’t know how much it

should cost or how long it should take.

They get lower quality work and less results. That means less profit.

As long as I’m breathing, I can learn something new. I take my

vitamins and hit the gym to stay sharp. If I can’t hit the gym i jump

rope outside.

Get that oxygen to your brain and learn a new skill that will help you

make more money today.

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P A G E 2 1

Once you’ve got a handle on it, you know exactly how to pay someone

else to do it for you for cheap.

Don’t listen to that 4 hour workweek stuff that glorifies being detatched

from your business. I like Tim Feriss, but you have to build the

business properly before you can remove yourself from it.

You gotta stick in the trenches! If you read this far, I have no doubt you

have the right mindset.

#8: Avoid Commercial Intent Keywords In Your Domain Name.

Whoa, I was talking about high-level business sense and now I’m

talking about what keywords should go in your domain name!

Some might argue against me on this one, but my results speak for

themselves. All my domain names that had obvious commercial intent

have fallen behind in 2012 consistently.

Compare this to my domains that are more neutral, and are

performing great with far less investment that the commercial intent

domains.

What is a commercial intent domain vs a neutral domain?

If your domain name is BestWidgetsGuide.com, that “best” must be a

negative signal of some kind. Maybe it signals that your site may be

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P A G E 2 2

an affiliate review site. As you can imagine, in most cases, sites with

names like that ARE thin affiliate sites with no real brand.

On the other hand, if your domain name is NiceWidgets.com, it may

get better results with less investment needed in things like link

building. I guess it just doesn’t trigger some filter in Google’s algorithm

at this time.

NOTE: I’m not saying you should eliminate commercial intent domains

from your portfolio/strategy. Just don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

H O W I B U I L D L I N K S F O R

P R O F I T

3

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P A G E 2 4

This is my favorite chapter. Oh I get all excited thinking about all the

cool ways to build links. We’re gonna talk about things like:

• Guest posting (real and paid)

• Weird ways to get links from themes

• Widget links

• Plugin links

• “Broken link building”

• Trading services for links, for cheap!

• Link bait etc

That’s great, but first I want to tell you which methods do NOT work.

You may already know this but I want to emphasize, since they can be

a huge waste of money and hurt your site:

• Profile link blasts (xrumer) - This one is most obvious. It’s

apalling how many people in forums are lead to believe that

this is their solution to #1 rankings. They take the bait and

spend the money, and get hurt.

• Link wheels and similar All-In-One type packages - There

may be guys with 1-2 posts to their name replying to forum

threads saying “omg dear the result is spectacle i order more!

good luck bros” but I don’t believe that for a second. These

don’t work anymore - all those social content sites like squidoo

etc have really gone down in link power. If your site suddenly

has a bunch of links from Squidoo lenses, whored out

social bookmarking profiles, wiki pages with 10k other links

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P A G E 2 5

spammed into them, .edu pages that auto-approve comments

from 10k spammers, etc... you’re in for a nasty surprise when

you check your rank tracker.

• 2-Way Link Exchanges - I guess this one is obvious but I’m

trying to make sure I don’t leave anyone at a disadvantage

here. I still have results from 3 way link exchanges but stopped

doing 2-ways years ago.

• In a 2 way link exchange, you link to their website, their

website links to yours.

• In a 3-way link exchange, link to their website, and their

website links to another website you own. NOTE: Not to

get geeky, but use common sense - if your websites are

both on the same IP address or have the same public

WHOIS info, it’s very easy to filter. Make sure to cover

your tracks there.

• Fiverr Packages - You can get these things elsewhere

but thath’s a good name for them. Look out for “10k blog

comments,” “5k directory submits” and similar. Useless. I don’t

care if it’s just $5... you don’t want that junk suddenly pointing

to your site. Spam signal, anyone?

I think you probably get the point. If it looks and is marketed like a

magic button for instant top rankings in Google, just forget about it.

Now let’s talk about what works.

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P A G E 2 6

Boost Profit With Guest Posting

If you’re scoffing at those words like I used to, you probably think

guest posting is for SEO newbies - for people who have never been in

the trenches; for people who have never achieved results for their own

websites but are happy to charge customers for SEO services.

Starting in 2011, guest posting has become increasingly effective

in achieving search rankings; especially with the relatively new

AuthorRank factor.

How does this help you?

It means that thanks to Panda and Penguin updates, you can spend

your time doing more real marketing instead of being stressed out and

trying to keep up with your competitors who suddenly appeared after

they bought some link package at BlackHatWorld.

As of now, the SEO landscape seems more natural. Of course, there

are always tricks to get ahead and get those rankings you want. Those

tricks are just completely different from what they were 2 years ago.

Here are my tips to make every guest post a ranking booster:

• In your author bio, link to your Google+ author profile which

you assocate with your website. This helps build your author

rank.

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• Add the site you guest posted on in your “contributor to” list in

your Google+ profile.

• Make an effort to increase the number of circles you are in,

and try to get ‘circled’ by real people who are actually in your

vertical, rather than fake accounts in other countries.

My results have been spectacular with guest posting.

Consider this: I often have to spend $75/month for a quality contextual

link which must be very carefully placed to help increase the chance

that Google lets it pass value to my site.

Many of the sites that wanted to charge me an arm and a leg for a tiny

contextual link have let me submit quality guest posts for FREE with

my link in there. It’s obvious how much of a win this is.

ROI is through the roof with guest posts! But what a pain to search

for sites, write for them, wait for submission and approval... and it’s

overwhelming to imagine doing it for just 20 posts in one month.

My solution is to outsource. ODesk is great for finding quality workers

at extremely affordable rates.

My #1 biggest tip for you is to find someone who is interested in your

niche, but may not offer writing service in their profile. For example,

one of my best guest posters is actually a web designer.

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Frank: From Frustrating Failure to $85,000/month Profit

Let me tell you a story. In one of my big niches, I was contacted by a

nice guy we’ll call eh.. Frank (name protected for his privacy).

