That really depends on what you would term white Hat SEO.
For example if you look at the top white hat SEO’s you will see that they spend a lot of time doing outreach to get backlinks, is that white hat or are they manipulating Google by driving initial high quality backlinks to kick start their SEO?

I do something broadly similar without the outreach, for example I manipulate backlinks that someone else worked hard for with expired 301 redirects, I will use Private Networks for this project and I will manipulate user behaviour signals to increase dwell time on the site and CTR clicks from the search results for specific keywords that I want to rank for.

What both black hat and white hat SEO’s really need is high quality content and I think both groups would agree.

Simply because if the content is not high quality then when the real traffic comes from the search engines then their user behaviour signals will have an effect on the search rankings.
If for example there’s a high rate of bouncing off a page (high bounce rate) and low retention on the content (either on the specific content or or low dwell time on the site) then Google picks up on this and this affects the rankings.
The same applies for click through from the search results too.
We can manipulate this very easily with very little effort using tools like Vid Attack Alpha but when you start to rank then you will need to achieve the decent level of click through from those search results otherwise those that have higher click through rates, combined with higher retention time on the content for the same search query will rank above you.

Is that more black hat that buying sponsored links under the white hat umbrella or reaching out to hundreds of bloggers asking for backlinks?

Honestly, I couldn't care and will let you make up your own mind on that, but outreach will drive traffic too as this strategy gets links from real traffic sites, but again, manipulating your rankings or kick starting your rankings with a few black hat tactics until you start driving real traffic from the search results should also increase your natural backlinks, if the content is good enough.

If you agree that user behaviour signals are a major ranking factor then you will also agree that there are very easy black hat strategies we can use to get top rankings fast without using backlinks, which also makes these strategies virtually untraceable.

In other words, it cannot be reverse engineered by your competitors like backlinks can.

I will be doing this with my agency site but this can be done just as effectively with any other type of local business site.

If you already have a brand name in mind then use that, you do not need to go for exact match domains anymore and we have more than enough ways to localize a domain without it looking spammy.

When you register the domain it could be a good idea to have it registered in a location that you are targeting as well as hosting in that location too, but honestly that's just a common sense guess there.

I haven't tested it, I probably wouldn't test it as I think we have enough to be getting on with, and multiple localization elements will be introduced throughout this guide.

The reason I want to use this domain is because i need to include GoogleMyBusiness in a future blog post on this case study and i have to use it from a location i can get GMB verified.

This is a new agency site that i am setting up but the case study strategies we will cover can be used for any type of business.

For example:

That's not an exhaustive list but it's important to be clear on the basics instead of flying blind and be prepared and flexible enough to adjust your goals and targets as things evolve. Especially when entering a new niche or sub niche as “you don't yet know, what you don't know.”

I will use my marketingalphas.online site as we go through this and the reason is that to go through a local seo site set up properly we really need to be able to do the Google My Business optimization stuff too.

This is a Pre-Configured WordPress template that I often update and it has evolved a lot of the past few weeks and months, and we now have the template evolved enough that we can now use it for multiple purposes including Local SEO sites, niche sites, blogs, traffic scouting, priming expired domains for a 301 redirect and even for affiliate sites etc.

The template has a set of plugins, most of them pre-configured and we migrate this template from the base site it was created on via migrate guru plugin into new sites so that you just need to do some basic tweaks and personalized details like social profiles and its well optimized and ready to start adding content in minutes.

The template has plugins like Yoast SEO, Schema, Slimstats Analytics, XML sitemaps (video, mobile, image included), site speed plugins, internal links, social syndication and a bunch of others that remain inactive but cover some great features that you might want to use and these are all plugins i have worked with and use myself such is infographic maker plugin, quick indexing tools, link building, advertising and even a plugin to make a web app from your site for mobile.

I cannot go through all the set up of this template here in this post but we will have a separate blog post for it. To get hold of the template you need to be a member of one of one of our courses or a customer of some of our plugins like the new Expired 301 redirection, local biz alpha or wp traffic scout.

To not leave you hanging on the last point of some strategies we can use eevn with low volume keywords as shown above.

I use a tool within a couple of my Alpha SEO suites (Alpha networks desktop tool and Live Stream Alpha) which we named the URL finder.

This is such a brilliant little tool that we will make a stand alone version of it and probably do a JVzoo launch with and build it out more at the same time. Watch out for that as this is a fantastic tool and if i take it further with the features i have mapped out for it then its a serious SEO tool in the making but even as it is now, its a great tool doing exactly what its supposed to do and at speed.
This little tool has found me some seriously good expired domains that I have purchased with 10 bucks price point again and again.
What we find with this tool is expired domains with relevant backlink profiles, often not spammed and sometimes with traffic too.

So i rank a quick test and within 2 minutes we have found broken links in YouTube descriptions and identified a bunch of available expired domains, lets take a look at the top one.

