PHPBUILT's Idiot-Proof Guide to Authority Site Building

[moonlighsunligh]

- When you have very little content. A simple paragraph can rank and keyword density matters less when there is very little content.
-Never screw with a #1 position, when you're #1 you move on to make something else #1.

Your other pages that aren't ranking, are they anywhere in the SERPs?

True, it is a neat 300 words article, but concise and to the point with 6 images. I found that multiple images sometimes can do a lot for ranking. I have had an 12K EMD ranked #22 with no backlinks thanks to multiple images, videos and 500-600 words of text.

Other page are anything between #25-50. I just changed a page from 1.5% to around 1% to see how it will effect the ranking. I am may even measure the keyword desity of top pages and try to do as they done, though there are the backlink anchor variable that need to be taken look at.

Edit:Most sites in top rank on authority, not much on KD, their KD is around 0.2-0.5% but my site DA is just 15 as I only did around 20 Web 2.0s few weeks back.

 

[KHer0]

@KHero. Keeping that keyword density to 1% by inflating your template with keywords and not using them in your content is something that would work. My gut feeling is that you get more benefit from keywords in content, and that feeling comes from success I have doing it that way. If you have success doing the reverse, then you know what works good for you. Most of everything I say, while based on a lot of research and personal experience, is pure guesswork. My guesswork gets pages ranking. Obviously there's probably more than one way to get stuff ranking. And yeah, like I said ... if you don't have a navigational menu, then breadcrumbs is siloing and there's nothing wrong with it at all.

This why I'm in this forum. To get more ideas from respected members. To develop my performance Actually, I'm going to adjust few things in my website structure. I forgot to mention I dont use targeted keyword in the title. I usually target more than one keyword and swap between them. One keyword for the slug ( main- one). Another one in the title with the same meaning. I also have total control over my pages. Like you can never go anywhere without my manual linking. No auto widgets of any kind. This give me total control and strict grip on my keyword density. Like on the photo, unlike the most, I need to mention the keyword in the content more Keep going PHPbuilt, you are doing astonishing work here. I think this is gonna be a historical thread in BHW for a long time to come. There is a question I forgot to ask, what is the tools you are using to create social accounts and use them to like you posts? And like I said I use pages not posts. So, I dont allow comments.. I dont think it has that much effect on the site unless its a blog but I ave absouletly no evidence on this. Do you think comments help on your site ranking? And I mean on a page basis not site wide

 

[phpbuilt]

There is a question I forgot to ask, what is the tools you are using to create social accounts and use them to like you posts? And like I said I use pages not posts.

Right now, I build web2.0s by hand or use a VA to do it.

I do spam and use automated software to the web2.0s ... I do the web2.0s by hand however. I don't have that part automated because once they're set up its not like I need a bunch more, I use 1 set of web2.0s per niche.

So, I dont allow comments.. I dont think it has that much effect on the site unless its a blog but I ave absouletly no evidence on this. Do you think comments help on your site ranking? And I mean on a page basis not site wide

I make Google+ accounts, give them a Gravitar account, and comment on my own blog. So yes, I think its important to have comments, but no -- I don't think its important to have real comments.

 

[phpbuilt]

Shortly before I started this thread, I started my next authority site. I published the first 10 articles right around Nov. 25 and started getting traffic on the 27th.

Right now it has 30 articles, and its now up to 60 visitors a day. What I show above is organic traffic from Google.

Everything I'm chasing after is buying keywords. Virtually no one gets to my site that didn't type in some sort of query implying they're about to buy a product. With the price range I've selected for the products I write about ... I know that every visitor I get from Google is worth around 15 cents, whether or not they buy anything. If 100 people visit my site, I make $15, if 1000 visit, I make $150.

Right now I'm up to 60 visitors from Google a day, and the site is making sales. At an average of 15 cents per visitor, the site is averaging $9 per day (not exactly, but I know this industry well enough to know by the time I have 1k visitors the site will make $150+ per day).

Consider the power of this for a moment.

I wrote 30 articles. Most people writing wholesale articles are getting $5 for a 500 word article. That's $150 in their pocket for writing 30 articles.

Compare that to this scenario where you're building an authority site.

These 30 articles are on average making me $9 per day right now (60 visitors per day from Google * .15 cents per visitor). That is $270 a month. Every article I wrote is almost making me $10 per month.

And I haven't even backlinked yet.

You can flip a site for 12 months of its current income. Although I would have to let the site "prove" itself by averaging a certain amount of money for a length of time -- as-is the site with its current income could flip for $3240 ($270 * 12).

$3240 for writing 30 articles. That's over $100 per article folks.

However, I won't probably flip it until its aged a year, so in reality I get to make 1 years income, and then flipping it -- makes that $100 per article closer to $200 per article.

