4 Hour SEO Week: How to achieve more with less
See what you need to do to get on the first position of Google with 4 hour or less every week!
Hello folks, after a crazy summer and after some really relaxing and invigorating vacations on the Greek Islands with good friends, its about time to come back to our premises and work with the only thing we know to do well, SEO.
l thought that is is better to deal with the core of SEO, to get back to the bare basics and utterly neccessary thing to rank a website on Google, on a steady and sustainable manner and to remain to this positions despite the changes of the Google Search Algorithm.
Trust me the algorithm is really too volatile with at least one major change every month and several lesser every week.
SEO its a real huge thing, and l considered to give you an easy plan to follow whether you had only 4 hours left in a week to do SEO and improve dramatically your website ranking on Google.
Sounds good? Read more.
Why 4 Hours SEO
Initially I would like to clarify a few things, that personally I have done just the opposite in SEO, I have never spent only 4 hours running a website on Google.
Especially in the beginning of doing SEO on a site, the time and effort required, depending on the competition, are titanic. Endless hours of searching for keywords ( keyword research ) and keyword phrases that have gaps in the competition, endless hours of writing texts, copywriting, producing videos and various other things, endless days of searching for websites to place a backlink and then creating good and quality articles for these sites to get the backlinks.
This is also a typical SEO cycle that you should rinse and repeat every time removing whatever element is not working and adding new SEO techniques that bring the desired results.
Such an SEO cycle, is about a complete SEO campaign can take from a few days to a few months, depending on the keywords and the competition.
Imagine now that in a normal week you have about 40 hours of work, and an SEO campaign requires you to rank a keyword in Google in more than 5 business days, then you will need a month to rank for 4 keywords.
But a website is not ranking in the Search Engines in a single day, and as I have empirically observed, the best time horizon is around 6 months, ( this time period is enought to to separate the wheat from the chaff – and it seems if you have reached the first page on Google – that you have done the right job all these months preceding.
The philosophy of 4 hours of SEO per week is to remove all these comments and unnecessary disruptions between you and your target so that you can focus on the key core skills required in SEO to get the desired results.
Then you will be able to become a digital nomad in every country you are operating in the world and live here even for a while the American dream, you can join the new rich as Tim Ferriss boasts.
The idea behind the 4 Hour SEO Week
In a recent reading and study of Tim Ferriss’s book The 4 Hour Work Week in English, which is also the one I recommend you read and skip the Greek translation, or German or every other translation because it can’t convey the basic idea and spirit of four-hour work, I realized how many things we can do in just 4 hours of work and even increasing your productivity.
There is always a way to do more in less time, and if Tim Ferriss has done it in his own industry and after him dozens of other entrepreneurs and professionals around the world, I will certainly be able to do that too.
So I thought, what if we could do the four-hour work in SEO?
And after a while, here’s my first article on the international and American market to this extent and to this analysis, by me a non American citizent, but with American education.
Anciet philosopher Isokrates said: “Greek is every who has Greek education”, paraphrasing it, “American is everyone who has american education.” Read more below.
Doing a 4 Hour SEO Week online search, I found only one search result from the guides.com website, and another one asking if the four hour model of web site promotion is feasible.
On this site James Agate, a digital nomad and SEO expert, lists what one needs to do to work in SEO only 4 hours a week traveling around the world and living in different cities each time.
Yes this is the basic concept of 4 Hour Work Week and it can be applied to almost all types of businesses and economies. I’m not trying to steal a little of Tim Ferriss’s glory, I just know that anything that the mind can capture as an idea can at some point become true.
What James Agate says about the 4 Hours SEO Week
Basically I would like to add before going any further that I am a very self-sufficient person, and I am always inspired to write something, no matter what the circumstances, whether I just broke up from a bad marriage, just returned home from a funeral, or won the lottary – l never play .
I mean I’ve developed a knack for SEO and copywriting regardless of the circumstances l am a bit fearless in this topic. I am not saying this to advertise myself to you but because I am not used to referr to theories of others as I do now with James Agate.
I am referring to him because his theory will assist as in our own 4HSW approach (4 Hours SEO Week).
