Case Study: Niche Site after 4 months applying only Whitehat technique

[Sebastian Velandia]

Hi everyone,

I'm very noob and new to this SEO stuff, this is my first blog. As you expect I have quite low knowledge about SEO and all other things about really matters at the beginning. But in some months I significantly increased my knowledge on this subject and started a new project on 11th Nov 2019. As many of us in this forum, I want to both give information and motivate myself by sharing case studies. I have a full-time job and only focus on the blog spare time during the week, especially weekends. I'm always open to your suggestions.

My Niche: Spirituality

Strategy and Tactics

• Always follow the white hat SEO
  
  
• Create unique and uplifting content, I'm focusing on Longtail Keywords with very low competition and a decent amount of searches >1000 Searches/month at least
  
  
• No effort for backlinks
  
  
• No effort for guest posts (in my niche is very difficult to get guest posts published with a ******** backlink, you have to work for them creating content and in addition you have to pay them!! Crazy!)
  
  
• Build a community on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr and share all my posts there and maintain good engagement
  
  
• Mangools Tools (KWfinder) for keyword and competition research
  
  
• Create at least 2 posts per month with at least 1.000 words each

Monetization

• ClickBank affiliate offer
  

My Goals

• Increase in organic traffic every month
  
  
• Get a 500 $/month before the end of 2020
  
  
• Thinking in creating a big journal website dedicated ONLY to spirituality similar to Elephant Journal
  

This is the summary of this 4.5 months so far:

Keyword Rankings from SEMrush

Plans for Next Month (April 2020)

• Publish at least 3 posts per month
  
  
• Create a monthly post with at least 2.000 words
  
  
• Get in touch with micro-influencers and propose collaboration

Pros and Cons

As I'm working full-time I didn't spend enough time to publish more content but that's ok, I'm playing for the long-shot. I will try to double content before the end of June 2020 which might make a difference. An increase in organic traffic every other month is very motivating for me which can be clearly seen from the google analytics data.

Thanks for sharing your suggestions and insights about the journey.

Cheers

 

[3bisu]

Congrats on your journey! How did you make affiliate income in these last months? Did you see if you can scale the option that you are using?

 

[Deleted member 1313244]

How come you made so much in January?

 

[Mr.Never]

Great journey!
I also have a few questions:
1. As in the first picture: 10 Posts in March 2020. Is it total or only in March?
2. There are very few keywords in Page 1, So How did you make affiliate income in these last months? I hope there will be something breaking out in April but before the situation Covid, I fear that it will be more difficult
I'm building a website for around 3 months and still do not have any income.

 

[Perry8]

Great job!

Is it correctly understood that you have made two post every month?

 

[ger81948]

Congratulations on starting this journey. It's not easy to go public like this. I'm also into the spiritual niche but wondering why only 3 posts a month. I know you're busy with a job, but organic SEO is also reliant on more posting. However, a 2000 word post will be really effective in getting that keyword ranked. Best of luck.

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

Congrats on your journey! How did you make affiliate income in these last months? Did you see if you can scale the option that you are using?

I have some very good banners, my web design matches almost exactly the affiliate offer so when people click on any banner they don't even notice they were redirected to another website, the affiliate landing is familiar to what they have seen in my website (design, colors, images, language, typo). Maybe that's why I think Im converting very well. Regarding "scaling" I didn't understand that part of the question

How come you made so much in January?

I made good money because the affiliate offer has an option to earn 100% on commissions on the initial sale, cross-sales and upsells, but you earn 0% on recurring. The month of January a fool just bought the full offer including cross-sales and upsells LOL. I actually have made only 3 unique sales in total.

Great journey!
I also have a few questions:
1. As in the first picture: 10 Posts in March 2020. Is it total or only in March?
2. There are very few keywords in Page 1, So How did you make affiliate income in these last months? I hope there will be something breaking out in April but before the situation Covid, I fear that it will be more difficult
I'm building a website for around 3 months and still do not have any income.View attachment 130473

1. It is the total posts on the website, I only have time to write 2 posts per month, I want to double up that number before June.
2. Well my search traffic is small, what you see on the table is just the organic search traffic I have had. But My main source of traffic is social, I have a facebook page with +11k followers, a twitter account with 2k followers, a Pinterest with more than 50k visits per month and a Tumblr account with 1.5k followers. I generate engagement and try to keep my posts informative and entertaining and shareable. What I have seen works best is to use an eyecatching image, I was able to find the perfect model so my link posts get excellent reach on all my social network, it's just about beat the algorithm.

But tbh, the social traffic is not that high, in total, I got 1.2k visits the month of March including search, social, and direct traffic.

Great job!

Is it correctly understood that you have made two post every month?

