Authority Site SEO Case Study

propipper said:

Hey BTB,

I know you're focusing on one authority site but do you ever put links to multiple money sites/clients on your Tier 1s? Working on a couple different authority sites in different niches and hesitant to put content/links to multiple money sites on the same Tier 1.

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If you mean do I put links to more than one site on any of my tier ones, no I do not. I don't have out bound links to anything at all except one site when I am building any backlinks at all when I am using a 3rd party site.

On a PBN site, I do link to more than one but that is on different articles, and again it is only to money sites.

BassTrackerBoats said:

If you mean do I put links to more than one site on any of my tier ones, no I do not. I don't have out bound links to anything at all except one site when I am building any backlinks at all when I am using a 3rd party site.

On a PBN site, I do link to more than one but that is on different articles, and again it is only to money sites.

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Yeah, with the PBN we have several articles on each of them now but with multiple niches/clients, was hesitant to link to different money sites on the same PBN. Thanks for the info on the tier ones.

Great thread - glad to see you're still updating on the progress.

Hey BTB,

First off I just wanted to say thank you very much for posting this and sharing your fantastic experience with us. I am reading and rereading this thread trying to gather us much info as I can so I can try and make my own authority site. Really appreciate you taking the time to explain everything that you have and to be as transparent as you have been, it does not go unnoticed and can't praise you enough.

Do have a question that is from a little earlier in the thread, I don't think I really saw an explanation of it and apologize if I missed it in here. I caught this thread a little late but am trying to give it a shot! But I saw that you said you started off with two pages. I am assuming you would do something like a Home page and an About Me page or something along those lines? If not what would you consider making? For example I looked at your SEO blog. What I expected was the top 6 navigation buttons to direct to a page but looks like you just have a home page, about me, contact, and one or two other very specific static pages with the rest just referring to categories I believe. Is this something similar to how you'd layout the larger authority site? Also realize I don't need to exactly copy what you are doing here as I don't want to be leaving footprints myself!

I started making two different sites for the moment just so I can try and mix things up and keep myself fresh on both.

When I started writing the home page for one I ended up with just a little over 2,000 words and started looking at it on the page. I essentially stated in first person what my website was designed to do, informed readers about my niche, that it was meant for beginners and experts alike, then went into some basics about the niche and what I planned to offer. Honestly seemed like a little too long of a page to start off with and that it might scare off some people? I realize this is the first place that they land if they are going straight to the website and not if they are coming in from the keywords that I will be targeting with my articles but want to make everything feel as natural as possible. Which also brings up the question of do you write in first person for everything and make up a pen name and even a persona for each site? Or do you try and keep it as informative as possible leaving yourself out of it? After all it is supposed to be an authority website so I would understand that.

Which also makes me a tad curious about setting up the home page in a different way. Just a more simple 500-1,200 (nothing specific, just a little more natural) word explanation of the website welcoming in the reader, an explanation with some popular posts mixed linked in the text or with images, or just the most recent posts. The theme that I am currently using offers the slider on the home page or all of the pages. Would you consider using these on your websites, or think it is just better to keep things clean and simple? I imagine as nice as it may look that they have little to no effect on SEO, or even a negative one if any.

Also as far as hosting goes I know you have things that I might not have access to right now. But would you suggest using shared hosting for the beginning or just going ahead and jumping into a VPS? And would you let an authority site share hosting with any of your other sites? Or just go ahead and give them each their own VPS or hosting plan?

And I know I am barraging you with questions right now so I'll make this my last one. When you initially set up your website do you have the settings for http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com. I know this is something very small and I have seen mixed things on it in my searches just curious what you think is best? I imagine it's just what you already have back links for from the expired/deleted domain. For example the sites I bought are deleted domains and when I did the ahrefs on it the back links and anchors the first shows as http://domain1.com while the other shows as http://www.domain2.com for the anchors and links. In reality they may not be the best back links ever but they are there.

Hopefully I didn't ask too much there, I know you are busy and don't want to waste your time. I swear this actually started out just as one question and then as I went back through looking at some stuff they kind of kept coming.

Thanks again and looking forward to more updates in the future!

Sorry for the slow response... I'll try and do better in response time here for this.

do you write in first person for everything and make up a pen name and even a persona for each site?

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I do use a pen name for all my sites... different names as well. In fact I use names of people from my childhood for the names of the authors. I'm not looking to build a personal reputation; I just want to make money from the sites and could care less if one thinks it is me or not.

I am assuming you would do something like a Home page and an About Me page or something along those lines?

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My home page is usually a decent size... I like to have at least 1500 words in it and pepper in gently some of the KWs I will be targeting but make it mainly a very general overview of the subject. I also do the About Us page as that is another way I can slip in some KWs without really writing about them.

For example I looked at your <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> blog

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That is really not indicative of the kinds of authority sites I like to build... it is more of a sharing site as opposed to a money making venture and I set it up a bit differently.

The theme that I am currently using offers the slider on the home page or all of the pages. Would you consider using these on your websites, or think it is just better to keep things clean and simple?