Would you start writing for $200 an article?

Of course, you need to do keyword research, write really well, continually fix areas of your site that aren't performing. But, its a good ROI.

And I haven't even backlinked yet. Someday I will. And it'll be worth more. That's the power of authority sites.

I forgot to mention, these are my Moz stats:

Subdomain MozRank => 0
Domain Authority => 10
External Links=> 0
Links=> 0
MozRank => 0
Page Authority => 1
Google Pagerank: 0

 

[_Chip_]

Hey PHP..
I think my post got missed in the crowd...

 

[phpbuilt]

1) If I want to optimize the article for 4 three-worded keyphrases..
example: blue cups in 2013, blue cups in 2014, fresh blue cups 2013, fresh blue cups 2014, and so on.. May be I want to include 10 more like these in the same article because they are all similar.. How should my approach be? I mean trying to get 1% for each keyphrase invariably the density for "blue cups" is sky rocketing coz of all the occurances due to other keyphrases..

You don't have to repeat this stuff ... Google sees 2013, 2014 on a page with fresh blue cups, you'll rank for those long terms. Anything about 1.5% keyword density brings problems for your page that are most easily overcome just by reducing it to 1.5% or less.

2) About backlinking: How should I start getting links if I have to start with 100 pages.. ?
Some plan like 5 HQ guest post links, some social signals per post for 5 posts per day or something?
Some bookmarking, webs, comments for some other 10 posts?
and randomise this the next day and so on?

I look at each page and guess what it needs. By the time you have 100 posts, you can clearly see which posts are ranking for their keywords. Webmaster tool will tell you which pages are giving you traffic, what impressions you are getting for each page.

So you again, start auditing each page 1 by 1. You have a page ranked #12 for a keyword, give it a link and move to next. Do like 5 to 10 links a day. If they're low competition words, use web2.0s. High, private blog network. Personally, I'll do this with a high PR blog network.

You'll find that once you start doing this, everything will improve, because your overall domain will increase in PA and DA.

Biggest advice is this -- you don't have 100 posts in general, you have 100 individual posts. You deal with them 1 by 1.

If I want to rank my homepage for a keyword, I'll get my homepage maybe 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 10 backlinks. On the current authority site I'm doing, I don't know that I want the homepage to rank for a tough keyword, so when I do backlinks it'll be 100% internal pages.

 

[briptech]

Many thanks OP for sharing such a big amount of great informations! Thread subscribed

 

[ritafairclough]

Excellent guide thanks - what do you do when your articles sit at ranks 15-30? as they may as well rank at 200 because the traffic is the same. zero.
Is this because the competition is too great for that keyword set or does the articles need backlinking?

 

[phpbuilt]

Excellent guide thanks - what do you do when your articles sit at ranks 15-30? as they may as well rank at 200 because the traffic is the same. zero.
Is this because the competition is too great for that keyword set or does the articles need backlinking?

You want stuff to hit 15 to 30 without backlinks. You improve the site -- weed out any dead weight, creating new content. Every article will rank for its own keywords, and then you link to your other content.

If you have a page ranked 15 to 30, you write a new article that is somewhat related (but different keywords you're shooting for) and link to that 15 to 30 page with your new article. That 15 to 30 will become 11 to 22. Age will make it rise, the weight of your internal linking will make it rise.

Eventually, you will backlink to the site. If you go the cheap route, you'll be making web2.0s. If you go a more expensive route, you'll be building your own private blog network. Continually audit your inner pages, how they rank for your main keywords and adjust the content, internal backlinks and finally, after your site is 100 to 200 pages (or whenever you are comfortable that your building is sufficient), you begin your external backlinking.

If you start that backlinking before your site is finished, you will have issues troubleshooting your content. However, if you are extremely confident in your ability to write articles that will not get penalized by keyword stuffing, feel free to begin backlinking early.

Refining your writing skills and sensing where Google is going to rank your content, without backlinks, makes you a better site creator. Backlinks are a crutch, and if you rely strictly on backlinks you'll end up with many #8 pages that could have been #1 if you had only known how to write it better, balance its keywords better, etc.

 

[StarkContrast]

Fascinating, phpbuilt. And quite logical as you present it. Two quick questions.

1. I played the "get hundreds of tags" game with a plugin. I didn't see much value. Now I have hundreds of tag/plumber, tag/sewage, tag/drainage type pages in the SERPS. Is it a waiting game for Google to let them drop? They are no longer tags on my posts. I've deleted them from the posts (and put them to no-index) but they're still showing up in the SERPS.

2. How do you go about interlinking identical keywords in different cities? For that matter, how do you create content that folks would click through even though it's just another city away and do it in natural way, ie., plumber in Oak Park, plumber in Tinley Park, plumber in Chicago would all have very similar content, no? I'm sure i'm overthinking it.