These are being built in several ways.
With easy blog networks we build quality private blog network sites and we use the url finder to find relevant domains.
We also use the brand new 301 Expired Redirection tool to create content into WordPress from what was found on archive.org.
Next we will build some social bookmark and video sharing sites in Alpha networks with expired domains and also some HTML blog networks in Alpha networks system again, and these are going to be used as second tier and possibly for 301 redirects too.
This gives us a mixture of private site backlinks with 4 different types of sites and all on class c IP addresses. Note that Alpha networks is using cloudflare to mask the IP and this is why it will be used more for second tier linking strategies.

Again there are strategies within strategies here and most of this will be covered in the videos and added to the RankAttack PBN course which is due an update in the next few weeks.

Again using the URL finder tool we can find tons of relevant expired domains and some with traffic and without spending 60 to 200 bucks a month of expensive memberships to find domains suitable.

This is just some basic common sense quick win type backlinks. Things like bookmarks, infographic site and doc sharing links, image links, relevant forum and social platform links etc.
Most of this will be done using some fiverr gigs or from sites similar and we will also build some authority links (wikipedia, newspaper links, medium.com and that type of stuff) as well as set up some 2nd tier branded IFTTT syndication.

We will use three types of press release seo strategies with this.
Yahoo news press releases which are the best available
400+ links press releases which we will buy on konker and MassMedia SEO press releases which we will use as second tier links to videos and buffer sites that link into specific pages and posts on the local site.
MassMedia Also has some other quite interesting SEO stuff happening in the background too as well as able to generate 200+ links per press release.

Again there is an on going blog post on this strategy and when I mention on going what I mean is that part 1one is published and as I do case studies we will publish the results form the various strategies that I am testing.

This will be pretty basic stuff and I'm not looking to make this more complicated than it needs to be and for good reason.

We have enough in our locker to handle local seo competition in my opinion and most importantly I am not expecting it to be difficult ranking in English for a Thai marketing service and I do not want to over optimize.

However the strategies used will be high impact and able to do at speed and also scale as needed if the competition is heavier than expected..

Again I will be using some gigs on fiverr and konker and will be adding some reverse engineering of competition to find opportunities. This will be a job that I outsource 100%.
There will be some contextual citations without links and this will be done in high volume too using some of the Alpha SEO desktop tools like Video Synd Alpha and the new Backlink Alpha.

This is as simple as looking at your competitors referring domains and going to their top pages and seeing who is linking to them. I will be using ahrefs and moz for this and probably SErpstat too.

We will compile a list of backlink opportunities and segment them into types of links (gateway links, free slinks, comments, directories, blogs and local sites etc) and then proceed to go and get as many links as we can.
Again this will be 100% outsourced.

This is the next step from reverse engineering competitors links.What we are doing here is identifying backlink opportunities not being used by competitors.
As example you will often find local newspapers have comments sections and rarely get comments from your competition, these are not the highest value links probably but they are coming from authority domains in your locality .
That's just one example and this will evolve the more we go through this project. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a new Alpha SEO tool just for this step by the end of this project either 🙂

Lead magnets are crucial to what we are doing here as they are really just content upgrades on sticky high quality content that we will be creating.
I need the high quality content to be something that people want to save and keep and a content upgrade like a chrome extension checklist, infographic etc is perfect for building your audience, backlinks and social shares and if you add a combination of this with PDF download of the blog post then you increase chances of all 3 benefits.
At this point I will be using the miniscrapring strategy for speed and will also do this at extremely low cost.
For example the last time I did this I got over 3000 subscribers for a chrome extension that cost me 50 bucks to have made.

Three things we will be focusing on here for speed, ease and low cost
YouTube ads and we will use the youtube ad placement findet tool in Traffic SCout Alpha as this pulls in thousands of ad placement opportunities.
Facebook Lead ads as we can automate adding the leads into multiple autoresponders and a black hat strategy which I will cover when the time comes.

This is the initial goal of any website that I create and without this your gonna work really hard trying to get fresh traffic in non stop.
Building an audience that you can remarket to via push notifications, email marketing, or even retargeting ad campaigns at low cost will ensure you start to build familiarity, social shares, backlinks and traffic for every new piece of content that you do.
Not only that but this is where the money is made for most marketers via promos for their own courses, seminars, webinars, software tools and affiliate marketing promotions.

The main goal for my local marketing site is to outsource services that i identify and map out and make a profit on it.

To do this there needs to be consistent monitoring of the site, any contact forms being filled in with enquiries and this means that there has to be a competent assistant to do this for me.

On top of outsourced services we will also be running monthly live events or workshops where the attendees will leave with something tangible like a well optimized website, a facebook business page setup for consistent posting, a google my business page optimized or an optimized YouTube channel with a business commercial video.

The goal here is to run one workshop per week and each different workshop monthly and have a minimum of ten attendees paying $500 each.

That would bring in minimum of $5000 per week revenue and over 50 weeks of the year then it means $250,000 per year.

Here’s the magic of this, once you have set up a system for each type of workshop then it's just rinse and repeat..

To drive traffic then the combination of email marketing from your list building, Facebook and YouTube ads ought to be enough to get minimum of ten attendees per week and the goal of generating 250k revenue per year just from this seems less daunting and very achievable.

There are also multiple upsell opportunities with the workshop monetization that could easily double this amount such as courses, templates, software tools, private coaching and more.