Frank was trying really hard but thinking inside a box. He wasn’t

making much money at all and was really struggling.

He contacted me asking for tips and I gave him some because I could

tell he was a good guy.

He took one of them to heart, but I didn’t know it would work this

well for him. See, I mentioned that people have been distributing free

Wordpress themes for many years in order to get back links.

Turns out, Frank was already an accomplished Joomla developer with

a few sites where he sold themes and gave away free themes.

People from all around the world install his themes on their websites.

Since it’s Joomla, the site quality is even higher because they are

usually not blogs. They’re full-fledged websites for businesses and

even a couple government organizations from around the world.

But Frank was clever about how he took advantage of this asset.

He decided NOT to do the norm of publicly adding spammy links in

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the footer area of his themes (which site owners would surely remove

if they had a legit site). Here’s a typical bad theme backlink:

Frank was smarter than what you see above though. He hid his links

using CSS and noscript tags, so the site owners never noticed them.

Not only that - he also embeds some of them in relevant sentences,

and switches up the sentences all the time, so most sites linking to

him have a different unique sentence.

You’d still think that Google would filter for hidden links. Apparently it’s

STILL not that smart sometimes. This has been working for 4 years

and he hasn’t budged through all the Panda and Penguin updates.

Somehow he slips through. But why? It all comes back to this...

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Compared to any competitors, Frank’s sites have the most contextual

links from more unique, real websites.

Will this last forever for him? No way, but it’s lasted much longer than

I ever predicted, and think of how low his overhead is. He doesn’t buy

ANY links.

All his links (from over 3,000 unique domains) are from his themes.

He just did it in a clever way, and now he’s laughing all the way to the

bank every month. Wanna get rich? Think outside the box.

Action Plan: How To Do What Frank Does

You could hire a theme developer on oDesk to design and code your

themes for anywhere from $75-$250/theme.

Add your backlinks in noscript or hide them with CSS like this:

In the backend you have a script that lets you add backlinks you

want to insert into your themes. Each time the theme is generated for

Outside The Box Tip: If you wanna get REALLY hardcore with

this, get a good PHP developer to code up a script that generates

a unique version of your theme every time someone downloads

the theme. Then most of your links will be unique. Looks natural.

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download, the script should randomly choose one of your backlinks to

include hidden in the theme’s code.

Does this sound complicated and overwhelming right now? If so, just

move on. You can always refer back later, and it’s not essential to your

success. In fact, I don’t even do this myself, which proves that it’s

nothing more than another example of thinking outside the box.

Oh, and after you’ve got a theme with your links in it, you’ll need to get

people to download and use that theme.

If you’d like to learn more about building themes to get backlinks, you

should check out Jon Cooper’s awesome post at Point Blank SEO.

Here’s a list of sites you can submit your theme to for distribution:

• http://www.bloggingthemes.com/

• http://wpthemesdir.com/

• http://www.freewpblogthemes.com/

• http://www.freewpskins.com/

• http://www.fresheezy.com/

• http://www.ithemes.org/WordPress/

• http://themes.rock-kitty.net/ (lots of downloads from here)

• http://www.sponsoredtemplates.com/

• http://www.themesandmods.net/submit-theme/

• http://www.themesbase.com/

• http://themespack.com/

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How To Win With Plugin Links

Back in the good ole’ days you could get your links from your

wordpress plugin or a hitcounter script you owned, bomb Google with

thousands of exact match anchor text links.

Do that and you would own the SERPs.

Today, we are told that widget links are too easy for Google to filter.

But that is contradicted by the actual backlink profiles of the sites that

are ranking in Google.

In my experience, it works. But, just like with theme links, you need to

be clever about it. If you have 4,592 links pointing to your site using

the same anchor text, surrounded by the same source code and the

same images, then YES that’s super easy to filter.

But what if you get clever? Let’s say you have a simple hit counter

script/plugin people can install on their sites.

Here’s what I would do:

• The plugin should connect to your database remotely and add

the user’s website to your list of target websites.

• For each website in your database, you can enter a link and

anchor text; or even better, a sentence, and include your

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anchor text/link in there.

• Ensure that each site using your plugin/widget has a unique

sentence with your link in it.

• Take advantage of this opportunity to vary your anchor texts.

You may wonder how you can expect your link to stay there. After

all, users don’t like to be forced to link out to something, so they will

probably remove your plugin and find something else. Or will they?

I recommend making the link unobtrusive to the user, but still visible

to Google. Use CSS properties such as text-indent to move the link off

screen. Another option is noscript tags.

Trade Your Skills For Links

Someday you’re going to walk away from all this SEO. Who knows?

Maybe you’ll do charity work or become an angel investor.

So what’s the hurt in putting in a little unusual, extra effort to preserve

some of your profits you’ll need later? You don’t want to keep hunting

income forever. Someday it will be nice to have a stack in the bank

and ability to live off the interest.

Before you break out the wallet to pay someone for a link, look for

ways you could help them. Studies have even shown that people who

naturally want to help others totally change mindset when money is

offered/involved in the transaction.

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If the amount doesn’t stimulate their brain’s pleasure center enough,

they may say no or ask for more money.

On the other hand, if you approach that same person offering to

redesign the header of their website for free, and show them some

of your design work, it’s highly likely that you’ll get a link back, and

probably in a better position than if you bought it. You may even get a

tweet and other social signals out of it.

Just thinking outside the box, yet again.

Link Bait For Traffic And Branding

This requires great effort up front, but is made much easier than

years ago, thanks to the power of our social networks like Twitter and

Facebook.

Typical examples of link bait include:

• Publicity stunts (GoDaddy supporting SOPA and changing

their mind = TONS of quality links from bloggers and news

outlets). This was just too easy.

• Virality - I hate to reference this but I heard from the original

owner of 2 Girls One Cup that he didn’t spend much on it,

he made bank from displaying CPA affiliate ads on its official

website, and then sold the site for high six figures.

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• Infographics are so 2011... but still effective! - I think the next

generation of infographics will be interactive. Maybe typically

using jQuery parallax slider techniques.