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I use a slider on some sites but not on those kinds of sites. I actually set up local sites and sell leads from them to various businesses and use a slider on some of them. I tried to use a slider on one of my larger sites but it was awkward so I bailed.  I did not spend much time on that though as I really hate web site designing so a guy that likes to build sites would probably be able to pull that off.

shared hosting for the beginning or just going ahead and jumping into a VPS? And would you let an authority site share hosting with any of your other sites?

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I use both shared hosting and private IP addresses; one of my partners and I own a private hosting service that we built for our own purposes (it is not for the public) and I use that for most of my sites.That being said, I also use some of the generic hosts that are out there as well as I like to mix things up a bunch.

When you initially set up your website do you have the settings for http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com. I know this is something very small and I have seen mixed things on it in my searches just curious what you think is best? I imagine it's just what you already have back links for from the expired/deleted domain.

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If I am using an expired or dropped domain for a project, I will use what has the backlinks pointed at it, otherwise I use the www.I've not seen any significant difference between using and not using the www myself but I have not done any extensive testing either and perhaps it would be wise to do that at some point.

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I've pulled off the eBay completely for montetization to see how something else works... for now I have just adsense on the site but am going to be looking at some CJ offers as well. I'll let the Adsense run for a while... maybe 3 - 4 weeks and see what happens there as to revenue.

Once I get the monetization down, I'll be giving the site to my friend... the whole site will be his. I'll be helping him along but the work and revenue will be all his. He is a good friend and one that could use a bit of a break and has shown that he does not mind hard work and that deserves to be rewarded even in a small measure such as this.

I'll continue to update here as I think that is appropriate as well.

No worries at all BTB! I just appreciate you answering the questions I have.

I'll go ahead and make sure I create pen names vs using my admin name to post everything.

And I went back through the thread and saw that you said you don't use the same structure on your authority sites and like to mix it up. So I'll do that! Try Silo on one and mix the other one up a little bit. Any big no nos on that though?

Think it's a problem right now that my sites share hosting with each other (shared hosting)? Or that they share the same hosting as other projects? None of the projects have much traffic right now. I have contemplated just getting VPS hosting for my authority sites.

Did find myself buying quite a few domains then wanting to start multiple authority sites, although have also considered just using those domains as potential PBN domains in the future.

Looking forward to more updates. Have a good one!

B2b i was writing my unique excerpts for my posts, but cant find a way to use those on category pages, do you write different ones even for tag pages? Is it okay if i use those excerpts as meta description?

lcampbell89 said:

And I went back through the thread and saw that you said you don't use the same structure on your authority sites and like to mix it up. So I'll do that! Try Silo on one and mix the other one up a little bit. Any big no nos on that though?

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No, that would be perfectly fine to do.

Think it's a problem right now that my sites share hosting with each other (shared hosting)? Or that they share the same hosting as other projects? None of the projects have much traffic right now. I have contemplated just getting VPS hosting for my authority sites.

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I have projects on shared hosting as well as their own IP... shared hosting is actually good to use as your site blends in with others. As long as the uptime/speed is good you should be good.

orko9696 said:

B2b i was writing my unique excerpts for my posts, but cant find a way to use those on category pages, do you write different ones even for tag pages? Is it okay if i use those excerpts as meta description?

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I use different content for all my pages, category and tag included. Some people say that makes no difference but I've been doing this for long enough to know that it makes sense to spend the extra few minutes to not copy and paste anything and re-use it.

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I'll have a site update later today as I have to head into town for a few hours.

The site update will include:

Site Status.
Ranking Image of the top 10 KWs.
Current Traffic Volumes.
Monetization Changes.
Future Plans.

Looking forward to the update.

Hey BTB, you have not posted anything about mobile optimization in this thread.

Can you share some of your tips/tricks about mobile optimization ?

I was wondering about your link building strategy. You mentioned high quality web 2 and press releases. Are there any other link types you will use? Can you recommend any good service for tier 1 and 2?

Site Status.

Currently I have a little over 400 articles up with various amounts of content on each page. I have only about 55 backlinks to the site total and all are either a Web 2.0 or Parastite/Authority page to it.

The Facebook page is up and we are slowly building that as well as the Twitter account. I'm not doing the buy fans/likes/followers thing but I am using IndianBill's software to build them up in a semi-natural way.

Ranking Image of the top 10 KWs.



Current Traffic Volumes.

The site is getting between 450 and 600 UV a day; there is a variance because this site is targeting a leisure crowd and is actually a little busier on the weekends than during the business week which was my intention when kicking around the idea of the site.

Monetization Changes.

I've pulled all monetization off the site; eBay partner was not converting as well as I would have liked and I am giving this to my friend. He is going to start off using just adsense on it and will tweak from there. If it were me, I would be going with CJ but he is new to IM and wants the low hanging fruit of the PPC opportunities that Adsense affords.

Future Plans.

Richard, new site owner, is going to write new content on a regular basis and target the KWs that I have grabbed using my method and I am sure he will come up with others as he moves along as this niche is something he really knows about... much more than me. I don't know that he will write as often but I would expect that he will put up 4 - 5 articles a week with various word counts per article. He actually took a class I taught where I volunteer and one of the things I taught in that class was how to write so it will be good to see him putting some of that to IM practice.

