[SEO] Build a competitive niche website, objective 3000€/m

[The John Doe]

Hi everyone, welcome to my first journey here. Taking a SEO website from not existing to 3,000€ of amazon affiliate commision and/or other sources of revenues.

The total budget: 5,000€
The experience: I'm good at SEO.

The plan:

1. Find a niche
2. Find a brandable domain name.
3. Find & customize a theme
4. Do a semantic analysis of the competition and the market
5. Structure your site
6. Create SEO briefs for each page / product I will create
7. Send briefs to the writer
8. Create each pages.
9. Build Links.
10. Do step 6 > 9 all over again.

1. The niche
This part is important and you'll find a lot of tutorial around BHW. Beside the "ticket price" (price of your average product) and competitors, one thing I will never stress enough is your interest in the product.
When starting a big project like this one, you'll need to look at products and understand them; understanding the buyer intent etc etc. You will not be able to do that if you hate what you see.
I won't disclose my niche but it's an apparel. I have worked in the past on this niche, and I believe I can do it again.

2. The domain name.
Forget the EMDs (Exact Match Domains, i.e. You're selling baby toys, your domain would be baby-toys.com).
They might work if you're an equilibrist of SEO, but most of people will burn their wings and get penalized in the long run.
Instead, pick something "brandable", short, and if possible, meaningful. i.e, if you're selling baby toys, "HappyBabies.com" would be a good name.
I picked the name a while ago.

3. The Theme.
You're probably going to go with Wordpress; so you need to have a very good theme to not look like your average blog.
I went for Elementor + Woocommerce. Elementor is a good builder do design very specific stuff. Woo commerce is very good to list products. I also added a few custom functions (after a lot of Google searches) and
tweaked the CSS a bit.
I designed my "categories of product pages" and "product pages" to look like an ecommerce website.
For the Logo, I went on Freelancer.com and launched a contest to design the best logo.

4. Semantic Analysis.
That part is very important. You will have 99% chances of fucking it up if you outsource it.
My method:
- Go to ahref and enter your main keyword
- Find your biggest competitors (the one ranking for +++ keywords) and export the keyword lists they're ranking for.
- Categorize those keywords: Are they meant to be part of the main keyword? Are they meant ot be on another page? Whihc catergory would
they fit in?


5. Structure your site: A good architecture is the key
This is the part where you want to undersstand the buyers, buyer intent, and buyer behavior. Once categorized, you want to create the menu of your site, which would be the main categories of products usually. The Step 4 should have helped you find the different buyer intents and what they're looking for. If you grouped your keywords well, you should have no problem creating categories and subcategories.

6. Create SEO briefs for each pages / products
A SEO brief should be the architecure of the article, paragraph per paragraph. You want to give your writers the most informations possible in order to write the perfect content.
For me it usually looks like this (example baby toys under 3y/o category page).
(H1) Baby Toys under 3 y/o
(Intro)
150 words, must include keywords x, x and x
(H2) The best toys for babies under 3 y/o
(H3) Product 1
150/250 words
(H3) Product 2
150/250 words
(H3) Product 3
150/250 words
(H3) Product 4
150/250 words
(H3) Product 5
150/250 words
(H2) How to choose your toy if your kid is under 3?
150 words, must include keywords x, x and x(H2) What is the price of a toy for babies under 3?
150 words, must include keywords x, x and x
(H2) Where can I find baby toys for toddlers under 3 y/o?
150 words, must include keywords x, x and x

Note: It's an example: I haven't actually done any research on that particular topic?

In total I have done : 2 brand pillar pages, 2 categories pillar pages, 50 products.

7. Send briefs to the writer
I can't stress enough the importance of QUALITY writing. You don't want to outsource your text to someone asking $1 for 100 words. You want to have someone that will actually research the topic / products, take time to understand the niche and write accordingly. Compare writers, make them do paid test. take someone native in the language.
My writer takes about $15 for 100 words ($25 an hour) - but the content is perfect. I feel like someone working in the field has actually written that; And that is what you want to give Google and the potential buyer.