I’ll spare you the typical link bait lecture you might have read already,

and give you a real life example from my own business:

A Real Life Example

I’m working on a link bait piece for one of my tech niche sites. This

is going to be an interactive infographic called something like “Top 7

Worst Polluting Datacenters In The World.”

Additionally, I might as well create a “Top 7 Greenest Datacenters

In The World” to make the most of my time spent in the Eco-related

research.

I’ll share these on the site’s Facebook/Twitter accounts, and run some

cheap Facebook ads for them. I’ll get my assistant to reach out to Eco

bloggers notifying them of my content.

Over time, I will get a few high quality links. Or if it goes viral among

the general public, I can count on receiving tons of high quality links.

Sounds like a long shot, but just like with anything else, it’s a numbers

game and the results come with experience and consistent effort.

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My Typical Linkbuilding Blueprint

I feel weird sharing my “secret sauce” but to be honest, it’s not secret,

as plenty of other people get great results using the same strategies.

I think the real secret sauce is consistency.

Here’s how I build links:

• For a new website, I start with guest posts. They look natural

because any new site would have to be featured elsewhere to

gain some traction.

• I always use social media. I set up Twitter accounts and

Facebook pages for all of my websites and actively use them.

This provides positive social signals and some backlinks that I

think are almost required to show a site is “real” these days.

• Once the website is a month old, I start using a tool like

CognitiveSEO or AHrefs to browse my competitors’ backlinks

and contact the webmasters linking to them, to see if I can

acquire a link as well. It’s definitely over 90% success rate.

I try to continue acuiring a few of these links a week, or a

month, depending on the budget I allocated for that site.

Gradually ramp up over time.

• I try to maintain link velocity. If you were Google, and you

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wanted to filter out sites that acquire links unnaturally, what

would you do to accomplish that? They monitor link velocity

as part of the link graph across the entire web, so if a site

acquires links and then loses a bunch of them, that looks fishy!

Try to ensure you build links that will stay live. I try to increase

the number of live, high quality links every month.

• Once the site is 2-3 months old, it has a strong enough

backlink profile to begin testing other more time intensive and

creative methods.

• When the site is close to “paying its rent” so to speak (earning

enough money to cover the costs of running it and paying

for the links, etc), I begin to invest more time and money into

enabling growth. That means figuring out ways to increase the

number of high quality pages on the site; directories, forums,

tutorials, dictionaries, tools, searchable/sortable databases,

search engines and more. All discussed in the authority site

section of the next chapter.

Start with a simple site and grow it consistently over time, expanding it

to add more value.

Meanwhile, diversify by using similar strategies on other sites. The

more sites you are actively growing, the more chances you have for

one to hit it big in a Google update and rake in the profit.

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How Quickly Should I Expect Results?

The toughest challenge my private coaching students face when

they’re building a full-time income from ther websites is the amount of

time it takes to get results.

You need patience and ridiculous work ethic to succeed. Once you

have momentum and a great income coming in, you can relax a little,

or a lot... depends on the lifestyle you desire.

Based on my 8+ years of experience, here is my advice to you:

• For a new website, give it 2-3 months of solid work before

expecting any revenue. Google needs time to trust your site,

but mostly you need time to build quality backlinks which

enable Google’s algorithm to rank you for your target keywords.

• Think long term. Don’t quit your full time job until you’ve at

least replaced your current income. This is about building high

yield investments; properties/assets that will pay dividends to

you for years to come. I could quit working now and take a year

off, and still make the same money. Do I? No, because it’s too

much fun, and I want to keep growing my portfolio of websites.

• If you don’t have any results after 3 months, you may be

targeting the wrong keywords, or your site doesn’t encourage

people to click ads or buy products you sell as an affiliate.

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If you take my advice in this book to heart and really apply it with

action and discipline, I’m sure you will see very promising results

within 3 months of work.

If you make back the money your site owes you in that time, you’re

doing a good job. Continue to build from there, increasing your traffic

and revenue by building more links and adding more quality content to

your site. Build an authority site in your niche. Your little project could

turn into a popular site you could sell for six, seven figures or more.

Outside The Box Tip: Which will get traffic more quickly? A site

with 10 pages, or a site with 10,000 pages (like a directory)? If you

chose option #2, you’re right. You can buy a database listing local

businesses for example, and quickly build a high traffic site.

These sites typically turn a profit more quickly than small product

review sites for example. But it’s also more difficult to make them

quality, useful sites, and they have a higher possibility to get hit by

Google’s “Panda” site quality algorithm.

My advice is to keep a mix of both directory sites and small,

quality-over-quantity sites to help balance your portfolio.

If you need help implementing this strategy, I’m willing to make my

team available to set it all up for you. (ian@sehabitat.com)

Y O U R S E O E M P I R E

4

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It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a boutique agency doing

SEO for clients. Everyone would love to generate passive income from

a simple affiliate website. You don’t have to do customer support or

manage orders, or anything of that sort. You just quietly work to grow

your traffic and sales (on your own schedule) while the checks roll in.

The sad truth is that most people who get into this “business” don’t

have the balls to stick with it through the long weeks or months

without a single dollar returned on the time/money invested.

But if you stick with it long enough to achieve results, you can never

really turn back... It’s too fun and too lucrative.

I’m writing this book for those of us who know results take time and

consistent effort, and the more you put in, the more you get back. In

fact, if you look for clever ways to make the most of your resources,

you can scale your little $5k/month to $10k, $20k, $50k, $250k... It’s

just a matter of building. Remember? Always be building.

In this chapter, I’ll open up the box and show you exactly how I

built my $2.7 million dollar SEO empire from nothing. This is a long

chapter, so if you need to, do some yoga; or 100 burpees for time; or

just grab a refreshing drink and proceed.

Outside The Box Tip: Forget everything you’ve seen about

making money online. The real secret to success here is to think

of it all like long term investments. You’re “buying long and holding”

so to speak. You’re building a diversified portfolio for maximum

long-term performance. Take this to heart, and you will succeed.

