Roll Your Own Black Hole

As promised, today we’ll go over some more of the trends in Black holes and what steps you can take to create or take advantage of their growing dominance in the SERPs.

First, the micro niche site is dying. Why build a site dedicated to (for example) bee-keeping, set theory, Jainism, or even Salvia Divinorum when right off the bat you’re conceding 43% of your Google traffic to a black hole?

Behold! The size advantage. Today, you are far better off running one or two mega sites than 10 or 100 niche sites. The last remaining vestige of an SEO advantage for running a specialized site is in a name match in the domain name. It’s like the specialty store vs. Wal-Mart all over again. Who do you think’s gonna win this one?

Look for social media sites (Digg, Twitter, del.icio.us . . . etc) to evolve into “everything for everyone” sites. The Twitterpedia, del.icio.us catering listings, and Digg shopping section will arrive shortly after their management’s realize just how much they can dominate the SERPs across every conceivable profitable niche. Answers.com, about.com, and the wikipedia are all examples that are close, but aren’t being nearly as aggressive as they could be.

If you’re doing SEO and have an extremely trusted site as a client, it certainly makes sense in the current Google environment to recommend an “Everything for everyone” strategy.

Additionally, because these strategies are not yet being pursued as aggressively as they could be, the valuations of highly trusted sites are fractions of what they could potentially produce. It would take some cash, but buying and transforming highly trusted sites into everything for everyone sites looks to be a very profitable business strategy.

If you can’t buy -em, Join ‘em

Another business model that makes sense: forming “strategic partnerships” with these companies. Why buy links when so much value is place on the trust of the domain? Plus, Google has stated that buying links isn’t Kosher. But there’s nothing currently in the rulebook about getting your own page or folder one or two clicks from the home page on a trusted domain or emerging black hole site.

In black hat SEO, we often try to parasite off the trust of such a site, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t make a symbiotic relationship that benefits both parties.

This really works: Rent out and develop some valuable real estate property on digg.com/dvd-rentals/, twitter.com/diet/, or reddit.com/wedding/. Stuff like this is already being done all over the Net but rather under the radar . . . and not with the sites named above (to my knowledge).

Create a Closed SEO Cartel

In experimental SEO labs, others are toying with the hypothesis that if you do not have a massive enough single body to create a black hole, you can try to create one with a network of tier 2 or 3 trust sites. Similar to the single black hole site, these tiny blacklets only link to other sites within their network. As these experiments are still in their crudest forms, they can still be identified in many cases by their identical footer links.

Most of these networks are currently created either by link selling / trading arrangements or are owned entirely by one or two firms. But as they evolve, look for all off network linking to be no-follow. Look for tighter agreements to create massive conglomerates. We see blog networks grasping at the edges of this idea, but they’re clearly not there yet.

Take page rank sculpting to the next level. Make it page rank sculpting across a closed network. Create a Link Juice Cartel with a dozen or a hundred trusted sties. Don’t external link to anything without a no-follow. Try to make all links be on site or on network.

But a word of caution, don’t be flagrant about your SEO ambitions with any of the above strategies. If you call it SEO, brag about it, and it works, Google going to penalize or try to make an example of you. Google doesn’t like to be gamed . . . and they really don’t like it when you brag about it. Use other language and tiptoe around what you are doing like a politician.

When you do any of the above and they work, remember the latest and greatest strategy in SEO is to just STFU about specifics and let the money roll in.

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