The three steps of 4 Hours SEO Week by James Agate
Sorry for the not so good English that this article has, I understand that some of you may have trouble understanding the text, but I’ll try to explain and simplify it as much as possible.
l am not a native english speaker, Greek is my mother language but nobody is perfect! At least you can drop a comment to help me on the revision and the correction of this post.
Step 1 – Identify The Process
In the first step we need to write down what we need to do to have a successful SEO campaign.
Step 2 – Break Down The Process
In the second step we will break down the SEO campaign into its key steps and analyze what really works and what doesn’t.
Step 3 – Rebuild The Process
In the third step we will rebuild the SEO campaign by keeping only the simple steps needed to get it the same or in better results in less time than before.
Completing these three steps we need to constantly repeat the process of making adjustments and trying to perfect the SEO process. We keep only what works and rinse the rest.
The fewer and simpler stages an SEO campaign has, the more efficient and effective it is and will be.
The philosophy of this SEO analysis is that we should simplify our SEO campaign to such an extent that even a non-SEO or an idiot can do it with results. Because anyway someday such a non-SEO or idiot will do it.
Be careful at least to follow the steps correctly and not ruin your site!
I imagine you’ve got a taste of what’s to come and you’re ready for the next stage? Great, read below.
Who ia the perfect candidate for the 4 Hours SEO Week
If you are new to SEO and have less than a 10,000 hour barrier (see article: Success on the Internet and the 10,000 Hour Rule) then you probably won’t have to deal with it yet.
However, I think there are always bright exceptions in the field, and very few in the world of SEO have exceeded the 10,000 hour barrier, so probably 1,000 hours of SEO experience is sufficient for an SEO technician to be able to understand what to do to succeed.
It is right to have a versatile and objective SEO training, so I highly recommend subscribing to my SEO Newsletter and read my SEO blog.
Black Hat SEO is out of the question
Now many SEO experts and website owners will tell me how you can be successful with 4 hours of SEO per week by doing only White Hat SEO?
It doesn’t take us four hours to even write a 2,000-word prospect article that stands out from the competition. Moreover my friends with Black Hat SEO you will not survive long because the results will be temporary and then once your site starts to drop rankings and lose positions on the SERPs, the results will be irreversible and you will not be able to catch up with the competition.
Is better to get started safely and go slower, securing every search engine positioning in a steady manner than getting into the vicious cycle of Black Hat SEO.
So all automatic backlink creation programs, bying backlinks and various other odd tricks that are of dubious quality and have controversial results are excluded.
What tools you need for the 4 Hour SEO Week?
The proper tools make the handyman, an old Greek proverb says.
Initially you will need for speed reasons a desktop PC, not a Mac, with a mechanical keyboard for speed and plenty of processing power. You will definitely need it along the way and the processing power of your machine will save you a lot of time.
At the same time, you’ll need a mobile phone with plenty of processing power and a large screen with an Android operating system. Personally I use a Samsung Note 8. Any technology that is competitive with Google is rejected.
These are the 2 basic tools to get you started, the other tools you will need to find along the way or to list below.
And now let’s look at the core workings of the SEO campaign starting from scratch. From the real zero without even having the site or domain.
I call it SEO core jobs without having anything to do with Chernobyl and nuclear power, it’s just the core of the job, and removing all the outer layers of feedback and junk is what is left.
Keyword research
Finding the right keywords and keyword phrases for your niche market is a very important step in the viability of your business or website.
You can see what keywords your competitors are using, and you can use Google’s Keyword Tool as the video shows.
A good tool to combine keywords and get search ideas is Ubersuggest, as well as the recommended searches Google gives you every time you search for something.
1 Find and aged domain name
In a previous article I had written that SEO starts with web design, but the truth is that SEO starts with the domain name and then extends to successful web design that will meet the basic standards of good practice required by Google’s algorithm.
So you should find an outdated domain name that carries link juice or PageRank and is in your industry.
It should preferably be:
- High Domain Authority and Page Authority
- Don’t be spam
- Don’t have dashes
- Consist of as fewer characters as possible
- Be brandable, it can be easily pronounced and easily recognized
- Have High Trust Flow and Citation Flow
- Have as many backlinks as possible from different domain names (Referring Domain Name or RD)
Where to find outdated domains?
