The Carpet Buyers Handbook

The Carpet Buyers Handbook (CBH) was truly an innovative, creative work that originated a number of popular world-wide internet marketing concepts.  At it's height of popularity it was a Google Authority Site and carried Google's Highest page rank.  The site was sold in 2007 to Quinstreet after more than 6 years as the top-ranked Carpet Site on the WWW.

An indication of how easily that keyword results can be manipulated (quickly) is to run a Google keyword search for "mohawk communication manager" and "mohawk communication plan", the subject of this assignment. This domain name was purchased (April 21, 2009 - 8 days ago) after Mohawk assigned this project.  A partial shell (draft) outline was uploaded on April 25.  By April 29, this new website had been indexed by Google and ranked #1 page 1 for the keywords I chose to target.  The Carpet Buyers Handbook accomplished this for more than 5500 keywords and at one time ranked higher than Mohawk Carpet for Mohawk carpet Google searches. Typically, it can take 6-months to be listed with Google. This website accomplished this and became top-ranked in 8 days!

The CBH can provide insight into creative potential and the value of communication.  While any number of individuals can brainstorm an idea, very few can actually put a plan into action and make it successful; especially when this plan is a new concept or new way of doing business.

The Carpet Buyers Handbook was the top-ranked Carpet Website on the WWW and the site was typically found in First Page keyword results for every imaginable carpet-related keyword.

The CBH was such a powerful internet site, it could manipulate the rankings of other websites (Georgia Carpet, Carpets of Dalton, Beckler's Carpet, Owen Carpet, Carpet Express, et. al.) for any keyword we chose, simply by listing or deleting links to that site.  We could demonstrate (with data) the keyword rank increase by linking to these sites using specific keywords, and we could lower the keyword rank by deleting those links.

• The Carpet Buyers Handbook was a one-man operation, but it ranked Page One Google for more than 5500 keywords, including "Carpet" for 3 years.  The site garnered more than 190,000 hits per day.

• The Carpet Buyers Handbook was the first website on any kind to offer consumers online competitive price quotes from multiple carpet wholesalers.  In 2001, the internet was still trying to find a method of profitability.  After the CBH pioneered this competitive price quote market (in 2001) a number of other websites came into existence which offered competitive mortgage quotes (Lending Tree), new and used car prices, and other competitive quote services.  However, the CBH was the first website OF ANY KIND to provide this service.

• The CBH was among the first infosites on the WWW and became one of the first websites to put together a profitable business plan as an infosite without selling a tangible product.

• The CBH used a highly complex strategy of keyword ranking manipulation using an innovative link strategy.  The CBH sold keyword links to other (carpet) websites before anyone understand how/why these links were beneficial.

• The CBH contained more than 1600 pages of information for consumers aimed at Helping Consumers Buy Carpet.  The site averaged more than 60 consumer price quote requests per day with an average retail value of $400 each  ($24,000/day) which were distributed to 10 local Carpet Wholesalers.

The site never purchased adwords or website traffic and had an annual marketing budget of about $30 (postage).  All site traffic was organic and generated from keyword placement.  The website was truly a Hometown Carpet Industry Success Story.

This site was last updated 05/04/09

Michael Hilton

706-463-2168