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Build Authority Sites.

...but what is an authority site, anyway?

Let’s learn by example. What do all these sites have in common?

• Drugs.com

• RxList.com

• MayoClinic.com

• WebMD.com

• EverydayHealth.com

Besides ranking in the top 10 consistently for “phentermine” in Google,

these sites all have some variation of...

• Community (forums, groups, public journals, etc)

• Helpful tools/calculators/etc

• Tutorials/How To Articles/Videos

• Searchable database of some content

• At least 1 million pages indexed in Google, going up to as

many as 44 million pages.

You may assume they all started out with huge funding and many

employees, but they didn’t.

Many years ago, they were brand new, medium quality sites consisting

mostly of articles. They gradually built up by continually adding value

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for users, and I believe many sites like these are actually whitelisted

by Google to prevent algorithm updates from killing their rankings.

Remember, as you may have heard, Google doesn’t want to look

stupid. They want the high quality sites to rank best. If crap is ranking

in the top 10, they look stupid. So, even if your backlink profile is

“super whitehat” you can get slapped in a manual review.

But you and I both know there’s always some bad sites in the top 10.

Even though that is true, the bad sites lose way more often than the

good sites, on an individual basis. So the best strategy is to create

high quality sites, since the potential return and longevity is far greater.

“If I spend so much time on one site, how am I building an empire?”

Start Good, Become Great

All of my authority sites started out as blank wordpress blogs.

Then they became small, thin affiliate review sites.

I gradually added to them until they became my most solid revenue

producers with the highest profit, due to the trust they build, and the

volume of longtail search traffic they receive from all the content such

as tutorials, tools, forum posts, blog posts, etc.

You can do this too! It’s really hard to build for months without results,

but it’s absolutely brilliant when you can take a year off from work and

still have big fat wires landing in your bank account every month.

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How To Choose Your Niches

The best salesmen can sell anything. They just have to believe in it

and know it like the back of their hand.

Some say you should choose an easy niche for your first site. I think

they’re very wrong and that it’s a horrible strategy. Why? The most

competitive niches have the largest demand, and therefore the biggest

potential revenue.

First, find out where the money is. Then filter out the niches you’re not

ethically comfortable with such as gambling, for example.

From the remaining niches, choose one which you find most

interesting. If you aren’t interested in any of them, then you don’t know

enough about any of them.

If you learn enough to know way more than the average person does

about mortgage loans, you’ll have a wealth of information you want to

share with your visitors.

You know your site will help them get a better, safer deal on a loan,

and that feels good. Now suddenly, you’re interested in mortgage

loans and you build sites that help people get better deals on

mortgages. So screw building that horse website. You are a mortgage

loan selling machine.

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I build in the most competitive niches on purpose. That’s all I’ve

ever done, so that’s all I can recommend to you. I don’t have any

experience in tiny girly-man niches. Lol...

Here are my favorite niches. Enter at your own peril. Do it.

• Diet

• Insurance

• Web Hosting

• PC Software (recovery, drivers etc)

...and here are a few I haven’t gotten into yet, but I plan to:

• Loans/Mortgages

• Credit cards

• Cord blood (thinking a directory here...)

• Education

• Lawyers

• Credit repair

Each of these has many subniches you can either cover on multiple

sites, or all on one big site. I usually start a site targeting a subniche,

and gradually develop it over a couple years to target many subniches.

If you’ve got the drive, you can make ridiculous money in these niches.

I make good money and I’m not even CLOSE to dominating anything.

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How To Choose Your Keywords

If you are going to make money online, you need to attract the right

people to your websites or landing pages. The best traffic is natural

search traffic from people who have commercial intent. That means

they are looking to buy something, or at at least in their research/

comparison phase of the buying process.

If you’re feeling a little lost, here are a few ideas:

• buy widgets

• purchase widgets

• widget reviews

• best widgets

• widget 83A914 (model number. They know what they want)• widgets in [city], [state]

• widgets prices

• widget providers

Don’t choose keywords based on how easy you think they are.

Choose keywords based on the potential revenue if you rank. Ranking

for that keyword may not be as hard as it was 1 years ago. Especially

these days, I often see sites with a small number of quality links

ranking very well because they also have good social signals.

Once you understand these basic concepts, you know what types of

content you should have on your sites. It gets easier after the first few.

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How To Scale Your Profits

This was my biggest challenge. Once I had a site bringing in decent

money every month, how could I replicate it?

Here’s some motivation: 1 site making $600/month sounds doable,

right? It’s not much, considering there are guys making $250k/month.

Build 19 more sites. Let’s say 12 of them do alright and the others

fail for some reason. That’s $7200/month from 12 sites. If one goes

down, you don’t lose your whole income, so this is a safer investment

than building 1 site with the risk of something happening to traffic.

I recently got a site ranked with just 3 quality guest posts. The first

one made $80 in September. It jumped to $1600 in October, and is on

track to do over $2000 in November, one of the worst months of the

year for that niche. Total cost? Under $100.

I copied the site from another one of mine that does well, and just

changed the content, colors, logos and all that. I invested under $100

in guest posts, and I spent a few hours copying and tweaking, etc.

I have copied this site to 10 other domains and just started guest

posting work. A couple posts have gone up and traffic is growing.

Soon these sites will be generating over $1,000/month each.

By January, I’ll have added another $10,000/month with a big

investment of time, but a small investment of money.

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It’s not always this easy and cheap. But I never would have discovered

it if I wasn’t always trying to build and learn more.

Compare building a business online to fighting as a mixed martial

artist. When MMA hit the fight scene, there was a good reason those

guys were kicking ass. They practiced many different skills, which

gave them a huge advantage over single-art opponents.

If you’re going to stay ahead, you have to be a constant learner.

But the #1 mistake people make is to learn but never take action.

There are many people who have spent thousands of dollars on guru

products promising them an easy “system” they can follow exactly to

make “$694.12/day” or something like that. By the time the customer

is finished with the product, they’ve found another course which

promises them more riches; and they’re forever stuck in that cycle of

buying info-products without taking action.

