Since I started my first online business I have been obsessed with learning about SEO, so that’s why today I’m allowing a fellow internet entrepreneur to write a post on SEO.

Mark runs a Seo Services business and operates in areas like Seo Manchester and Seo London and he also runs an affiliate marketing business. One of the main reasons I like taking advice from Mark is because he doesn’t make all of his money from selling services, he actually makes the majority from ranking his own websites in Google such as e-commerce stores and affiliate blogs! You can see his latest review.

I’ll stop talking now, and let Mark begin…

SEO – What’s Working?

Firstly let me say a big thanks to Amir for letting me write an article. I’ve worked with Amir over the past couple of years on a fairly informal basis helping him with his online projects. As he mentioned despite running a seo consulting business the majority of my income comes from my own projects.

I have experience with every form of SEO from the blackest of the black hat to white hat. For me it’s about finding the balance between what works, what is sustainable and what is cost effective. Many argue that white hat seo (see moz’ explanation) is the only way to go. I actually think that white hat certainly has it’s place but it’s not the only way to go. It actually depends on your business and it depends what you are ranking.

For example: you could use white hat seo on your main website, grey hat seo on secondary websites and black hat seo on things like YouTube. This means your main website is sustainable and safe, and you are getting quick results from your secondary sites and extremely quick results from ranking YouTube videos.

I personally believe it all comes down to what the competition is doing. Some might argue that you shouldn’t do what others are doing, just because they do it does not make it right and that is fair enough but at the end of the day a business exists to make money. If black hat seo gives quick results and makes money then it is worth testing.

Methods that are working right now are high page-rank authoritive links. These are links that come from relevant websites to yours and websites that are trusted in the eyes of Google because they already have page-rank and/or many backlinks. You can obtain these links through legitimate white hat methods and you can also get them through grey hat methods such as buying PR domains and creating your own network.

When is it okay to use Black Hat?

I can give you a perfect example of when this is okay. One of my businesses involves reviewing internet marketing products. The competition is fierce and using white hat methods to rank here would be impossible.

100% of the people who are ranking for products in this niche are using grey hat or black hat methods. The white hat methods here are too slow and they would not work. Black hat however works perfectly. Many of the people ranking for products use YouTube videos and they all have 1000′s of spam backlinks to rank them. This is literally the only way to go if you want to rank in this competitive niche.

Also when you are ranking for product launches you are jumping on the hype of a product. This hype will not last therefore what is the point in spending time / money on legitimate white hat, or even grey hat methods to rank your website or YouTube video? You might as well use black hat because even if your website / YouTube video gets penalized it won’t matter as the launch is over.

There are certain circumstances when it makes sense to go the black hat route despite what others might think. At the end of the day, if your website provides the searcher with the relevant and helpful information, then who cares how the website got ranked? Competition is just that… competition and if black hat beats the competition then it can be incorporated into a seo strategy.

When should you avoid Black Hat?

You should avoid black hat SEO on your main website.

If you have a website that you really care about that you want to stick around for the long run and be sustainable then you absolutely must avoid Black Hat.

The only way to go with a website you really care about is white hat and perhaps grey hat.

When should you use White Hat?

White hat seo is something that is confused by many seo’s. For example: creating 100 unique articles and putting them on directories with a link back to your website is NOT white hat seo. This is grey hat seo. You are manipulating your ranking even though your content might be very good, therefore this is GREY HAT.

White hat is basically where you don’t build links yourself. To be a good white hat seo you essentially need to be able to network with people and attract links naturally.

Example: moz.com has probably has a 6-7 figure readership so whenever they publish a new article people read it and they might reference the article on their own websites. This is white hat seo because moz hasn’t manually created the link or even asked for the link. They have created some valuable content that people want to link to naturally.

Where does Grey Hat fit in?

Grey hat (or Gray if you’re American) is what most so called “white hat” seo’s actually do. It’s creating links yourself and even if you write the best possible article in the world if you are creating that link yourself then you are effectively doing grey hat.

This is what I personally recommend you do for the majority of your websites. Networking with other people to get links is fine but it takes time and your results are going to be far better if you utilize a mixture of white hat and grey hat.

One of the methods that is working that fits into the grey hat category is buying up expired domains with page-rank, filling them with relevant content to your website and linking back. You are essentially creating your own network of sites you can get links from. This is method that Google frowns upon because it’s manipulating their search results however it’s working extremely well and has done for years. Plus it’s something that Google would have to work extremely hard at to eliminate because these kind of links look natural and pass as white hat to their algorithmn.

A strategy you can use…

1. Main website – mixture of white hat / grey hat
2. Secondary websites – grey hat
3. Other sites, article directories, forums, YouTube – black hat

This is a fairly safe way to utilize different website properties to get good rankings and traffic.

Big thanks for Mark for putting this together, you can learn more about his business at www.Marksherris.co.uk/ – If you enjoyed this article please leave a comment below.

After leaving school I worked as an apprentice for a while at a construction company. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but I decided I would rather be earning and learning instead of just learning. I had spent the past 11 years at school learning, and it was now time to make some money!

Of course the construction job wasn’t going to be forever. I knew this as soon as I joined because I always had dreams of running my own business. I just figured it would be something that would naturally happen in 10-20 years. Little did I know that after a couple of weeks of boring construction work I would be putting the wheels in motion for my business. It took me another few years to actually leave the job but when I did I never looked back.

