SEO Learning curve- in need of some reassurance

Hi BHW peeps,

I'm a web designer/developer and network technician by trade and have done things the hard way for years. I've had a website for 10 years earning revenue solely from adverts "the hard manual way" - i did not know much about SEO (well not to today's requirements anyway). The most I did 8-10 years ago, was make sure we used META tags and all that basic stuff. I'm overwhelmed with how SEO has grown and better yet how fantastic it is that there are tools out there and very useful information about to enhance website positioning, popularity and so on.

Enough of the introduction. As you can see I am "new" as I have only posted 3/4 posts now, but I've been reading through the forums for what seems a lifetime.

I have recently launched a "Beauty Advice" website for my sister on the wordpress engine and I was basically after a little reassurance that i'm doing things correctly (or incorrectly). I thought for the benefit of those who don't like reading, I highlighted any of my questions in green...

1. I'm using a theme that uses a few adsense adverts, and a few clickexchange adverts strategicly placed (that is apparently configured for good revenue intake). Is there a way total if my theme is/isn't performing well, and if its doing poorly, can anyone recommend a theme with good ad placements?

2. I've installed several WP plugins, to name a few: WP-Robot, WP-Super Cache, DDSitemapGen, SEO Smart Links, Headspace, AddThis ...I understand that most of these plugins will help dramatically with SEO when configured correctly, so I have done my best with their configs. I've seen lots of posts recommending plugins, but a lot seem to do the same/similar things. Do my few plugins listed above cater for the essentials, or is there a vital 'type of' plugin that im missing?

3. Since my sister has not completed any new articles yet (i.e. all I hear from her is "I've nearly finished it bro..." lol), I decided to use WP-Robot to auto blog 20 new posts to get the ball rolling. I published these immediately and I assume G spidered my site at some point over the last 4 months because they can be found in the G results but very deep. I then found out that G penalise duplicate content, so I used SpinnerChief to rewrite the articles as best I could, averaging a 15-20% change from the original. These articles are now published. Is a 15-20% change sufficient for G to accept it as "different from the original"? And, since G has already spidered the old "non-original" posts in the blog previously, will G come back and look again to see that i've changed them and in-turn recalculate my sites "value"? (not sure of the correct term here)

4. I then found out about backlinks, and how simple it can be done using ScrapeBox. So I purchase and setup ScrapeBox. I'm using a proxy list of 200 confirmed working proxies (according to the ScrapeBox results) and I have done a modest blast using 20 keywords, and generated 2,300 relevant URLs with multiple PR's ranging from 0 to 4. Since last night I started using the Commenter (Slow Accurate Mode). But for some reason, It's been 8 hours now, and only done 46% of 2,300 URL's (Success: 261 - Failed: 851 - Not Completed: 1283). My concern is why its taking soooo long, or is this normal? Any better practices when auto commenting? I have 50Mb broadband internet, the proxies i'm using have passed the ScrapeBox tests, and timeout settings are set to 45 seconds, however looking at the results of the slow commenter, there is so many that say "Failed, timeout" - part of the reason why its taking so long I guess because its waiting 45 secs before going to the next one. Anything I can do to sort this problem out?

5. I'm yet to tweak my sisters blog/website to ensure im getting the best positioning of the adverts because I've read a lot of information of how to make more, and it looks like I still got some adjustments to make. I also gotta throw the site through some kind of on-line SEO analyser to see where I can improve it. Any recommendations on on-line SEO analysers?

Have I missed out anything major in my steps? or am I going about this the right way? The blog site is 4 months old and has generated approx $4 thus far, baring in mind, it is only yesterday and today that I have starting doing all this SEO stuff. I know I have a long way yet, but you guys seem so helpful and it is a first to see this sort of good attitude on a forum.

Thanks for all your help so far.

Neil.

Just test & keep track & implement.

IamNRE said:

Just test & keep track & implement.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to respond and offer your reassurance. lol

Happy New Year!

Neil.

You're on the right track. Get some unique content on there though and don't just hammer the home page with links. Hit other pages.

Make sure you understand keyword research too. That is very important when trying to rank a site. And go through the download section for SEO products to learn more. I would suggest reading up on things like link pyramid, link push, link wheels, and any scrapebox guide you can find here on BHW.

Oh and setup google analytics if you haven't already. I didn't read through everything so I don't know if you did this or not.

-Jericho- said:

You're on the right track. Get some unique content on there though and don't just hammer the home page with links. Hit other pages.