You are probably an action-taker though, since you read this far,

and this book is not filled with promises of instant riches to keep you

turning the pages... In fact it’s filled with my exact processes I used to

make my money and build the first stage of my online empire.

You know it will take immense work to achieve your goals. I want

to help you avoid the mistakes I’ve made along the way, and take

advantage of the successes I’ve built by trial and error.

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Want To Get Rich? Get Organized.

If you’re going to have a fighting chance in scaling a measly $1,000/

month up to $10k, $50k, $200k or more, you absolutely MUST keep

your entire business organized.

Ask me anytime, and I could tell you very quickly...

• how much I’m spending per month on links for any site in my

massive portfolio

• which sites aren’t worth their link expense anymore

• which of my sites is netting the highest profit margin

• which of my SEO strategies is yielding the highest profit

(based on tests on my sites)

• A report of every single expense I’ve ever incurred for a site.

Why is this ability so valuable? I’ll go back to my MMA fighter example

again: The champions all know their bodies very well, so they are able

to make effective decisions during training. They also make split-

second strategic decisions during fights. If you know you injured your

knee, you would adjust your training regimen and fighting strategy to

compensate for the setback.

PPC and media buys are another example. When you have money

on the table for every click or impression, you need tracking software

to show you which campaign tests work; split test more until you get

profitable, and continuously optimize to increase that profit.

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How To Organize Your SEO Empire

Imagine you have 10 sites. At any given time, you’ll be dealing with:

• content writing

• link building

• social media signals/management

• programming/development

• web/graphic design

• system administration/hosting

• SEO strategy development based on the current SEO

environment, taking into account the site’s history (any

penalties, how it fared in panda/penguin updates, etc)

If you do work for clients, multiply that by your number of clients. Now

imagine trying to remember what’s going on with all of those types of

work for every single site. That’s a quick way to kill your productivity

and skyrocket your stress level. Not what we want...

You can solve this with spreadsheets. In fact, that’s what most of us

big affiliates and agencies have been doing for a long time.

Free Stuff: I included some free sample spreadsheets along with this

book to get you started. You can use them to keep track of your SEO.

Why I Stopped Using Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets sure beat trying to remember it all; but they have their

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limitations. For example, spreadsheets cannot track your links for you

and send you an alert if one of your links is removed or nofollowed by

the website owner who promised to keep it up for you. They also can’t

automatically tell you how much you’ve spent on a link you bought

9 months ago, which you pay for every 3 months. Those are just a

couple of the biggest pitfalls and liabilities in using spreadsheets.

Boost Your Profits By Avoiding My Mistakes

After my first couple of successes, I used to spend most of the day

working out and then going to gymnastics to work on tumbling. I also

played drums, guitar, bass throughout the day or just went for a joyride

in one of my cars. It was awesome. I really felt free.

I was still managing/tracking my SEO in spreadsheets, but it was

alright because I only had a couple sites. But when my empire started

to grow, I got depressed. I was spending hours of my day doing really

unproductive tasks:

• Looking through my spreadsheets

• checking websites to see if they still had my links up

• checking revenue stats for certain date ranges

• totalling up my expenses

• wondering if I missed something

Result: I often failed to make a quick decision about what strategy

I’d use going forward on a site. Why? I didn’t have a clear way to see

what was working for me.

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After all my busy work trying to piece together data and get some

perspective about what’s working and where my money’s going, there

was no time to do real work on my sites. I just floundered around until

I decided to try something, or I would default back to working on my

biggest producing sites, doing the same things I was used to doing.

There just wasn’t any more room for improvement or creativity in

my brain, as it was clouded by frustration from trying to do too many

things at the same time. I didn’t have altitude over my empire. I was

running around in the streets without much direction.

This is why I built SEHabitat. I mentioned it to a few friends in the

space, and they also wished they had a toolset like that. So I opened it

up, polished everything, and I am constantly working on new features

to help myself and my clients save time and make more money.

If you want to save time by eliminating boring tedious tasks from your

SEO work, and you want to make more money from your SEO, then

you should try SEHabitat. Try it free for 30 days (no card required).

After you sign up, I’ll send you an email so we can brainstorm ways

for you to grow your business. Even if you don’t decide to become

a paying client, you can still keep your free account for access to

members-only services and important SEO updates.

So, back to our goal in this section: building an SEO empire, instead

of a hut or village. On the next page, I’ll summarize my tips to help you

get organized so you can make decisions/take action more easily.

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Summary

Organize your sites into networks, by niche. For example, you may

have a Diet Network, a Finance Network, a Fitness Network, etc.

For each website, keep track of these key pieces of information:

• How much do you spend on links every month?

• Are all your links still live after you acquired them, or have any

been removed by the webmaster?

• What is your total revenue vs total expense, and therefore

what is the return on investment (% figure)?

• Does the site still owe you any money? (has it turned a profit

yet or not?)

• What SEO strategies are you using on the site?

• Has the site lost or gained rankings during any Google

updates, ever?

• Is there anything you can learn from this site that will help you

succeed in building more sites and increasing your profit?

Many of the “make money online” gurus try to attract customers by

talking like making money online is as easy as sitting at the beach

with a pina colada. First of all, that’s boring after 1 day. Second, it’s

so not true. I’ve put in years of effort to find my own way and build my

online empire of affiliate sites. You must put in great effort if you are to

reap great rewards and live the lifestyle you dream of. It’s WORTH IT!

F I N D Y O U R O W N W A Y

5

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What? I’m giving you my success blueprint, and telling you to go find

your own way? Yes, and here’s why...

It’s a well known truth among successful people that even if you give a

newbie a step-by-step plan to achieve success the same way you did,

it never works out that way.

I don’t mean you shouldn’t be reading this book or that you shouldn’t

try to learn from others who are successful. My point is that you need

to keep your mind open and think outside the box.

For example, if you take action on just a few of the strategies I share

in this book, you will increase your odds of making a good living.

