Time to ditch the white hat....go easy BHatters

[SwagnusSwagnson]

Hi,
Errrm,

here, I should be doing better.

I have a small wordpress ecommerce site.

My niche is barred from facebook ads, adwords.

So, since 2014, i taught meself to use wordpress and slowly built a site, got it all integrated with woocommerce....

then i heard about seo, and realised why i only apppeared on google for *sitename*

and slowly i've 'improved' the site. I've got about 700 email subscribers, and i careful not to bombard them, and so i get a reasonable open and follow through conversion rate through that.

I've worked on my on page seo, earlier today i checked on seositecheckup, and was at 95%, and on seoptimer am an A+ rating.

I'm small, even in my niche, and for a few single word generic keywords i'm hitting page one, top 5 even. For quite a few two word keywords I'm on page one. and theres a load of combinstions of longtails I do well on

But I get about 40 - 80 visitors a day, and at least half are regulars.

It seems like a pisspoor number to me.

I'm sure it does to you.

But that's me and that's why I'm here, I'm gonna try a new hat, and see if I can improve this shower of shit a bit.

 

[Debian]

You can always buy some traffic too.

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

You can always buy some traffic too.

Nice Juan for the reply...

yeah i did try buying some traffic last year, I got more traffic. Cheap. About 200 visitors a day.

But from what I could tell in GA, the conversions were still coming from regulars and the standard organic, social traffic routes...

So, no, it wasn't cheap as it didn't generate any revenue and It just gave me a shite looking conversion rate tbh.

So I'm a bit cynical/skeptical about the benefits of buying traffic really. Now I've been free of paid traffic for 6 months or so, and really if anything my rankings have improved, particularly over the last couple of weeks....

 

[Oogless]

You can always buy some traffic too.

Does bought traffic do anything other than inflate numbers? I also run a crappy site, and would like traffic to click on my ads as well - does it?

Sorry, really noob here. Thanks

 

[Billy Batts]

If your eCommerce site is something serious and for the long run don't go blackhat. Plenty of white hat methods to generate traffic.

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

Does bought traffic do anything other than inflate numbers? I also run a crappy site, and would like traffic to click on my ads as well - does it?

Sorry, really noob here. Thanks

I dont have any ads on my webshite.

Traffic is so low i wouldnt have thought the clicks would enerate anything, and i dont want to put off genuine customers, who are the ones i want to get in.

As far as i could tell, paid traffic did bugger all, I dunno, if you are looking for clicks on ads it might be more beneficial

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

If your eCommerce site is something serious and for the long run don't go blackhat. Plenty of white hat methods to generate traffic.

Its gettin to the point where if genuine customers and revenue don't start coming in the biz might not be goin much longer.

It's been something serious for almost 3 years, I've seo'd , and tbh it feels like its just a losing battle. I can't use adwords, but there is another site with a similar name to mine, and for some reason one of their adwords links back to me , not them. It doesnt seem to make much difference, so i dont think i can even keep on blaming the lack of adwords....

 

[hiimanshu]

What's your niche? Have you tried some sneaky Reddit promotion?

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

What's your niche? Have you tried some sneaky Reddit promotion?

yeah, I have a reddit account , tbh thats something i should chase up more, i subscribe to a subreddit in my niche where i'm even permitted to spam , but really that subreddit is just a infinite roll of spam scrolling, so i dunno how useful, I've got a lot of links from forums, and most of my regular customers are from forums.....

I have got a customer who seems to mention and link to the site on reddit now and then, which clearly does well for backlink credibility, but this is what i'm saying....even wiith backlinks on reddit, and some high ranking keywords, impressions and clicks are terrible from google...

I'm sort of more wondering why people go so mad over this seo, when it seems to generate such insignificant traffic.

 

[hiimanshu]

Reddit is good for promotion, backlinks aren't that powerful. Feel free to pm me if you want to utilize Reddit more as I run the reddit upvote panel on bhw.
Regards

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

Just checked, me last mailchimp campaign went out to 697, 311 opens, 113 clicks, 37 decent conversions.

