Before we go to the case-study,let me provide a short overview of recent dynamics of SEO world so that we are on the same page.:338:
SEO is dead! But industry veterans say people have been screaming so for years. So,the panic is nothing new. So,where is the truth? Is there any tectonic change this time?
Though Penguin/Panda Algo has made life little(?) difficult,there have been always such challenges, what has radically changed is "user behavior" (eg mobile,social media,marketplace,platform-play,discovery,native ads). Hence, a lot of people do not make purchases after searching in Google anymore. People discover stuff via platforms(amazon,YT,Pinterest etc) and read real reviews before making purchases.
These kinds of changes are affecting everyone in the industry be it a small affiliate marketer or top 500 Forbes company. Power is shifting towards consumers or existing players with strong network effect.
So,the key takeaways are
1)Observe how consumers are making the decisions in your industry and adapt. If customers in your industry are searching in Amazon,Youtube or app store,try to jam search results there too. There is no point in building a standalone website and spending $300 for SEO and ending up at page 4 forever then concluding "SEO is dead". Have multi-channel traffic sources whenever possible. Mixing SEO with retargetting via Facebook/PPC can do wonders!
2)The strategy of ranking the site with only pure spam for big keywords,when you have big brands with optimized pages in top 5 is almost dead ,unless you have very deep pockets or you are a hacker. Note that this is not applicable for big keywords,where spammers or small businesses dominate. This means pick your battle(keywords) wisely.
Ok. Enough of BS! I know most of the people are beginners here and I will not be surprised if above stuff does not make much sense to you. Now let's come to "how I can make money" from your small budget of 1734$!
There is a lot of money in SEO in the following industries even now . I would back up each with case studies in coming months.
Case Study ( Top 7 USA City name+ SEO keyword)
I would cover Local SEO part in the following 3 case studies. Ranking for top city+SEO keywords is almost a decent gold standard to test any new link building strategy .
a)How I ranked in top 1-3 "top 5 US city+SEO keywords" in 6 months. (This thread's focus)
b)How I earned ~$50K*+ commission by generating leads worth ~$800K*+ for a lawyer friend(friend's friend) in 9 months. (Using SEO+ retargeting)*Estimated earnings from profit sharing deal
c)Ranking a plastic surgeon (top 10 USA state) website in top 1-3 for a client.
I generally deal with SEO resellers rather than clients directly. So,I had never tried ranking my own sites for big city keywords myself though I have ranked it for others.
I picked up this "city+SEO" keyword just to check how long does it take to rank tough local terms and wanted to test one strategy with citations. It started around the same time I started offering service in last thread.
Link Building Strategy
Thesis: "Google detects unnatural link pattern by detecting patterns in anchors and traffic of linking sites. Still,it is a sucker for exact match anchors and powerful links. Niche links help to look natural in eyes of Google".( It was mostly based on my own experience in ranking/observing 100+ sites . Only thing that has changed recently is weight age of exact match of anchors with respect to partial match anchors.)
Backlinking and Anchors
We need exact match anchors to rank and at the same time,it also triggers the unnatural warning when not done judiciously. So,I will save the exact match anchors for my best links and use generic and long tails for average links.
Week-1)
Booked a partial match domain. SEOcityname+xx.COM as made the website live. Check the #1 ranking site for keyword density and got my sales pitch written on the similar line.
W2)Published 4 how-to blog posts(400-700 words linking to leading SEO and city-specific sites) about local SEO and got a basic Youtube video done.
W3)
W4-6)
W6-16)
I picked up top 10 city rather than top 2-3 so that I have a realistic chance of #1-3 within a year. I needed a city where local map pack is triggered more often.
Keyword progress
Keyword Volume
*MSM underreporting volume for 2 of 4 kws. But total USA search volume for cityname+seo and seo+city/company/services name is around 1.5-1.8K+
Overall,after 6 months of link building campaign, 2 keywords stabilized in #1-2 and other 2 at #3-4. It gets me around 5-10 calls/leads/week;which is below my expectation but I am yet to hit #1 for the most searched keywords. I will give it few more weeks before doing next link building campaign.
And yes,I am at #1-2 for most G maps search but depending on locations it is lower. Since,I do NOT have 5+ reviews yet,the stars are not showing which may be causing less CTR. I will get that done soon.
From around 50+ leads/calls,5 have converted yet and which is worth 9-10k+/mo revenue wise.
So,what is the takeaway?
It is still possible to rank for good keywords within 4-6 months (at least in the local niche). Even after 2014-15 clean-up and panic,you may find some big local keywords easier than they were in 2012! Just that you need to wait in terms of months NOT 3-4 weeks/days as it used to be in 2012-14.
:smilie_weihn_winki:SEO is dead! But industry veterans say people have been screaming so for years. So,the panic is nothing new. So,where is the truth? Is there any tectonic change this time?
Though Penguin/Panda Algo has made life little(?) difficult,there have been always such challenges, what has radically changed is "user behavior" (eg mobile,social media,marketplace,platform-play,discovery,native ads). Hence, a lot of people do not make purchases after searching in Google anymore. People discover stuff via platforms(amazon,YT,Pinterest etc) and read real reviews before making purchases.
These kinds of changes are affecting everyone in the industry be it a small affiliate marketer or top 500 Forbes company. Power is shifting towards consumers or existing players with strong network effect.