8. Create each page
That takes times. If you have done the design correctly and the text is good, it should fit, but you need to fine tune every little detail to make it the more legit possible.

9. Build Links.
Building links is by definition black hat. So you want to either let the pro do, or be really careful.
First links should be brand and url links, for at least a few months, then once ranking is settled
I am not there yet, i'll update at a later time.

Conclusion & spending summary:

That project takes time. It's almost opening a real shop, and then let Google decide how good your shop is.

1.The Niche
Time : 1 hour (I'm lucky, i knew my niche before)
Cost: $0
2.Find a brandable domain name.
Time: 4 hours
Cost: $10
3.Find & customize a theme
Time: 50 hours
Cost: $100 (Elementor + Custom logo)
4.Do a semantic analysis of the competition and the market
Time: 4 hours (product research, categorization)
Cost: $0 (I have unlimited ahrefs)
5.Structure your site
Time: 1 hour (I'm use to it, SEO is my field)
Cost: $0
6.Create SEO briefs for each page / product I will create
Time: 8 hours
Cost: $0
7.Send briefs to the writer
Time: 2 hours (testing writers and picking the good one)
Cost: $629
8.Create each pages.
Time: 4 hours
Cost: $0
9.Build Links.
Time: not started
Cost: Not started

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 74 hours
Expenses: $739​

Any questions?

feel free to let them come my way

I'll post a first update very soon

 

[Saba1991]

bookmarked!

I liked the content structure part! Good luck

 

[Starblazer]

You have a perfect plan. I like the way you prepared the structure and planned your budget.
But, why Amazon?
They are paying peanuts to affiliates.

 

[The John Doe]

You have a perfect plan. I like the way you prepared the structure and planned your budget.
But, why Amazon?
They are paying peanuts to affiliates.

Thanks!

I am in Europe. So far comission have not been impacted.
But on a side note, I built the website with an evolutive vision, in order to be able to incorporate more products in the future, from diffeernt providers!

 

[perrymason]

good luck in your journey !

 

[thegoldeneye]

I'll be following this journey, it sounds really interesting. Btw you have a really big budget, which will, I hope so, help you to achieve faster your goals. Good luck!

 

[Ezzra]

good luck following you

 

[mam4q]

Look forward to seeing your updates. That's quite a hefty budget you have there - I see the biggest expenditure so far appears to have been on outsourced content authors.
Interested to hear how your content performs in search both before and after linkbuilding.

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 1]]​

I have added the all the pages I had, finalised the design.
In total, we count 2 Brand pages with >1200 words, 2 long tail keyword pages with > 1000 words each, and 50 products. It's around 12000 words on the website

First problem: Indexing seems very slow lately.
I have sent the pages for indexation on the April 8th (2 brand pages) - and updated the design since then.
Google has not caught the changes yet (16 days and counting, and multiple indexation request).
I added the 2 long tail keyword pages on the 20th of April and requested indexation through the Search Console. It didn't and still doesn't work.
the command "site:mydomain.com" only show 10 pages, including old pages now de-indexed, on a total of 70 pages that should be ready for indexing on the site.​

I have a lot of theories about it, and some are related to Marie Haynes articles about the January 2020 Core update (https://www.mariehaynes.com/january-2020-core-update/):

• The first version of my design had a misleading button to the Amazon (Buy now) - I since then added An amazon logo
• The first version of the design was including placeholder picture on the main page.
• Google rates my site as low quality because too many affiliate links?

I'll wait a few more days, to see if at least I can get the long tail keywords pages indexed (First time I don't see a page indexing when asked through search console).

 

[MSRP]

Great journey with great plan. Also supported with awesome budget.
I am waiting your URL campaign update. Thank your for share this great journey. Following and good luck.

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 2]]​

Things haven't changed (it hasnt been long ...)

