Hey fellas,
So basically I have a shitty site that I created about a year ago and forgot about. It was in a pretty non-competitive niche and it was my first real effort in SEO. It made me about $600 last year, so I'm pretty proud of that. That being said, I've quickly learned that I suck at SEO and need to get better.
So, I'm revisiting the site and I'm going to try and grind it up to the #1 spot (highest rank used to be #3) for its main KW.
On Page SEO
The KW is full of other affiliates, so I know that it isn't going to be as easy as greener virgin pastures elsewhere, but I thought it would be fun to chronicle my attempts to move up and to create a little archive of things I tried that both worked and didn't work.
Main KW has 4,400 searches / month and SerpIQ rates it at 37 competition.
I'm #8 on that. Awesome, I know. So, using my own super-extensive SEO knowledge and using SerpIQ's ratings, I fixed up my on-page shit. I added <h3> tags with my KW in it, bolded my KW in the article, changed image descriptions to have my KW and, in general, rocked out with my cock out.
I also updated the template and changed my site structure around. Honestly, the old template I was using was complete and utter shit and I don't think it was shit in the "holy fuck let me get off this page and quickly buy whatever this asshole wants" way, more in the "fuck this, I'm out and never coming back" way.
The structural changes were done so that it would be easier to add more content in the future and so that the structure made more sense to Google. I basically added the category into the URL for each product so instead of being www.site.com/product-name-review it's now site.com/brand/product-name-review. I also moved my lengthier content about why you need one of these products, how to choose these products, etc to its own category.
Whether that was a good idea or not, I don't know. I 301ed every link I could and have been monitoring the 404 logs to see what is coming in.
Cool beans.
NOTE: None of these new changes are reflected in SerpIQ.
Off Page SEO
So, assuming that I've at least improved my on-page SEO, it's time to look at the off page stuff. Sufficed to say, my off-site SEO is worse than listening to an Ashley Simpson concert live. Right now, the site totals 55 backlinks in SerpIQ, most of which are no-follow. If I had any memory, I'd tell you how many backlinks it originally had, but I barely remember my own name these days.
Backlinks
Google Webmaster Tools: 3,238
SerpIQ: 55
Ahrefs: 43
Fuck.
#1 dude:
SerpIQ: 600 URL / 800 domain
Ahrefs: ~800.
Double fuck.
So, I did some digging through his backlink profile. About 90% of his links come from two other shitty sites he owns. The rest are a smattering of blog comments and stuff. SerpIQ rates him at 43.
Plan
I know my site is going to fall because of the URL changes. Like I said, I've 301ed all the pages I can, but between that and redesigning the site, I'm sure Google will let it dance for a while.
So my backlink profile sucks and I need to improve it. My main competitor does have significantly more backlinks than me, but 90% of them are from two websites, neither of which is really an authority site (PR 0). So, I'm thinking that using a high-PR article directory for 5-10 links a day over the next month will make a huge difference.
I was also going to pick up an .edu package on Fiverr and also do some work to improve my site's social standing. Obviously, I'm not going to do this all this week, but I was going to start with the articles.
Thoughts? I'll let you guys know how it's going every few days.
So basically I have a shitty site that I created about a year ago and forgot about. It was in a pretty non-competitive niche and it was my first real effort in SEO. It made me about $600 last year, so I'm pretty proud of that. That being said, I've quickly learned that I suck at SEO and need to get better.
So, I'm revisiting the site and I'm going to try and grind it up to the #1 spot (highest rank used to be #3) for its main KW.
On Page SEO
The KW is full of other affiliates, so I know that it isn't going to be as easy as greener virgin pastures elsewhere, but I thought it would be fun to chronicle my attempts to move up and to create a little archive of things I tried that both worked and didn't work.
Main KW has 4,400 searches / month and SerpIQ rates it at 37 competition.
I'm #8 on that. Awesome, I know. So, using my own super-extensive SEO knowledge and using SerpIQ's ratings, I fixed up my on-page shit. I added <h3> tags with my KW in it, bolded my KW in the article, changed image descriptions to have my KW and, in general, rocked out with my cock out.
I also updated the template and changed my site structure around. Honestly, the old template I was using was complete and utter shit and I don't think it was shit in the "holy fuck let me get off this page and quickly buy whatever this asshole wants" way, more in the "fuck this, I'm out and never coming back" way.
The structural changes were done so that it would be easier to add more content in the future and so that the structure made more sense to Google. I basically added the category into the URL for each product so instead of being www.site.com/product-name-review it's now site.com/brand/product-name-review. I also moved my lengthier content about why you need one of these products, how to choose these products, etc to its own category.
Whether that was a good idea or not, I don't know. I 301ed every link I could and have been monitoring the 404 logs to see what is coming in.
Cool beans.
NOTE: None of these new changes are reflected in SerpIQ.
Off Page SEO
So, assuming that I've at least improved my on-page SEO, it's time to look at the off page stuff. Sufficed to say, my off-site SEO is worse than listening to an Ashley Simpson concert live. Right now, the site totals 55 backlinks in SerpIQ, most of which are no-follow. If I had any memory, I'd tell you how many backlinks it originally had, but I barely remember my own name these days.
Backlinks
Google Webmaster Tools: 3,238
SerpIQ: 55
Ahrefs: 43
Fuck.
#1 dude:
SerpIQ: 600 URL / 800 domain
Ahrefs: ~800.
Double fuck.
So, I did some digging through his backlink profile. About 90% of his links come from two other shitty sites he owns. The rest are a smattering of blog comments and stuff. SerpIQ rates him at 43.
Plan
I know my site is going to fall because of the URL changes. Like I said, I've 301ed all the pages I can, but between that and redesigning the site, I'm sure Google will let it dance for a while.
So my backlink profile sucks and I need to improve it. My main competitor does have significantly more backlinks than me, but 90% of them are from two websites, neither of which is really an authority site (PR 0). So, I'm thinking that using a high-PR article directory for 5-10 links a day over the next month will make a huge difference.
I was also going to pick up an .edu package on Fiverr and also do some work to improve my site's social standing. Obviously, I'm not going to do this all this week, but I was going to start with the articles.
Thoughts? I'll let you guys know how it's going every few days.