Make sure you understand keyword research too. That is very important when trying to rank a site. And go through the download section for SEO products to learn more. I would suggest reading up on things like link pyramid, link push, link wheels, and any scrapebox guide you can find here on BHW.

Oh and setup google analytics if you haven't already. I didn't read through everything so I don't know if you did this or not.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your advice, I totally forgot about G Analytics, so I will do that next. I will get unique content on there as soon as my sis has finished writing them, should just be in the next couple days hopefully.

When you say not to hammer the home page with links, and i should hit other pages, im not sure what you mean. Do u mean when I post linkbacks I should link back to a different page of my site and not always the home page root? Or are you on about something else?

Thanks,

Neil.

Hey Dude,

Thought I would pitch in and offer some support.

For your adverts make sure you set up channels so you can see which placements are performing the best. If you are earning different commission rates you may want to switch placements around it will also help you identify which networks adverts perform the best.

Some of the other guys on here will offer advice on good conversion rates, personally i've seen as little as 2% and as much as 20% for adsense.

WP Plugins I find useful are All in one SEO, Easy Privacy Policy, Statpress, Google XML Sitemaps, Fast Secure Contact Form and Search Meter.

As long as you don't have duplicate content on your own site your should be OK. Install this plugin to make sure you dont over ping your articles - cbnet Ping Optimizer.

Like all tools there is a learning curve (I have SB and I'm still learning this great tool). For a new site keep it slow and steady (consider link velocity). Try scraping high page rank blogs and manually posting on them to secure the links. Then ping the linking page with SB.

You could use this site http://www.aboutus.org/ or http://www.link-assistant.com/website-auditor/

Looks like you are on the right track and there are loads of great posts on here about autoblogging and Micro Niche Sites.

Gool Luck

Si.

Thank you so much for the responses so far, like I said, I find this all somewhat unusual that the members of this forum are actually helpful and not cocky/arrogant or making degrading suggestions - this really feels weird. If only all forums were like this and didn't all just say things like "RTFM" or "Use the search" etc.

Thx -Jericho- for you reassurance, I will look into Keyword research as best as possible using the suggestions you gave... should be interesting. How hard can the understanding of Keywords really be? (/me wonders). I've now installed a G Analytics WP plugin so that will hopefully be something I can check back on once its accumulated enough decent data. I use G Analytics on my 10 year old website, and TBH I rarely checked it because I forgot it was there, and then when I did check it recently, I was lost and inundated with so much of their options and information.

Thx UltraBurner for your tips too. You said but im not entirely sure how to do this. Do I setup the channels in G Analytics, if so could you give me some pointers, if not, whats the best way to do this - I agree that understanding which ads are performing best is crucial.

Your suggestion to do manual posts for high Page Ranked sites makes a lot of sense. I think when I do my next harvest, I will manually post to the high PR sites to make sure my comment gets approved (sometimes the obvious ideas have to be thrown in your face in order to see it I guess. lol)

New question: I understand linkbacks now (i think), but i've read that it is recommended to ping my generated linkbacks. I see this option in ScrapeBox and have given it a go, but not actually sure what it does? Does it post another comment, or check that the comment was successfully written or something else?

Thanks again everyone,

Neil.

PS. Thanks also to turdface who took the time to personally PM with answers to all my questions too!

wizzkidd said:

Thank you for your advice, I totally forgot about G Analytics, so I will do that next. I will get unique content on there as soon as my sis has finished writing them, should just be in the next couple days hopefully.

When you say not to hammer the home page with links, and i should hit other pages, im not sure what you mean. Do u mean when I post linkbacks I should link back to a different page of my sites and not always the home page root? Or are you on about something else?

Thanks,

Neil.

Click to expand...

Yes I'm saying backlink other pages on your site. It looks more natural and adds more weight to your internal link structure. I personally backlink everything on my site including the sitemap and rss feed.

-Jericho- said:

Yes I'm saying backlink other pages on your site. It looks more natural and adds more weight to your internal link structure. I personally backlink everything on my site including the sitemap and rss feed.

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Another great tip, thanks. How on earth would you backlink to your sitemap, surely that woudn't look "natural". Unless your posting to someones website that is discussing sitemaps i guess?

Neil.

Hey Neil.you are on the right track mate.And as for "overwhelming" that you mentioned about,it really is not that way.all you need to rank are the basics and nothing more.may be the jargons of seo may spin your head a little but when you think about it,all you need to do is stick to the basics.