So,the key takeaways are
1)Observe how consumers are making the decisions in your industry and adapt. If customers in your industry are searching in Amazon,Youtube or app store,try to jam search results there too. There is no point in building a standalone website and spending $300 for SEO and ending up at page 4 forever then concluding "SEO is dead". Have multi-channel traffic sources whenever possible. Mixing SEO with retargetting via Facebook/PPC can do wonders!
2)The strategy of ranking the site with only pure spam for big keywords,when you have big brands with optimized pages in top 5 is almost dead ,unless you have very deep pockets or you are a hacker. Note that this is not applicable for big keywords,where spammers or small businesses dominate. This means pick your battle(keywords) wisely.
Ok. Enough of BS! I know most of the people are beginners here and I will not be surprised if above stuff does not make much sense to you. Now let's come to "how I can make money" from your small budget of 1734$!
There is a lot of money in SEO in the following industries even now . I would back up each with case studies in coming months.
- Local SEO (Both lead gen and local client SEO)
- Affiliate SEO via Youtube (Product release/review etc)
- SEO in new industry/trends (eg Marijuana)
Case Study ( Top 7 USA City name+ SEO keyword)
I would cover Local SEO part in the following 3 case studies. Ranking for top city+SEO keywords is almost a decent gold standard to test any new link building strategy .
a)How I ranked in top 1-3 "top 5 US city+SEO keywords" in 6 months. (This thread's focus)
b)How I earned ~$50K*+ commission by generating leads worth ~$800K*+ for a lawyer friend(friend's friend) in 9 months. (Using SEO+ retargeting)*Estimated earnings from profit sharing deal
c)Ranking a plastic surgeon (top 10 USA state) website in top 1-3 for a client.
I generally deal with SEO resellers rather than clients directly. So,I had never tried ranking my own sites for big city keywords myself though I have ranked it for others.
I picked up this "city+SEO" keyword just to check how long does it take to rank tough local terms and wanted to test one strategy with citations. It started around the same time I started offering service in last thread.
Link Building Strategy
Thesis: "Google detects unnatural link pattern by detecting patterns in anchors and traffic of linking sites. Still,it is a sucker for exact match anchors and powerful links. Niche links help to look natural in eyes of Google".( It was mostly based on my own experience in ranking/observing 100+ sites . Only thing that has changed recently is weight age of exact match of anchors with respect to partial match anchors.)
Backlinking and Anchors
We need exact match anchors to rank and at the same time,it also triggers the unnatural warning when not done judiciously. So,I will save the exact match anchors for my best links and use generic and long tails for average links.
Week-1)
Booked a partial match domain. SEOcityname+xx.COM as made the website live. Check the #1 ranking site for keyword density and got my sales pitch written on the similar line.
W2)Published 4 how-to blog posts(400-700 words linking to leading SEO and city-specific sites) about local SEO and got a basic Youtube video done.
W3)
- Established Fb,Twitter,Pinterest ,Youtube , Crunchbase,G+ pages and published several posts/images interlinking those. Got my VA to participate in the niche specific discussion of these social platforms. Did light social signals to money site blogposts. Spent $50 for genuine local FB likes(It was just to develop audience rather than SEO)
- G+ Business name has keyword in it. This works like dope though looks bit spammy! Asked my old clients to put reviews on G+ page. Just made sure 2 reviews are from that city IP.
W4-6)
- 50 citations done and pointed 400 PBN posts links to these. Dripped for 4 weeks.
- Domain Authority stacking,DAS using 50+ foundations links (mix of web2.0,blogs,forms,editorial, G news sites etc interlinked followed by (Mix of dofollow and nofollow links/citations.). Dripped 3600 tier 2 PBN links for 8 weeks.
- Got 30+ niche specific discussion links from forums,Reddit etc and blogs done. Dripped 4 weeks.
- Dropped 5 exact matches from my DA40+ properties. 3 of these were niche specific.
W6-16)
- Dripped 25 sticky PBN posts in my own local niche network (where most OBLs are about US city contractors) over 10 weeks.
- Around 9-10th week,main keywords trickled to top 3-7 and I started getting calls 3-4 calls/week. Keywords were still bouncing between top 3-6 to page 5-6 in alternate days.
- I made the new design live which caused dropped in ranking for 2 weeks and came back after I made few tweaks.
I picked up top 10 city rather than top 2-3 so that I have a realistic chance of #1-3 within a year. I needed a city where local map pack is triggered more often.
Keyword progress
Keyword Volume
*MSM underreporting volume for 2 of 4 kws. But total USA search volume for cityname+seo and seo+city/company/services name is around 1.5-1.8K+
Overall,after 6 months of link building campaign, 2 keywords stabilized in #1-2 and other 2 at #3-4. It gets me around 5-10 calls/leads/week;which is below my expectation but I am yet to hit #1 for the most searched keywords. I will give it few more weeks before doing next link building campaign.
And yes,I am at #1-2 for most G maps search but depending on locations it is lower. Since,I do NOT have 5+ reviews yet,the stars are not showing which may be causing less CTR. I will get that done soon.
From around 50+ leads/calls,5 have converted yet and which is worth 9-10k+/mo revenue wise.
So,what is the takeaway?
It is still possible to rank for good keywords within 4-6 months (at least in the local niche). Even after 2014-15 clean-up and panic,you may find some big local keywords easier than they were in 2012! Just that you need to wait in terms of months NOT 3-4 weeks/days as it used to be in 2012-14.
So,what is on offer?
Coming soon in next Bump!
If you have questions,PM/email me or old members can always ping me on Skype.