But what if you went beyond this book? What if you viewed each

piece of my blueprint as the beginning of a branch as it grows out of

a strong, resiliant tree? As the branch grows, you would find your own

way through plateaus and create your own, custom-tailored success

that nobody else has achieved the same way.

My #1 Success Rule

When people ask me what my number one rule is for success, I

always tell them this:

Find your own way. Build something from nothing. Think outside the

box. Apply ridiculous work ethic to providing value to the world in your

own unique way. Your journey can begin in a similar way to many

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other people, but it’s those who think outside the box who build

something unique and come out on top.

Every wildly successful person I’ve studied achieved that success by

discovering their own unique angle, even if it’s just a marketing angle,

and working hard to scale from there.

How To Set Up Websites

If you don’t know how to set up a website yet, please listen to my

advice here, as it will save you from much suffering: Do not learn from

guru products. Learn as if you wanted to become a web designer and

developer. Learn how to create a beautiful website that is helpful to

users and provides value to the world somehow.

This may sound like idealism, but it’s not. It’s more about your own

success than you may realize. By learning those skills, you are

defeating the mindset that causes people to feel desperate and take

shortcuts. You are also building your own value in society because you

have new skills you could offer to others.

I could stop everything I’m doing and start working full time or

freelance as a web designer or developer if I so desired. This is

because I’ve forced myself to be disciplined and learn the skills

myself. This has paid huge dividends in enabling me to hire the right

people for contract work/outsourcing. I know how to do it, so I know

how they should be doing it and I can spot the rockstars easily.

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Where To Learn

Below I will list some of my favorite resources I use in my ongoing

quest to become a better web designer and developer. You’ll notice

almost all of them are free resources.

• Lynda.com ($39/month or something... best education money I

ever spent... I’m even learning how to code my own iOS apps.)

• WPBeginner.com - for Wordpress newbies

• StackOverflow.com - for answers to development questions

• Wordpress.StackExchange.com - get help with Wordpress

Where To Find Design Inspiration

• HongKiat.com

• Artatm.com

• CoDrops.com

• SmashingMagazine.com

Where To Get Cheap Premade Stuff

• GraphicRiver.net

• ThemeForest.net

• CodeCanyon.net

• and FREE code examples are at CoDrops.com

H E L P F U LT O O L S A N D R E S O U R C E S

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I’m working to build the best SEO toolkit in SEHabitat, but that doesn’t

mean I don’t use other tools and resources to help me profit. I’m going

to briefly review each tool I use, and you can decide if it’s right for you.

You can also view this list (and any updates) at SEHabitat.com.

Cognitive SEOPlans starting at $19/mo (CognitiveSEO.com)

This is hands-down the most useful backlink analysis software I’ve

ever used. Razvan (the chief architect and owner) is constantly

improving everything from the interface to the metrics and reporting.

Why would you use this tool?

If you want to know which backlinks are helping your competition rank,

just paste their domain name into this tool, and you will see a list of

metrics showing what types of links they have, where they’re coming

from, where they are placed on the page, how strong the domain is,

and much more. This makes link building easier for me.

SERPFoxPlans starting at $10/mo (SERPFox.com)

SEHabitat doesn’t have rank tracking at this time, so I use a simple

rank tracker called SERPFox to see where my sites stand for their

keywords. When SEHabitat includes rank tracking, I will update you.

Do you need this tool? Nah, just need any good rank tracking tool.

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SEOMoz ProPlans starting at $99/mo (SEOMoz.org)

I let SEOMoz crawl my sites and alert me of any errors and potential

SEO problems that could decrease my rankings. They have keyword

tracking too but I don’t use it.

Open Site Explorer is also helpful for analyzing the strength of both

competitor’s backlinks, as well as the strength of their site, and the

strength of potential sites you want to get links from. Comparing the

MozRank of two potential sites can help you decide which one to

invest in getting a link from.

Do you NEED it? Nope, it’s just helpful if you have a very large site.

Backlinks.comInstant contextual links for cheap. Low quality but can help. (backlinks.com)

Do not use this as your main link building method. Also, do not use it if

you depend on revenue from only one website.

These are low quality contextual links on pretty questionable sites in

questionable placements, such as in tiny text below the footer.

Nevertheless, I still see people ranking with them, so I use them

too for my smaller sites that wouldn’t ruin my world if they lost some

rankings in a Google update or a manual review.

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GrindMetricsPricing varies by current link offering (GrindMetrics.com)

Nohel at GrindMetrics provides unique link placements inside high

quality content he writes personally. He specializes in placements

on .EDU sites or city newspapers. Good guy - get on his email list to

receive alerts about any new offerings. He keeps it pretty private so

you won’t find much on his site.

Market MongoosePlans starting at $499/mo (MarketMongoose.com)

I found this company on BlackHatWorld. How ironic! They offer very

solid link building packages which are like nothing else available.

For example, they will build apps for your site and submit them to

iTunes store, Google Play/Android Market, etc so you get backlinks

from those stores, which are a quality signal.

Their social signal offerings are also very well rounded, and they have

some other things in the works right now involving buildling custom

search engines for clients and filling them with tons of pages based on

data they collect from search engine APIs. Sounds complicated, but

I’m sure they’d be glad to explain it to you if you’re interested.

I’m having them integrate one into one of my sites, so I’ll keep you

updated on how that goes after I have it set up.

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Google DocsFree (docs.google.com)

I’m just starting to test upcoming employee account features in

SEHabitat, so until those are ready, I use Google docs to organize my

guest post campaigns with various service providers on oDesk.

I send my workers a list of sites and target keywords, and share a

template spreadsheet with them, so they can fill it out with sites they’re

trying to guest post on, along with the status of each post and more.

