How One Video Dominated Google For John Thornhill Coaching

October 23, 2008 by · 10 Comments
Filed under: How To Guides 

Hello everyone, and welcome to a fairly overdue blog post!

This week I’m going to show you how a spoof video I created a couple of weeks ago helped me to dominate the 1st page of Google results for a particular search term.

It all started around a month ago when John Thornhill (the eBuwk guy with the funny accent!) asked me if I’d like to promote his coaching program, having worked with him countless times in the past I agreed and started to plan out what I could do to promote it for him.

The most obvious answer, and this I’m sure is what most people would do, is to simply write out some email copy and then send it off to you guys. I would no doubt make a few sales that way, but once the initial mail had been sent, the sales would stop after a few days and I’d have no more sales coming in after that, so I needed to come up with a plan to get a steady flow of on-going sales.

I decided I would first purchase a domain that was related to the search term, and then I’d do a spoof “expose” on the coaching program, providing visitors with an idea of what they would receive when they signed up for the John Thornhill Coaching Program. Central to this page would be a spoof video, and the spoof video wouldn’t just be to provide content on the page….

Before we go any further, here’s the video I created:

Edit: I’ve just noticed that after publishing this post, all the traffic seems to have crashed the Viddler video above, so in the meantime here’s a Youtube link to the video:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct_EAaRs_z8

I’m fully aware that the video is incredibly stupid, but it does the job it’s supposed to. It grabs the viewers attention with the kids voice at the start, and then the crazy Irish lady (Disclaimer: not all Irish people are crazy ;-)), it almost makes you want to keep watching to see what stupidity is going to come next!

I then provide them with a small bit of content, showing the viewer a brief glimpse of the coaching members area, and explaining what they can expect to achieve if they decide to take up the coaching offer. Just as I’m about to reveal the week by week information, I get cut off “By John”, and you are urged to head on over to the site to view the rest of the “expose”.

You’ll also notice that I leave the URL of my webpage on the screen for quite a long time at the end of the video, a lot of people when creating videos, leave the URL on screen for a few seconds and then it’s goes away. The URL at the end of the video is the most important thing, so make sure you give the viewer time to read it!

With the video out of the way, take a look at the screenshots below, they show you the search results for “John Thornhill Coaching” on both Google.com and Google.co.uk. Take a look at how many of the results on page 1 are mine, there are even 4 people paying for Google Adwords ad’s, and I’m out-ranking them with my stupid video!

Here is the first page of Google.com

And here is the first page of Google.co.uk

So now you want to know how I did it?

I actually showed John what I was doing and he said I should document it (as I’m doing now) and then sell it as a $7 report. And as I’m writing this the thought is still crossing my mind, should I give you the information for free or should I charge for it?

You are lucky I’m in a good mood, so I’ll continue with the freebie. If you do feel like giving me a little reward, do check out the “My Offers” category of this blog and see if there is anything on there that takes your fancy!

So, the first thing I needed to do was submit the video I created to a number of different video sites, believe it or not there are actually other video sites out there besides Youtube and Google video.

So I used a service called HeySpread – not an affiliate link, what’s wrong with me today!? 🙂

For around $1 they’ll submit your video to around 20 video directories for you, well worth the very small price you pay if you ask me. With the video is a description explaining what the video is about, and of course, the obligatory link back to my John Thornhill Coaching “Expose” page.

As each video gets added to the video site, it gets crawled by Google and the page gets indexed. In some cases it also indexes the link back to my site – each from a different IP address.

Finally, I “Dugg” both the Youtube video, as well as my “expose” page, again some more back links from different IP addresses.

Not too difficult was it?

With the video, and the landing page I now take up 6 out of the top 10 positions on Google for my search term, and I’d like to bet it will be 7 out of 10 when this article gets indexed.

That’s all for today, but before I go, it would be rude not to point you in the direction of my John Thornhill Expose landing page so you can see what all the fuss is about!

You know the drill by now, any questions, leave a comment, and so on 🙂

Cheers,
Dan