We are going to continue to build the FB and Twitter up and he is going to set up an Instagram as well and post real life pics of things in that niche.

I'm going to start really backlinking the site like I would a normal site also. We did just fine getting some of our targeted KWs ranked using just content and a little bit of backlinking and could continue that path and I'm sure it would be a 1,000 UV site a day operating in that manner but the revenue will affect Richard so I want to push it so that he makes some decent money from this site.

Another thing that we had talked about way back when was building an APP that targets this segment of society and I'll be looking into doing that as well. I'm not APP savvy but I have a few guys that I know fairly well that are and we'll put that into play. The thinking is that if we are getting a decent amount of UVs, and offer a free APP to DL on the site, that we will increase our reach and thus the monetization opportunities. I've done that with a few of my business sites and it is a nice way to increase your revenue without a lot of extra effort since you are working on driving traffic anyway.

BTB you are a huge inspiration to me and a lot of people here on BHW. Thanks to you I'm up to nearly 60 articles on my site and I'm getting about 4-5 uniques per day. I'm learning something new each day, like how to find better kws, how to improve on-page SEO, and a variety of other things related to ranking my site. I'm very impressed with how much content you added and I hope to be in a similar spot 3 or 4 months from now.

You might have mentioned it already but I've read the first few pages and couldn't find anything. What are the monthly searches for your top kws? You don't have to give exact but if you add the totals together what would you get? Are you outranking bigger sites (other authority or niche sites) on your content alone?

Thanks BTB!

BobbyFresh said:

You might have mentioned it already but I've read the first few pages and couldn't find anything. What are the monthly searches for your top kws?

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From what I remember they are not real high... I believe the main niche KW was in the 12,000 range and we are #1 with that now. Some of the other ones I checked are between 1,000 and 8,000 but the gold is not so much in ranking them as in ranking all the hundreds of ancillary ones that will come along due to the high volume of content.

Are you outranking bigger sites (other authority or niche sites) on your content alone?

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The monetization idea was initially to take advantage of my eBay partner network account and we have been kicking it with "eBay KW" buying searches. That was actually much easier than I thought it would be so, yeah, we are outranking eBay as was my initial goal.

It is 99% content and just those 55 or so backlinks at this point but with the new rad we are taking there will be increased backlinking activity.

With things morphing we'll be doing a different spin and making some target changes (I'll share that here).

A little update, Richard added 2 articles yesterday.

Let me share something here about him that I am sure he would not mind; 2 articles is a lot of work for him. He did not finish high school and got his G.E.D. from the volunteer classes I taught and reading, writing and other tasks like that are not real easy for him so 2 articles is VERY impressive.

The social media accounts are coming along and I'll be buying some PBN domains to back this site up this week. Perhaps 10 - 15 or so initially. I know we started this to build a site that one could do with almost no money but since things have changed, the approach has to change as well and I want the revenue for my buddy so I will be more aggressive going forward.

Although that is not my initial vision for this thread, it may help some of you that want to really push a site like this and thus I see it as having some value.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Let me share something here about him that I am sure he would not mind; 2 articles is a lot of work for him. He did not finish high school and got his G.E.D. from the volunteer classes I taught and reading, writing and other tasks like that are not real easy for him so 2 articles is VERY impressive.

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Nice work - Speed will come with time, quality not (just) quantity is the name of the game here

Have you done any backlinking other than the 50 web2.0?

My site is now 1 month and half old with 42 posts on it, looking to rank for keywords that don't even go over 2k monthly searches yet only have 3 keywords out of the 42 posts that are in top 10 and none in top 1

All I've done was make a few web2.0 directed to homepage and categories and 2-3 high PR blog comments to 15-20 posts (2-3 blog comments per post I mean)

spectrejoe said:

Have you done any backlinking other than the 50 web2.0?

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I have only about 55 backlinks to the site total and all are either a Web 2.0 or Parastite/Authority page to it.

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You missed this up above in my ramblings but not anything that is even remotely aggressive.

The site has some age, some content and I can feel comfortable starting to give it some more and diverse backlinks. I'll be sure to share the activity here for all to see.

Do you try to do the outreaching bullshit that everyone says to do? Like asking for guest posts on legit sites or building relationships with authority sites in your niche?

Good luck for you! Thanks for your experience on your journey!

Retraction said:

Do you try to do the outreaching bullshit that everyone says to do? Like asking for guest posts on legit sites or building relationships with authority sites in your niche?

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Probably not since that requires a lot of effort to get a single backlink and you have really low success rate and I'm sure he doesn't struggle with backlinks. But it's good to do if you need backlinks and don't have PBNs of your own, just write a few 500-900 words articles and send to several website owners asking if they want free content

Retraction said:

Do you try to do the outreaching bs that everyone says to do? Like asking for guest posts on legit sites or building relationships with authority sites in your niche?

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I don't do any of that sort of thing... it does require too much time and effort as spectrejoe says for the return generally for me.

I do have links from eHow that were not solicited and links from Wikipedia that I was able to slip in, and I have bought guest posts, but doing the shaking hands and kissing babies to get links is not in my wheelhouse.