Today I've added 3 links to the sidebar of 3 websites I own, anchor is the url.
Metrics on the websites I put those links on:
- DR33, 498 RD
- DR 51, 807 RD
- DR40, 63 RD

I'm not a defender of the all-metrics links. Those are just information I use in order to see the evolution in time. I know those links have power, those are blogs I've done and posted on for now 2 years.

Let's see how it changes the indexation problem.


TOTAL:
Time Spent: 76 hours
Expenses: $739

 

[Project-Shadow]

I can see this is going to be a successful journey already. You mentioned you're worried about too many affiliate links, I'd recommend you put them through a local redirect (plenty of wp plugins out there for that) and you might see some extra pickup.

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 3]]​

No change in my indexation problem;
2 days ago, I set up a plugin to "hide" my outbound links (to amazon) from crawlers. Maybe it has been not long enough, but even with asking indexation of my pillar page, nothing has changed.

I lose patience.

My last move will be to move the domain from a gTLD to a ccTLD in the hope of waking things up!


TOTAL:
Time Spent: 77 hours
Expenses: $739

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 4]]​

Changes! Finally. It seems that the indexation problem is gone. I believe it's related to the May Core Update of Google. I remember one of the last Core update was preceded by indexation problems. I have now 74 indexed pages according to google "site:" command. It's relative I know, but always better than the 10 pages that were stuck for now.

Ranking has not improved a little. Will give it some times. I don't think I will change the domain name just yet. There is hope.

I will think about the linking strategy by the end of the week, start of next week!. Will keep you updated.

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 77 hours
Expenses: $739

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 5]][Netlinking]​

Here we comes. I have started building links. Or better, I started buying links. For that, I decided to go through 2 online platforms that provides backlinks (I won't mention them).

On the first one, It's a 30 days campaign, consisting of 10 x $41 Links & 2 x $270 links (authority links for the kickstart).
On the second provider, there is a possibility to schedule links. So I did as follow:
Month 1: 2 Semantical links + 2 Generic links = $130
Month 2: 3 + 2 = $214
Month 3: 3 + 2 = $214
Month 4: 3 + 2 = $214
Month 5: 3 + 0 = $177

Anchors? First provider doesn't let me chose. Second provider, I used 10% exact match, 10% broad match and 80% brand and url.

That is a total of 12 +22 = 34 Reffering Domains over 5 months.

Total provider 1 : $1140
Total provider 2: $1082

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 79 hours
Previous expenses: $739
New Expenses : $2222
Total Expenses : $2961

 

[unsungwarrior]

Best of luck for the journey. How many articles are you planning to post in total for this blog?

 

[The John Doe]

Best of luck for the journey. How many articles are you planning to post in total for this blog?

It is not a blog, it's a website., ideally, I want to get 100 products

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 6]][Content]​

So the site ranking and indexation still doesn't move.It is worrying at this point, nothing like I ever seen in my seo experience.

Internal linking report only shows the homepage. 2 months and a half and I can only find 20 of my pages in the index (instead of 70).

I rebuild the menu (took of the top menu with dropdown through javascript) and implemented it in the sidebar on the left.

I built a guide about the security requirement, graphics, exhausitve tables, 1000 words of content. It's the best guide you can find online about this matter. Added about 20 small satellite pages for categorisation, with a bit of text on it. Let's see where it brings us.

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 100 hours
Previous expenses: $2961
Total Expenses : $2961

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 6.1]][Content]
​

Just a small update. I used to have affiliate links on my homepage & category page directly (the button view product had. asmall amazon link on the side), it's not the case anymore. I realize the first goal is to grow the trafic, and for that I need the maximum of internal linking I can get at the moment. Will let you know how it goes!

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 101 hours
Previous expenses: $2961
Total Expenses : $2961

 

[The John Doe]

[[Update 6.2]][Content]​

Another small update. I have created a 1300 words guide on "how to choose".

I feel like it's going to come and rank!

TOTAL:
Time Spent: 105 hours
Previous expenses: $2961
Total Expenses : $2961