Some sources for finding outdated and quality domain names are the following:
These are just a few of the dozens sources of finding domain names that are old and great value for Google .
2 Buy a proper hosting
Then, after finding the right domain or the right domains, itr is better to find more that one and use them as 301 redirects to the dominant domain name, you should choose a fast hosting with unique IP for your website.
The company I usually prefer is WPengine because it has a very good service and is not only the speed of loading a hosting today but also the service that counts.
WPengine is only for WordPress sites, if you want to build a custom site, you may use Solid SEO VPS.
3 Web design
So based on the keywords, you need to build your website and set up your main page which is the home page to target the main keyword.
We recommend you build a WordPress website if it is a simple presentation or eshop website. In case of a more complex website, prefer custom design or PHP.
The text of the first page should be 2,000 words like any other landing page, original and of good quality. A YouTube embedded video in the home pag is also a factor of not only ranking but also of crawling and indexing.
To keep things going, your page should be fully optimized to catch up with Google’s search algorithm, load in a second or less and give the end users what they are looking for.
That page should be 100% optimized and the On Site SEO should be perfect.
One paid tool to be able to optimize your website is SEO Powersuite.
4 Build quality backlinks
We should aim for quality over quantity as Aristotle said. So we need to start by linking to 10 sites with an article we will write for them or an article they will write for us.
We need each article to be something from 500 to 2,000 words and cover the key keyword we are targeting and for which we are doing this whole SEO race.
If you have more than one keyword that is related, you can put them all together to point to the same landing page.
If you now have completely different keywords for which you will need different landing pages, you will need to repeat the same process from the beginning with a second internal landing page covering another set of keywords.
This process is called keyword grouping.
Organize the keywords into groups of keywords
You’ll save time by organizing your keywords into groups. For example, if your website has 2 main topics, website design and SEO, then you need to create 2 key landing pages, one of which will be targeted for website design and the other for SEO.
You will then do a brainstorming using the tools I mentioned and divide the keywords into 2 major categories. For example:
SEO
SEO SERVICES
SEO PRICES
SEO COST
SEO AGENCY
etc and
WEB DESIGN
WEB DESIGN PRICES
WORDPRESS WEB DESIGN
SEO WEB DESIGN
QUALITY WEB DESIGN
etc.
Keep adding backlinks for at least 6 months
Keep in mind that the timeframe for getting to the first page of Google should be 6 months, so you have to take into consideration that if the total backlinks you think you will need is 60, you should be bulding 10 a month, every month.
The steady growth rate of a website’s backlinks is a ranking signal for Google.
The more quality and relevant your site is to the sites you get backlinks from, the less backlinks you will need to rank.
Then we have to check the progress of our website every month based on backlinks. The most impartial program to check rankings is Rank Tracker by SEO Powersuite.
With Rank Tracker, you can monitor more than 100 keywords for more than 10 competitors’ websites and keep a ranking and fluctuation record.
How many backlinks you need to rank first on Google?
The most accurate tool for finding backlinks of the competition and calculating the degree of difficulty is Ahrefs, if you go to the Keyword Explorer section on the menu.
With Keyword Explorer you’ll see how many reffering domains are needed to get to the first page of Google, what your competitors are, your keywords’ total search volume, and other useful statistics.
The good news is that it supports all keywords and national search engines like Google.com, Google.co.uk etc. The downside is that it costs around 97 dolars per month to get full access to very important SEO metrics.
It is one of the tools you should use every day and I will continue to refer to it in my SEO articles.
Rebuilding the 4 Hour SEO Week process
So after we have decomposed the basic SEO process in almost enough details and we have omitted, I would say, several pieces that do not offer or offer little in the ranking, such as Facebook, Instagram, social signals, Google Ads through indirect traffic as an SEO factor etc.
We have to somehow bring the whole process together in a four-hour period which:
- It will be measurable
- It can be repetitive
- It can be scaled, done twice in a cycle, three times etc
- You only have to work 4 hours a week
Difficult? And it still can be done, that’s why I told you that you need some relevant former SEO experience.
Let’s go back to the basics and assume now that we have already built our website and all we need is to repeat the SEO process of the month which is the 10 backlinks.