Free: I’ve included an example spreadsheet you can use.

oDeskFilter through the time-wasters and you’ll find hidden gems. (oDesk.com)

oDesk is my favorite outsourcing marketplace. I’ve done a lot of

business on there - over $40,000 last time I checked, and considering

how cheap the talent can be on there, I got a lot for my money. As with

any outsourcing marketplace, you’ll be inundated with people who

work in an agency in India, and say things like:

“Dear, I am with Super Pro Web Agency in Bangladesh. I have viewed

your job posting and believe I am in great compatibility with your

requirements. Please see our portfolio blah blah blah”

Call my cynical, but I just hide those applications instantly because

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in my experience, those are the people who waste my time with bad

communication, clearly lack understanding of my requirements, take

too long to deliver the work, etc.

So, when I post a job/project on oDesk, I usually require the following

from anyone who applies:

• 4.5 star rating minimum

• minimum of 100 hours billed on oDesk

• Independent contractor, NO agencies/firms.

• For design work, I’ve had best results with people in Eastern

Europe or the Philippines.

• For development work, I’ve found some great people in India

and various parts of East Asia

• For system administration/web server optimization I’ve found

the best results with people in Eastern Europe. In fact, I can

recommend Vladislav Mikhaylov from Moscow, Russia. He is

not cheap ($45/hour) but he works fast and REALLY knows

what he is doing with anything related to networking, unix/

linux, Amazon EC2/S3 and more.

ScrapeBoxOne time fee of $97 (ScrapeBox.com)

In my opinion, most people use ScrapeBox the wrong way, and only

scratch the surface of its capabilities. I don’t even do much with it

except for scraping Google for potential sites to get links from.

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SEHabitatPlans starting at $20/month (see reasons why it will help you)

In its current iteration, SEHabitat does the following automatically, so I

can spend time on real work that actually grows my business:

• tracks my backlinks to alerts me if any are removed,

nofollowed or dofollowed

• automatically tracks my expenses for each website, including

generating recurring link expenses.

• gives me charts of each website’s profit/performance over

whatever time period I want to view.

• keeps all my link deals organized, so I always know the status

of each deal, whether it’s in negotiation, live or cancelled, etc.

• keeps all my SEO campaigns and sites in one place,

organized in an empire, but for any clients I’m helping, I can

also add clients and their own websites separately from mine.

As I’m writing this, SEHabitat does not track your keyword rankings or

display web traffic/analytics for you. I’m working on integrating those

tools and more.

My goal is to make SEHabitat an easy choice for both webmasters

and agencies; an all-in-one toolkit that makes you more money and

saves you time.

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Great Online CommunitiesThese are the communities I’ve been with/learned from for years.

IMGrind.com Private Forums (paid membership)Who do you think makes more money? The guy who has a site

promoting a product directly; or the guy who has a site promoting his

own free or cheap product/service which helps the target audience,

and also gives him a list of leads to further monetize by promoting

related helpful products as an affiliate? I choose #2.

Ruck and Ryan over at IMGrind forums are great teachers of this

more advanced affiliate strategy. Many affiliates using paid traffic

sources wouldn’t be profitable if they hadn’t built funnels and lists.

WickedFire.com

The Traffic/SEO forums are a great place to start. Read before you

ask questions; and try to make your first post a contribution. :)

StackThatMoney.com

My favorite part of the wealth of info here is all the case studies on

split testing landing pages and ads to boost profit. Good for your sites.

Jon Cooper (Point Blank SEO)

To see why a simple blog made my resource list, just check out Jon’s

famous post: Complete List of Link Building Strategies

T A K I N G I T F U R T H E R

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If you’re serious about reaching your goals and making a difference in

your life (and lifestyle), there is plenty of useful, actionable advice in

this book and you can begin implementing it today.

I walked you through how I build websites that become valuable

income-producing assets. I showed you how to stay organized and

multiply your efforts to grow more of these sites and build a portfolio.

I also showed you how to build links and get rankings so your sites

pull in massive, targeted traffic.

If you read this far and you’re stuck on something which is preventing

you from taking action, that’s a damn shame! You can solve that either

by doing a Google search to find your answers, or contacting me

(ian@sehabitat.com or post on the Facebook page).

I’m relatively new to teaching, so I’m always learning and improving

how I teach. If you don’t get something, tell me. If you have a “stupid”

question and you can’t find the answer anywhere you look, ask me.

I do accept private coaching clients, but my time is limited so we’ll

need to get to know eachother a bit first before I know if we’re a good

fit and I can help you.

If you are short on time and want it done right, I’m also making my

team available to build sites. Again, this is only available to certain

individuals who stand out. I’m not trying to make it seem like an

exclusive club. I have limited time, and it’s my responsibility as a

teacher/mentor/friend/caring human being to give that time to people

who display creativity and work ethic and take action.

P E O P L E I W A N T T O

T H A N K

8

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You.

Thank you for reading my book. I really opened up about many things

I’ve kept only for close friends who wanted to learn about how I make

a great living from home and enjoy the freedom with a fun, rewarding

lifestyle and lots of family time.

So, it means a lot to me that you took the time to consider my advice,

and in all likelihood, you’re probably someone who has encouraged

me in my journey building SEHabitat.

Without you, there would be no point in writing this book and keeping

it up-to-date; which I discovered I REALLY enjoy doing, since I chose

to write like I’m talking to my friends, instead of being super serious.

Now for specific people in no particular order...

D. (name kept private by request)

Thank you for being my first student years ago, and taking my

teachings to heart.

You put in the hard work and achieved immense results, all while

raising two young children with your wonderful wife and staying true

to yourself and your hobbies. You’re a true example of what can be

achieved by taking action and being consistent. Even if it doesn’t last

forever, nothing can hinder someone with your drive and discipline.

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Loren Yadeski

Thanks for the support since day one. You have encouraged me

during times I had to pivot SEHabitat. You can see the real potential

and the real value I’m building, and it’s great to know you’ve got my

back in that respect. We’ve never met in person, but doesn’t matter, I

consider you a friend.

Allen Wong www.RegoApps.com

You contributed to my inspirationg to write this book. As you know, I

gained a lot by reading your book, Lifehacked, learning of all that you

and your family have been through; and how you powered through it

with discipline, creativity, passion and love for your family to create a

thriving app business.