I first started with a market stall selling bits and bobs. It wasn’t amazing money but I was my own man and that felt good. I didn’t have to answer to anyone and I was making my own money, even if it wasn’t much more than my job paid it was the start of something.

A real shop…

After some time had passed I eventually managed to raise enough money to open up my own shop in a highstreet. It was only small but it was the first real step to owning multiple businesses for me. I was very proud at this moment that I was able to raise enough capital to open a real, physical shop. The market stand was no more and I was moving up!

Since opening my first store I’ve been able to own multiple brick and mortar businesses. At the moment my main brick and mortar business is a bar in my local town. It’s one of the most popular venues in the town and something I am very proud of.

The business operates as a restaurant / cafe during the day and transforms into a bar / club on the night time. We still have the upstairs as a restaurant though at all times and this has worked well for us over the past few years. In fact I have just done the annual refurb as I like to keep it looking good each year and keep the customers coming back to a venue that they enjoy.

Online businesses…

As the internet has evolved it’s become a great place to run a business. I have seen the internet go from nothing to what it is today and I am profiting from this huge growth too. I have educated myself on the interent and online businesses so that I can make money.

I am wired strange because at school I did not like learning, yet I can learn extremely well and quickly when I am doing it myself. I guess when I am interested in something I can learn about it quickly, but unfortunately many of the things you are taught at school at not necessarily relevant, school kind of gives a 1 size fits all approach to life!

Anyway… over the past 5-6 years I have operated e-commerce stores online and more recently an internet marketing business selling digital products. The great thing about selling information online is that you can sell it in a digital format over and over again and the whole process of transaction to product delivery is automated and digital. My internet marketing business literally sells products day and night and I never have to manage any of the sales process or product delivery!

The e-commerce stores take more management time, however they are still good businesses and whenever I get tired of an e-commerce store I am able to flip it online for a nice profit.

Skills: going into the online business space a few years back has made me develop my knowledge of HTML and also Search Engine Optimization. A skill that is very valuable!

Investing…

The final part of my business / income streams has been investing. This has been something in recent years I’ve been able to do because of the success of my businesses online and offline. Investing is always somethign I wanted to do when I was younger, but it’s difficult to find big sums of cash when you are young.

Over the past few years I have owned multiple properties in the UK (thankfully post recession, not pre) and they have provided me with an okay return, however earlier this year I decided to sell up 80% of my UK properties. Now I only have 2 in the UK, purely because they have been difficult to sell.

I have moved my portfolio across to other areas of the world where the prices are lower and the demand is higher. One of my main investment areas is in the USA in Florida. I worked with a local property specialist over there thanks to an agency here in the UK and they helped me set up initially 5 investments. I have since grown that to more and my average return per year is 17.5% which is huge compared to what I was achieving over here in the UK.

The end…

I wasn’t sure how to end this blog post but so I will just end it now. Hopefully it has given you some background on myself and what I have been able to achieve business and investmnet wise. For my latest articles you can go here.

Let’s get one thing straight… property has and always will be a prime investment if you know where to look. Many people go wrong with property investing (aka real estate, see wikipedia) because they choose they wrong places!

I’ve been investing in property for the past 10 years and I’ve been able to make a lot of money from it, and build an income that will last a lifetime.

Like anything you need to stay ahead of the times. You can’t just go out there and start investing in any old property and expect to make money. You have to analyze the market first and see what prices are like and where they are heading. Secondly you need to see what the demand is. The last thing you want is a property Investment with no tenants. If you find somewhere where the property is cheap, the demand for rental is high and the market is on the way up then you have the perfect investment!

A friend of mine over in the UK runs an online business offering up these kind of properties where you can get high return on investment. They are known online as Www.AmericanPropertyInvestments.co.uk/ and specialize in cheap high ROI properties.

Property Investment Blunders!

There are many things you want to avoid and some may seem obvious but you would be amazed by how many people fall into these blunders.

1. Buying a property at the height of the market
2. Buying a property where there is no rental demand
3. Buying a property with a low return on investment
4. Buying a property that needs a lot of work (lowers ROI)
5. Buying a property that hasn’t been built (BIG NO NO!)

You hear of many horror stories on TV programs where people have invested in upcoming projects. People have literally spent their life savings on a property that hasn’t even been built yet! Don’t get me wrong, these development projects can be very profitable however they are only good for the investor who has enough money to risk losing it.

These kind of investments are NOT for your average person. If you are putting life savings into a development project that could fold then you are literally playing with fire. That is why you see these people on TV who have lost their whole live savings to a dodgy investment!

Pre-Tenanted – The Way To Go!

If you want to mazimize your ROI you need to go with pre-tenanted properties. What the heck are those? They are where you buy a property that already has tenants! This usually happens when a current investor wants to sell the property OR when an agent perhaps has purchased at auction, found tenants and then is selling as an investment for a profit.

Either way, you need to look for properties that come WITH tenants. This is going to maximize your first years ROI and mean less time spent messing around with other agencies trying to find tenants. If you are 1000′s of miles away from your investment this can also be a difficult and time consuming process!

To learn more about how to find these kind of investments and most importantly how to buy them safely you should read the FAQ over at www.AmericanPropertyInvestments.co.uk/faq/ and you’ll find out the ins and outs of owning these kind of properties and the best places to buy.

As I am typing this I currently own 12 of these USA properties and they are giving me a very healthy return of on average (Between all 12) 17.5% which is fantastic. I should be buying up more of them soon across Florida.

Thanks for reading, check back soon for another article on money making

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