Our goal is to steadily increase the reffering domains every month, which I stress is the key SEO factor. If the number of reffering domains decline for a month you will see that your website will start to go down on the SERPs instead of going up.
So the right White Hat, 4 Hour SEO Week, needs to be consistent and without swings in our effort.
10 Backlinks per month on quality sites
So we need 10 unique articles with a photo and content of 500-2,000 words, otherwise we stay in articles with 500 to 700 words from which we will get 1-3 different backlinks to our site. We mainly prefer dofollow backlinks.
To find 10 news sites and write 10 articles in a month, we will probably need 2 to 3 hours a week to write articles and one hour to publish them.
While the average journalistic site costs 100 dolars per post, we need to have a minimum budget of 1,000 dolars per month to invest in our SEO.
The 10 backlinks per month with 10 different articles in news or news blogs is our core and core activity that should be done every month and of course meets the four above criteria we set.
But what happens when we need more than 10 backlinks per month? See below.
20 Backlinks per month on quality sites
Here is thew point where the problems of time and escalation begin, because while we can still find the 20 new sites we will be linking to, we cannot write the 20 quality articles that will help our site to rank well and get the right quality backlinks.
We now need to find a copywriter. The average cost of a copywriter to write 20 articles per month ranges from 20 dolars to 100 dolars per article and so the average cost is 1000 dolars plus 2,000 dolars per month for a third blog post.
Again all this is done within a four hour per week framework. But can we do the same with 100 backlinks per month?
The national search engine markets, such as the Greek market is about low competition. But what if we are targeting a highly competitive market, for example the US market?
100 Backlinks per month on quality sites
In this case, we will have to hire a copywriter who will also be a personal assistant to undertake the finding third-party sites for publicing post to obtain backlinks.
I know many of you will now ask, well is there any other way to get backlinks? For example by creating an Infographic, informative video, or amazing content that everyone would want to link to?
The answer is yes, but none of the above fulfills the four criteria we mentioned above. Also, as we have mentioned, this process should be repeated by a non SEO or even an idiot, because at some point inf the future an idiot will run this process.
Your process should be idiotproof. So we’re talking about idiotproof SEO.
The term idiotproof is not new, McDonalds have set up their own information system so that an idiot manager can run it, because at some point an idiot will find it. And don’t laugh at all because if you look a little further you will see that it is.
So, as a fifth criterion, the SEO process needs to be idiotproof.
So let’s see what happens with 100 backlinks per month.
In this case we need a full time copywriter or even someone who will write the articles. The cost of 100 articles is in a rough calculation 3,000 dolars a month. The cost of publications will reach an SEO budget of over 10,000 dolars per month.
Here we start thinking seriously about choosing an SEO company instead of doing it on our own, because budget and cost are really going up.
An SEO company it does the same thing with us on an industrial scale and is capable of achieving economies of scale and dropping prices on many services.
But in order to be able to find the 100 sites we will be linking to, we must also have special software that will look for opportunities for an interface such as SEO Powersuite’s Link Assistant.
Our role in this case should be purely supervisory and managerial. You will need an excel to knot down all the backlinks you have placed in a calendar order.
A sample of the backlinks file you will find in this excel.
Again the SEO process is scalable whether we need 10 backlinks per month or 100. Note that with 100 backlinks per month in one year you will accumulate about 1200 backlinks from different domains.
In another site asking the same question if Tim Ferris’s 4 hours work week model is viable on the SEO industry, again the analyst refers to the use of backlinks and articles from Odesk and other sites such as:
Instead of an epilogue
In conclusion, we see that the 4 Hour SEO Week model only works when a website is already running and has some rankings, otherwise it is difficult for a start up site, a new site to work only 4 hours a week.
Also the webmaster or its owner should have some relevant experience in the field in order to be able to automate and supervise the process.
However for best results, you will always need the help of an SEO company like ours to deliver the same results or better in less time and at less cost.
Only then will you be able to free yourself in time, take vacations around the world and experience the unique digital nomad experience!
I wish you good luck!
See more about SEO
- Increase your website traffic with Search Engine Optimization
- Increasing the Conversion Rate of your Website
- Link earning Vs Link building: What will survive?
Need more traffic? Ask for a quote for SEO today!