Thanks for your great posts. Truly thought provoking. Ranking with your articles BEFORE backlinking makes total sense.

 

[Zevoltai]

Dang, looks like I was really overoptimized after all, thanks for the tips

 

[crazedspyker]

Is it possible to over-optimize with single words too? I'm trying to reduce keyword density of my single words to 2% but it's so hard to do compared to 2/3 word phrases.

For example, if my keyword was dog training ebook, is it over-optimization to have 3.5% keyword density for just the word "dog"?

 

[phpbuilt]

Is it possible to over-optimize with single words too? I'm trying to reduce keyword density of my single words to 2% but it's so hard to do compared to 2/3 word phrases.

For example, if my keyword was dog training ebook, is it over-optimization to have 3.5% keyword density for just the word "dog"?

On a 3 keyword combo, you want to be under 1%. 2 keywords ... under 1.5% (probably better off closer to 1%), and if you have a 1 word keyword, I'd say 2% is highest you want to go.

I know it can be hard for someone who is a SEO writer stuck in the best practices of a couple years ago, I'm in the same boat. However, you have to do it to rank.

 

[phpbuilt]

Fascinating, phpbuilt. And quite logical as you present it. Two quick questions.

1. I played the "get hundreds of tags" game with a plugin. I didn't see much value. Now I have hundreds of tag/plumber, tag/sewage, tag/drainage type pages in the SERPS. Is it a waiting game for Google to let them drop? They are no longer tags on my posts. I've deleted them from the posts (and put them to no-index) but they're still showing up in the SERPS.

I have a site that was tagged at about 100 pages on 20 articles I did as a test, about 2 months ago I completely dropped tags with a 301 to homepage. There's 62 pages indexed now ... which means it dropped like 40 of them and there's still 40 left in the index.

I think it'd probably be faster to get them out of the index by keeping the tags, but noindex/follow them (with all-in-one SEO). They will drop quicker, once they're gone delete them.

2. How do you go about interlinking identical keywords in different cities? For that matter, how do you create content that folks would click through even though it's just another city away and do it in natural way, ie., plumber in Oak Park, plumber in Tinley Park, plumber in Chicago would all have very similar content, no? I'm sure i'm overthinking it.

Thanks for your great posts. Truly thought provoking. Ranking with your articles BEFORE backlinking makes total sense.

When I do something like this ... lets say I'm doing all cities in a state. There's this SQL query you can do to find the closest 5 zip codes if you have longitude and latitude in the database. I'll run a query to select closest 5 zip codes and then I include them at the bottom of the article (similar to how YARPP would insert 4 related articles at the bottom of the article). That seems to work fine.

 

[rschmitz]

Php, I'm getting confused here. So if I build a site around the word kittens, I would have to avoid using kittens in my content? Itd do that but it would make for some extreme clunkiness. In fact any related navigation would jeopardize your keyword density

 

[phpbuilt]

Php, I'm getting confused here. So if I build a site around the word kittens, I would have to avoid using kittens in my content? Itd do that but it would make for some extreme clunkiness. In fact any related navigation would jeopardize your keyword density

Bingo. Well said. You now understand young padawan, go and make awesome ranking websites.

 

[rschmitz]

Php I have a siloed site. Can I pm you the url to have a quick look at? Pretty sure I'm failing

 

[finerpleasures]

Phpbuilt, in relation to keyword density . If I had an article , and I want to rank for "crazy sexy cool".

it would be safe to mention this phrase twice "only" in the article, as in "crazy sexy cool" once in the start and "crazy sexy cool" once in the finish or in parts like crazy sexy, crazy cool , sexy cool.

Also, do you mind sharing your Skype ID ?

 

[phpbuilt]

Phpbuilt, in relation to keyword density . If I had an article , and I want to rank for "crazy sexy cool".

it would be safe to mention this phrase twice "only" in the article, as in "crazy sexy cool" once in the start and "crazy sexy cool" once in the finish or in parts like crazy sexy, crazy cool , sexy cool.

Also, do you mind sharing your Skype ID ?

Skype is: phpbuilt

If I wanted to rank for crazy sexy cool, I'd make it 1% keyword density or less. The individual words crazy, sexy and cool, I wouldn't use more than around 2.5% density.

Though in reality those are common words, which would probably mess up the theory. If my keyword was "Austrian Pumpernickel Ferrets", I'd use Austrian Pumpernickel Ferrets at 1% or less, Austrian Pumpernickel at 1.5% or less and each individual word at 2% or less.

 

[Bluearrow]

Awesome !

Bigger the articles get it's hard for me to keep keyword density low and keep everything related. Anyway do you make all your site artists with 400+ words or you have any rules for this ?