Yes! but I know it's not enough, I want to increase it to 4 per month. I mean writing post consumes me a lot of time since I don't have any idea about the topics I write on my posts LOL I only want to drive traffic and keep my audience entertained, so I make some research and check other sources and then join it all together rewriting it.

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

Congratulations on starting this journey. It's not easy to go public like this. I'm also into the spiritual niche but wondering why only 3 posts a month. I know you're busy with a job, but organic SEO is also reliant on more posting. However, a 2000 word post will be really effective in getting that keyword ranked. Best of luck.

Yes I know, I completely agree, would you suggest outsourcing content? I mean, outsourcing is not cheap, and it is difficult to find a writer who understands SEO the right way and also writes good content. How many posts do you suggest would be ok per month?

 

[JVRZ]

Good luck man!
Your stats look pretty good, keep it up

 

[nSnoopy]

Yes I know, I completely agree, would you suggest outsourcing content? I mean, outsourcing is not cheap, and it is difficult to find a writer who understands SEO the right way and also writes good content. How many posts do you suggest would be ok per month?

Outsource content is not too expensive, if you look at the BHW Marketplace you will find good writers for under 10$/1000words, i outsource content and tbh i use about 5-6000 words/month.

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

Outsource content is not too expensive, if you look at the BHW Marketplace you will find good writers for under 10$/1000words, i outsource content and tbh i use about 5-6000 words/month.

Sorry my ignorance, what is the "BHW Marketplace"?

 

[nSnoopy]

Sorry my ignorance, what is the "BHW Marketplace"?

https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/content-copywriting.194/
Over here

 

[ger81948]

Yes I know, I completely agree, would you suggest outsourcing content? I mean, outsourcing is not cheap, and it is difficult to find a writer who understands SEO the right way and also writes good content. How many posts do you suggest would be ok per month?

The number of posts is equally important with good SEO. However, the number is important too. If your posts were all 2000 words, I'd say 4 a month with a 4 shorter (500 words) posts a month also. I know that seems like a lot but you'll definitely start ranking for your keywords faster. Yes outsourcing does cost but depending on your budget there are some really good SEO gigs on BHW. The fact that you're concentrating on long tail keywords will make it easier to rank also, especially if you're not competing with the seller.

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

UPDATE

These are the results I have got so far, my website is almost 7 months old now, I'm very excited to see my website growth!

My organic traffic increased by almost 500%!!!

If you're wondering, yes I only have 14 posts published in my website in total.

Keyword Rankings from SEMrush

I've been able to rank 9 (non-branded) keywords in the top 3 of SERPS!!!


Now let me show you the growth of the organic presence in Google the last 3 months, it's just going parabolic, I'm so excited!

Conclusions so far:

1. Most of you recommended to outsource content and produce much more content, however as you can see I could only create 2 posts per month. I Invest a lot of effort on each blog post, since Im focusing on high content quality, so probably the key of my success so far has been content quality over quantity. I decided to keep creating the content myself.

2. Although I've been able to monetize my website, so far I have earned some money and Im happy, however I changed my marketing strategy. Instead of redirecting to the sales page right after people click on my banners I added a bridge popup to gather emails, I created automatic email sequence right after people subscribe to my list, sending extra gifts and encouraging people to buy the affiliate product.

3. Im considering add Adsense, however not sure if it is a good idea to combine affiliate offer with adsense ads in the same website, would like to know your oppinion about it!

4. I added the new marketing strategy to gather visitors email addresses 20 days ago, I have seen that the conversion of the popup is almost 2% Do you think that's a good conversion rate for a "subscribe" popup? Im offering a free gift and try to encourage curiosity on my visitors, I would like to know in your experience what's the average conversion rate of a subscription popup, I also coded the exit-intent function for my popup.


I would like to know your opinions on my results so far, and any suggestion will be accepted, this is my first website and my first SEO and affiliate marketing experience, I've been a developer all my life, but I find this world of SEO and affiliate marketing fascinating! I hope to quit my developer job soon to dedicate all my time to this stuff some day!

 

[destinywakes]

What's the gravity of the product?
SEO Takes time it's a long hustle keep writing high quality content and I'm sure you will take this project to new heights.
All da best!

 

[Ezzra]

Another great journey
Good luck! I'm following this!

 

[MIRANTHA]

good luck..

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

What's the gravity of the product?
SEO Takes time it's a long hustle keep writing high quality content and I'm sure you will take this project to new heights.
All da best!

The Gravity of the product is 55.34 what do you think?

 

[destinywakes]

Yes anything below 100 is good I think, what's you url is it broad specific to spiritual niche?

 

[Sebastian Velandia]

Yes anything below 100 is good I think, what's you url is it broad specific to spiritual niche?

I thought the more gravity the better? Why you say below 100 is good?