BlackHat SEO News & Reviews

Now that the fever of SE Nuke has died down, it’s appropriate to take a step back and evaluate the program objectively. It was so much hype that I had to join just so I would stop reading people’s emails about it.

The site is run with the appearance of, I dunno, a white hat site but the tool should be considered black hat since it automates submissions to lots of sites that don’t like automated submissions. One of the factors that attracted me to the program initially was the automated squidoo lens building, but that was quickly removed.

The program takes forever to set up if you do it by hand. Any sensible person will realize that they’re gonna have to register new accounts and build them to look human initially, which was a huge turn off for me. Second, it’s trying to be a jack-of-all trades. I’m not a fan of programs that try to do too much. As we’ve seen with SENuke, it’s always being updated and it’s a matter of downloading, extracting, and replacing. The best updating software I’ve had is Video Post Robot which updated itself. SENuke could do that as well.

The monthly fee is understandable because it’s the only way they’ll be able to afford to constantly maintain the program. $97 per month is heavy though, and in a world where all of your work can be wiped out overnight by a Google ban or a court order to shut down the web site, I decided to pass on SENuke.

What’s worse is that the people I talk to who are also using it, haven’t really been thrilled with results either. That’s why SENuke gets a 4/10, and for falling below the half way mark, is going on the shit list.

I’ve linked to it because I’m not claiming to be perfect or an expert on the program. It may help you, but this type of thing doesn’t fit my business model because it’s public and anybody can screw with it, including employees of businesses that would like it shut down.

Ever seen those custom Error 404 pages and wondered how they did that? When I first learned the technique I thought it was too technical, but it’s actually quite easy.

You need to do is create a “.htaccess” file and upload it to the server (or subdirectory) where your site is hosted. If you have no idea how to upload a file to your hosting service, most providers have how-to sections on that or you can download SmartFTP for free which has easy to follow video tutorials. Open a text editor like notepad on your computer since we’ll be creating a new simple text file that will make miracles happen.

All you need to do in this text file is add a few lines that will tell your server to redirect visitors to the page of your choice instead of the typical error message. Let’s just focus on three of the most common errors so you’ll get the hang of this.

On the first line of the text file type:
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.customurl.com

Now, instead of visitors getting the typical white text page that says Error 404 they’ll see the website you inserted! It can be a custom page on your website or another one of your choice, like say…and affiliate link!

This gets pretty exciting, especially if your site gets lots of traffic. Before I implemented this tactic my site got about one thousand error messages in a single month, and I’m sure most of those visitors were lost to me forever.

Now go ahead and add the next two lines in the text file.

ErrorDocument 400 http://www.customurl.com
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.customurl.com

Your file should now be properly prepared to redirect visitors to the page of your choice when a server error occurs.

Now we need to make your document functional. In Notepad you can go ahead and save it as htaccess.txt for now. Now log in to your server and upload the file to your site’s root directory (that’s the main one where all the main pages are).

Once you’re online with your server’s interface and you’ve uploaded the text file, use the server’s interface to rename the document, and instead of being “htaccess.txt” you should rename it “.htaccess” with no file name extension. Don’t forget to include the period at the beginning of the name of the file or else this won’t work for you.

To test that you’ve gotten the settings right, type your main domain name into your browser then backslash anything you want. For example, yoursite.com/blahblahblah and instead of getting the typical Error 404 message you should see the URL you put into the .htaccess file you just uploaded. If this didn’t work for you, review the steps. If you still have trouble, contact your server’s support line and they should be able to guide you to making it work.

You should make a custom .htaccess file for each subdirectory of major importance as well. If you host multiple domains, make a custom file for each. If you have forums or blogs be sure that the scripts you are running include these lines in the .htaccess file that came with them. If not, you can add them yourself.

There’s a fine line between creating good controversial content and purposefully “link-baiting”. We tend to qualify “link bait” as false outlandish claims made just to get attention, traffic, and of course, links to the site. Many blogs are constantly link-baiting because visitors can be hard to keep on your site.

One of the most successful traffic magnets I’ve seen recently is this ebay auction:

Click Here to See the Controversial Auction

That auction tells the story of a wife who caught her husband in infidelity and is selling the evidence on eBay as she tells the story. (the lover’s panties and the husband’s empty condom package)

I posted this here as an example of the right way to get attention on the internet. It’s an emotional situation that people can relate to with a way to PARTICIPATE. Yes, participation is the code of Web 2.0. Users can interact! Did you notice the Q&A on the ad? It’s hilarious! People were supporting the wife as well, and she told the aftermath.

You can do this kind of thing on purpose, but you’ve got to bring social traffic and it’s got to be so good that people will laugh and share it. This is when you use sites like StumbeUpon, Digg, and Reddit to turn up the heat. Look at the price she got for what is essentially garbage! That’s easy money!