Congratulations on becoming a published author. You deserve it and

I’m glad so many others can read your story and helpful advice.

Timothy Sykes www.TimothySykes.com

You are crazy and you’re a great guy. I love the business you’ve built

leveraging your skills, connections and experience to actually help

people make a living from trading.

You showed me that a teacher can be crazy and hype things up AND

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truly make a positive difference in people’s lives. Previously I saw

only the hype part from others offering to teach/sell advice and similar,

but thanks to you, I know I can help others. I wish you and your

students increasing success and many good times!

Secret Entourage www.SecretEntourage.com

Don Sabatini, Alan Dang, Navid Norouzi and the whole team.

Thank you for your support and for all you do for the world. Your hard

work helps to arm young entrepreneurs with more than inspiration.

You help us avoid costly mistakes, and teach us creative ways to get

more out of life and live the lifestyles we desire without being wasteful.

Your advice comes from successful entrepreneurs both young and

older, who share their failures and successes, and give us actionable

advice to increase our chances of success. It’s all about finding your

purpose and thinking outside the box about how you can offer value

to the world in a big way. Building that one day at a time, one person

CAN make a positive change in the world.

Ralph Ruckman www.IMGrind.com

My thank you list is full of people who rose like the phoenix from fire,

and you are no exception. You never cease to impress me with the

value you provide and the work ethic you apply to everything you do.

You’ve changed many peoples lives and made many millionaires in

the affiliate space. You also have a really big heart and never denied

me your time.

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Andy Cho

Since we met in high school we’ve been like brothers. Your family

welcomed me warmly and I love all of you. You’ve always had my back

and been there when I needed your friendship and advice, business

brainstorming, random adventures or just good company.

John Roescher

Thank you and the rest of the Handsome team for your beautiful

work on the UX of SEHabitat, and for your warm welcome when I

stopped by in Austin. John, you’ve been a good friend for years and

I’m so happy to see your remarkable agency succeed. You provide

tremendous value to your clients, and the Handsome team is building

some brilliant internal projects. Cheers!

Mike Hill

You taught me so much about the infrastructure/logistics of running

my own online business. You’re also a genuine guy with a big heart

and a desire to help others succeed. Thank you for sharing your

knowledge and always treating me with respect.

Ryan McDonnell

Ryan, you’re a brilliant developer and a good friend. Thanks for all

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the work you did for me back before you launched your own full time

businesses. I’m so happy for you and the way everything has turned

out. Have fun remodeling your new house with your soul mate!

Clement Wong

You are the man! It’s been a pleasure watching you grow to a 20-

person company helping big brands make higher ROI from their online

marketing and social media efforts. You are an inspiration, and you’ve

always supported me. You even spent an hour on the phone with me

giving me an agency’s perspective on SEHabitat and confirming my

upcoming strategy to grow the company. Thank you!

Nick Lister

Thanks for always believing in me and encouraging me to build

SEHabitat. You’re a good guy and I’m glad to see you’ve achieved

your own success, and a healthy peaceful lifestyle. I’m glad we met.

Eric Jones

You’ve been an active supporter of SEHabitat since I first put up my

facebook page, and you’ve made it clear that you’re confident in what

I’m building. You also go out of your way to randomly send me things

you think will be helpful to me. Thank you.

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Rick Del Rio

Thanks for always working to increase the value you provide in

LimelightCRM. Whenever I’ve had questions or needed help or even

advice on the direction of my business, you were there for me. You’re

just an all-around great guy.

Ryan McDonnell

Ryan, you’re a brilliant developer and a good friend. Thanks for all

the work you did for me years ago. I’m so happy for you and the way

everything has turned out. Have fun remodeling your new house!

Allan Stone

Thanks for being there when I needed help or advice on my affiliate

business and SEHabitat. I love what you’re doing with CarNinja, and

congratulations on the new member of your family :)

Robert Himler

Months ago, you tweeted at me with very kind words about SEHabitat.

I printed it out and put it on my wall. Thank you for always treating me

with respect and encouragement.

Oh, and thanks for sharing your car adventures with the world :)

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Greg Childs

Thanks for your support and constructive criticism over the past year

developing SEHabitat, and even helping me find typos in this book.

It’s been a big help and nice of you to take time to do that.

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My Wife, Kyungri

Years ago, I was going through a very difficult time with my

business, and it was right before we were supposed to get

married. I felt so shaken that I asked you if you were sure you

still wanted to marry me. Unphased and confident, you told me it

was the best time to get married because it was the hardest time.

Your actions have always been true to that statement. You’re always

there supporting me in my endeavors, bringing so much happiness

to my life, bringing me closer to my family; giving me another family

across the world whom I love very much... I could list so many things,

so I’ll just say thank you.

My Parents

Thank you for teaching me to think outside the box and always stay

true to myself. You raised me to make my own way if I didn’t find one.

You always nourished and rewarded my creativity.

You gave me my musical ability, my creativity and my engineering

mindset. I am so satisfied to be your son, and I love you so much.

Thank you for everything you have done for me.

H E R E I S M Y C H A L L E N G E

T O Y O U

>

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You made it. You’ve finished my book. I hereby challenge you to take

the knowledge you have acquired, and put it into action. The sad

reality is that 99% of people just keep dreaming.

Do you have what it takes? I think you DO. My book is filled with

technical, unsexy, factual advice and lacks in the hype department; so

if you made it this far, I have big belief in you!

Do one thing at a time. Building a business is not about all-or-nothing;

not about that one big idea that will make you millions; not about

that one brilliant system/method you learn that will give you an early

retirement and free lifestyle.

Success is best summed up in these words...

“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out and say ‘I’m gonna

build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that has ever been built’.

You say ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be

laid’. You do this every single day, and soon you have a wall.”

-Will Smith

Let’s catch up soon by email or Facebook.

To our success, health and happiness,

Ian Mason

ian@sehabitat.com

SEHabitat on Facebook