- Sep 8, 2015
- 5,622
- 5,451
Yes, you read that right. Let me explain…
This case study revolves around the power of internal linking, site structure & silos.
We are going to use power of an entire website to push one primary page in the SERPs.
I call this… Page Supreme. (yes, I recently watched Star Wars)
It might suitable strategy for anyone on a budget or for veterans to play with.
I consider difficulty level of this strategy Intermediate+ because you must be able to acquire a strong, clean auction domain which requires skill.
Without further a due…
DISCLOSURE: I only did this 2 times so far. Both success but it’s not enough data to consider this strategy 100% fool proof.
Page Supreme – Case Study
Ingredients
- Auction domain – $300
- 10 PBN links – $90 /month (optional)
Strategy
Strategy is very simple. SEO 101 really.
Publish a piece of content, then build links to it.
The twist is that instead of external links, we will build internal ones.
Let’s get into details:
#1 – Get a Strong Auction Domain
I used private vendor for this but you can get a similar quality domain at TB Solutions or from @Nargil for example.
Characteristics of picked domain:
- category relevant (means broader relevancy than niche)
- 100 referring domains
- clean backlink profile
- branded anchor text profile
- most links going to inner pages <- most important
Here is current Ahrefs screenshot of the domain. I made it today. DR looked better when I was picking it up (before update).
#2 – Re-create the old website
This is crucial step.
Re-create website’s old URLs and populate them with unique content. Sometimes it didn’t even make sense for the URL, I just made sure it’s related to the category of my target.
Even though old website was just a simple HTML and CSS I used WordPress.
#3 – Let it age
Once the whole thing is back to it’s former glory, let it age. Submit a sitemap and let the Google find it and re-index it all.
Then wait for 2-3 months at least. To let the re-purposing sand-box pass mostly.
I published one piece of relevant content a month to keep things fresh and create a social presence for the site. Twitter, Facebook page etc. Around 10 properties total that linked back to homepage.
#4 – Publish Page Supreme
After the wait is over, it’s time get the Supreme page up.
My Page Supreme is a product review (very surprising, I know)
I got one well written, 1000 words long, Elite level article from iWriter.
It required optimization afterwards, those writers are not SEOs mostly. I optimized it based on data from PageOptimizerPro.
#5 – Let Page Supreme age a little
Yet again, I waited a little. This is my personal preference. It probably isn't required at all, it’s just something I like to do.
Simply submit sitemap, not even video sitemap, just basic XML sitemap and let the engines find the page and index it.
Two weeks in this case.
#6 – Internal linking
Now, this is the key part of the case study.
We are going to build links like we would normally do but with a twist – internal links only.
Remember those old, re-created pages? We are going to use those for “linkbuilding”.
Every 4 days on average I injected link pointing to Page Supreme to one of the old, re-created pages.
I started with the homepage.
Here is anchor text break down:
- [product name] (homepage link)
- [product name] review
- long-tail containing [product name]
- naked URL
- LSI
- review of [product name]
- naked URL
- first word of the product name
- [product name]
- LSI
- naked URL
- [product name] reviews
- second word of the product name
- [product name]
- review
IMPORTANT: You can be more aggressive with internal links, even more than what I did above but be careful. Keyword rich only anchors might get you into trouble.
#7 – External linking
This step is optional.
After internal linking was done and several additional weeks passed, the page was ranking between positions #13 – #8.
I wasn’t happy with this and it looked like internal links did all they could. I wanted to give it a push so I built 10 external PBN links.
Conclusion
Here is what the rank graph looked like:
Some of the old pages only had 1-3 links.
Imagine the possibility if you had really strong domain with 10+ links per page and many more pages.
Maybe to some it will seem like a waste, focusing whole website on a single page. But isn’t 301 redirect the same thing?
At the end of the day it’s all about your return.
Search volume isn’t very high but this is medium+ competition buyer keyword. Not to mention tons of long-tails and keyword variations it ranks for now.
Let me know your thoughts below.