Twatter is a waste of space these days, just people all shoutingg and no one looking , listening, but the engagement rate if i try is up to 6.5% last months tweets, but average prob about 1-1.5% and i dont see much in the way of revenue coming from Twatter....just get enaement if i post especially clickbait type posts....

facebook i just do not bother with, have got a page and occasionally put an update, but thats terrible these days i think for generating business, cynical people, crowded for my niche on facebook as it is with lots of shouting and jostling for attention. Fuck that.

And when i started all this I always heard that KEY to success, key to everything , is getting up there on the organic search results.

Are people so cynical nowadays they dont even like to click on searches they've called up themselves???? Its Googles fault, it wont be long before whatever you search for the first page results will be full of seo companies or directories.

Personally, and i'm serious, if i'm looking on google for product say, i'm starting to scroll past the first 3 results or so as they usually seo related, or they are companies who are shit hot at seo, but shite at the product I'm after... hahaha.

It's all going ful circle, door to door sales will be back in the next couple of years, and Tupperware parties. Google will be dead

 

[SEO]

Not knowing what your niche is, I'll provide this blind advice: promote the heck out of your site on other people's blogs with good traffic.

Guest Post
Seriously, get out there and start guest posting like crazy. Guest post with the intention of generating traffic to your site. Make sure that whatever you write is awesome to the point that the site owners invite you back to write more for them. This is how Leo Babauta got his minimalism blog started.

Comments for Traffic
Also, monitor for new posts in your niche and be the first person commenting and leaving a great comment. I've had numerous comments over the years generate very meaningful percentages of traffic to my pages. Also, when you comment, make sure the site URL is pointing to the most relevant page on your site for the article you're commenting on rather than to just the homepage. Some webmasters might throw your comment out, but many of my comments like this have gone through fine.

Trick for getting to the top of the comments
If you find some great articles to comment on that already have a good amount of real comments, check to see if replies are nested. If they are, then you can simply reply to the top comment and end up being the 2nd comment on the page.

Seriously, Comment Traffic is Real- Here's proof:
If you want to see how powerful comments can be, there's a news site I frequent called Zero Hedge, and I always see a dude commenting with links to his site in it. I'm pretty sure all he does is drive traffic to his site through comments. Check out his traffic graph: https://www.semrush.com/info/dailyjobcuts.com?db=us

Nearly 25% of his inbound links come from ZeroHedge comments. Naturally, this may not be perfect for your niche, but it's an idea. Good luck to you.

 

[710fla]

SEO the organic keywords your ranking for and look at your competitors backlinks to steal them too. Also look at keywords they are ranking for.

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

Not knowing what your niche is, I'll provide this blind advice: ............ Good luck to you.

Nice post, thanks, very much..... yeah, guest posts, I'm not sure i get the concept of that at all. Thing is I'm wary of being overtly spammy, self-promoting. Not reallly a great way to be when you are trying to sell stuff...

Most of my Google traffic comes from a posts on my site I spent time on the content and the seo, and the initial customer base came from forums i used to spend a lot of time daily on. I just dont have the time to keep up the noise on the forums these days..... but if i put the time in I can write and be reasonably engaging and I dunno about 'awesome content' but yeah.....

So the thing is with guest posts, i go and ask people if i can write a guest post for them, and then i put a couple of links to my site in, but the post is in general about the niche or a current issue in the industry or some 'tips' for a newcomer or whatever? I just don't see other siteowners wanting to give me an opportunity to take their potential business by offering me free publicity like that.... or am I misunderstanding?

But the comments idea, yes, nice I like that....again, the coments come easy but i'm very wary about forcing links in , even when they'd be relevant, as i really think its so obvious a spam attempt....i hate seeing it from other people...I have a Quora account and about 100 answers, only made one backlink, and that was to take the piss out of a spammer......

I think I've just got to stop worrying about being brash or vulgar ( ) and just get spammy.

