I see alot of questions like how do i do this, how do i do that, how many links do i build, and honestly I am just floored that some of you people just dont read up on seo. If you just follow the basic rules of google, then you can move past google putting a bullet in your head. Your first and fatal mistake is jumping into link building before anything else, and i highly suspect, even while you are still working on your site, right? You think if you jump on it early, then you will be ahead of the game, however, in reality, you are just desperate; I get it, you put a site up, and you want to make money, and there is completely nothing wrong with that; I am sorry to say, this is not how google works anymore; Link building should always be your very last attempt to get traffic stimulated, and that is what link building does, if done right, it starts moving you up the ranks, then traffic starts coming too your site; It is a very slow process. What should i do first? 1: Have a plan! Just because you want to get into adult or gaming does not mean you have a chance of hell ever making any money; If you have not researched your niches, then you have already failed! You will simply continue to waste money on seo/marketing, then next year let your site go in disappointment because you did not do your niche research. It does not matter what you "love" to do, if the niche is just to competitive, then it is what it is...There are resources out there if you just look for them that can help you find profitable niches, and you will have far greater chance in success if the niche has little competition. If you love news, and think you will have great success in setting up a content site full of random news, you end up with lots of random traffic from all over the world, which results in very low conversions. 2: Keyword research is imperative for success! If you fail to do proper research, then youwill end up spending tons of money on seo/marketing going absolutely no-where. Lets say you are selling "computers" and you love the term "best buy" because you think it is cool, wrong! Unless you are a big player like Best Buy, then you will never rank, what-so-ever! Lets take the keyword "best buy" for example, lets look at some keyword data from Long tail pro: keyword: "best buy" metrics: 60 1: Bestbuy.com keyword comp: 100 PA: 91 PL: 170k DA: 89 In order to get on the first page of google, then you really would have to throw some serious link power, which means you need serious resources.... What keyword should I look for? You should be looking for keywords that have: 1: Metric score below 30 2: High search volume 3: Low competition and keywords must be related to your niche. If you are a farmer, and you are using keywords related to auto to rank your site, then you will get irrelevant traffic to your site, and traffic that is irrelevant will not convert, and this leads google to believe that people are not looking for what they are searching for, and this leads to penalty over time. Everything you do in seo/markting should be relevant to your site. I have somewhat jumped ahead, when i said earlier that link building should be last! 3: Your next important give to man kind should be your website! Some people really do not care about the way their house looks, so they put up a fast as soon as possible, and get it out on the market as soon as they can; however, if you want to look like and authority site, then you need to look like one; You should have an attractive design, your design/ layout should be clean, and the site should be well optimized for search engines ie: Wordpress a custom/professional design can cost you around $500-2000 and this can really depend on your custom needs; the more complex, then expect your cost to be on the higher side. Your website is your house, and your house should be 100% complete for you start wasting money on $5 links that will not take you anyway expect for down the ranks. Ok, your website has been completed, so your house has been built, and no one is home! Now what! Hopefully by now, you will have already researched your niche, you know what you want to write about (products, reviews, whatever) make sure your content is of high quality, your content should be easy to read, and is SEO friendly, which means when you setup yoru content, and post your content, then you work less when link building., in fact, I can share a couple links regarding seo and google penalties, read them, apply the tactics. How to get google trust: http://backlinko.com/prevent-google-penalties http://backlinko.com/google-trustrank/comment-page-13#comment-68650 If you are a brand new site, dont be an idiot and try to get 1000 links per day, google is not stupid, and google knows by now that you are not famous, powerful or movie star... Your priority at this point is submitting the best content for your audience that you can possibly submit, and you keep submitting; You are not a media site, so you do not have to post 10 articles day, unless, you are just doing this to fill gaps in your site, and if this is the case, then fine, continue to submit articles until your site is fully populated. at this point, it maybe ok to obtain a backlink here and there, but do not over do your link buliding, this is where many people screw it up because of desperation. Most people work on their site for many hours, and months for they start seeing any real action going on, and there are exceptions to this rule; If your site is that convincing in design, and content that people just share your link at will, and this is how good your has to be! Everyone else should be doing natrual link building. The owner of the mentioned site said he never did he backlinking other then social media! I personally saw his site, and it was beyond belief awesome, and I really believe he is making $4k/mo and he claims he did in 4 months, which i believe also, because his site just looked awesome, design wise, and content also; some say poor design has no effect on conversions, wrong! For everyone else, it may take them 1-5 years to acheive what he did in just 4 months. Quality matters! Quality works! How many backlinks do I need? Some say 5-10/month, however, it is not the number of backlinks you do. What is important is the quality of that backlink to your site. If you want google to see your site has spam, then get a lot of spammy bookmark links. If you want to take your site to the next level, then get links from Wikipedia, Huffington post, and high quality links within your niche, however, these type of links are going to be expensive, and you are desperate, so by tmorrow, you will be search fiverr once again, you will be looking for the lowest price, and the high return you can get from your spammy link builder... The reason people say you only need 5-10 backlinks per month are right, why? If you are targetting super links, then you do not need more then that; Stop trying to over-think the link building process. link buliding should only be used as a last resort, lets say you have 25 articles posted, and your traffic has not started increasing yet, ok, I think it is safe to say you need to start some type of link building so you can stimulate traffic, however, do not stop posting content; you should always be doing one of two things: 1: Updating existing content 2: submitting new content The fastest way to get rid of google is to just stop updating/posting content. Google wants you to rank, but if you give up on your site, then you have nothing more to offer, so why should google keep hanging around your site? If you do have any rankings at this time, then they will start to slip; That does mean you have to post every day, every month. I have heard that people have not worked on their sites for months, and I guess this could be for several factors why google still continued to love them; I suspect the site had trust backlinks. If you choose the right niche, and the right keyword, then you most likely can rank that keyword with just a few high quality links; however, this does not imply it will be overnight, it could very well take weeks, or even months... but if you never want to rank, then continue to use those $5 gigs. Anchor/Link diversity is a must! Remember when all people did was use the exact same anchor/link and spam it across the universe? Dont be greedy, I know you want to blast your money keyword to the moon, however, that is not the answer, that is only the solution of how you will get a penalty. I once read from someone that claims he only uses his money keyword 1% in his anchor rotation, which means he is using more LSI, Generic, nake urls, and so on...If you want to know more, then I have posted two valuable seo links in this thread. Do yourself a favor, and educate yourself, as these gurus will teach you how to google proof your site against any current, past, and future animal attacks sent over by google.... Did I miss anything? SEO Gurus may bullshit you until you die... if you ask me, then I will just tell you like it is... The truth... ps. sorry for the bad spelling. It is long past my bed time... End notes: 1: Build your site right from the start. 2: high grade content only, or dont bother at all. 3: Educate yourself in property link building... 4: Do not forget about onpage seo, it matters.. (work smarter, not harder) Whats your deal? 1: Long term building for long term success... or 2: Short term building, small gains, then your out... If this had been an article: 1,854 words How many words do I need? If you are just populating your site, then shoot for 1000 word articles, and once your site has been fully populated, then start increasing your word count. You will never get high rankings with 500 word articles. This is why sites that have 5000 word articles rank very good; google absolutely wants you to out-do the person before you, and if your mission is not to exceed the next person, then you have no hope.