But anyway, hows about the google thing, why do so few people come from page one ranked keywoords even??

 

[SEO]

But anyway, hows about the google thing, why do so few people come from page one ranked keywoords even??

It depends on the traffic that keyword gets each month. If the KW only gets 10 searches per month, then you're likely to only get a handful of visits each month.

Regarding the guest posting, don't even worry about being spammy or promotional. Just put out the best content possible and try to build your name, and your site's brand as an authority. Don't write posts with a sale in mind. Write it to build your brand. As traffic grows from that outreach, sales conversions will happen. Also, you can try getting links from competitors, but if that doesn't work, do a related niche. If you sell baseball cleats, then see if a sports commentary site would let you write for them.

As for comment links, you don't have to drop links directly in the body text of the comment, most sites let you link to your site in your name. Scroll to the bottom of this page and look at the comment form and you'll see what I'm talking about: http://www.beabetterhitter.com/swing-path-and-hip-rotation/

The "Website" field will be the URL that your name links to. Hover over "John Murphy's" comment and you'll see that it links to a website.

 

[SwagnusSwagnson]

It depends on the traffic that keyword gets each month. If the KW only gets 10 searches per month, then you're likely to only get a handful of visits each month

The "Website" field will be the URL that your name links to. Hover over "John Murphy's" comment and you'll see that it links to a website.

Keyword : ejuice

I'm there in the top half of page one. Now its not as big a hitter as say, e liquid, or e-liquid, but its a fine generic keyword.... one of the most heavy hittin of the generic keywords for my niche.

I write posts like you mention for my own site, one of the best for traffic is a comparative review between two well known products, one of the products i rank higher than the manufacturer does even, its a review thats been shared a fair bit. Another is a tutorial with pics and a very short youtube clip, neither of them salesy, but both solid content and well shared. I can do that. But as a guest post...sorry to sound stupid, but how do i get someone else in my niche to let me do this on their site?? Someone presumably with higher PA/DA than me for it to be worthwhile... wont they be very wise to my real motive and just tell me to do one?

I see what you are saying about the anchor linking thing, and yes am going to start hovering round like a vulture looking for comment opportunities a bit more.... Thanks again..

EDIT>>>>>LOL just hit 'post reply' and got message that comment cant be submitted, probably spammy. hahahahaha.....i'll remove your link and see if that helps....

 

[SEO]

Keyword : ejuice

I'm there in the top half of page one. Now its not as big a hitter as say, e liquid, or e-liquid, but its a fine generic keyword.... one of the most heavy hittin of the generic keywords for my niche.

I write posts like you mention for my own site, one of the best for traffic is a comparative review between two well known products, one of the products i rank higher than the manufacturer does even, its a review thats been shared a fair bit. Another is a tutorial with pics and a very short youtube clip, neither of them salesy, but both solid content and well shared. I can do that. But as a guest post...sorry to sound stupid, but how do i get someone else in my niche to let me do this on their site?? Someone presumably with higher PA/DA than me for it to be worthwhile... wont they be very wise to my real motive and just tell me to do one?

I see what you are saying about the anchor linking thing, and yes am going to start hovering round like a vulture looking for comment opportunities a bit more.... Thanks again..

EDIT>>>>>LOL just hit 'post reply' and got message that comment cant be submitted, probably spammy. hahahahaha.....i'll remove your link and see if that helps....

Ideally, you want to be in the top 3 to get a good amount of traffic. I want to say the top 3 get like 65% of the clicks roughly.

A lot of site owners aren't into SEO, so they won't know what your motivation is. If the content is really good, then even if they are wise to it, they may still allow it as they are human and it will give them a day off from having to write. If all other vaping sites shut you down, then go for other opportunities.

Perhaps sites about quitting smoking? You could write up an article about any info you've gotten from customers about how vaping has helped them kick their smoking habit. Vaping industry blogs would probably be open to guest posts. You could check to see if any of your manufacturers have blogs.