Case Study/journey - From Research to Ranking

I had been doing quite well ranking for a tough keyword (Dont know how best to determine competition, but when I type the term in to Google in quotes, it returns 239,000,000 results ).

Anyway, since the discovery of the "Exact" tick box on the Goolge keyword tool, I realised it doesn't get nearly as many searches as I originally thought it did 160,000 down to 1200

So, I thought I'd gradually move away from that keyword and do some research to find a keyword worth going for. I decided to document results here just for fun.

So, the first thing I did was some keyword research - I bought scrapebox and MS for this and initially scraped a load of keywords related to my niche and then narrowed them down by competition and monthly searches - doing this took my list from about 10,000 keywords to about 30 keywords and they were all crap...

So next I decided to change tactics a little bit and do some keyword research based on terms that I already rank for.

I downloaded all of my visitor logs (last 10,000 visitors) and I took the complete list of keywords that I rank for (or that I get traffic from). then I ran that through Google keyword tool and made a spreadsheet of competition, monthly searches etc.

Next I manually checked all of the positions on Google (initially I tried using MS, but it was too slow).

I kept all of these keywords (as long as they had a decent amount of searches per month) and set them aside, then using that list, I scraped some more keywords using scrapebox and I ran those words through Google keyword tool and kept any that were appropriate and that had a decent amount of monthly searches.

By the end of this process I have a nice big list of keywords that have a good amount of monthly searches, and that are highly relevant to my niche (I have about 170 keywords ranging from 12-8000 exact local searches per month).

Next I chose a keyword based on competition and monthly searches.

The keyword I chose has the following characteristics:

Local monthly searches: 5400
Adwords competition: 0.97
Keyword results: 137,000,000
"Keyword" results: 618,000
Rank: #25

Initial Efforts:

1.Purchased 5 x blogroll links on high quality domains (Max 8 OBL)
2.Done on-page SEO (Title, H1,H2, keyword density etc).

Note: 2 of the above links were targeted towards my original search term which I am currently ranked #7 for - after removing these links I will be tracking that keyword as well.

Anyone got any comments? I know it's a bit of a noobs guide

Next things I'm gonna do are get the keyword on Volunds blog network (if I can change keywords) and then I'm going to build some link exchanges via link2me.com (I know two way links arnt great) its nice because it's fairly whitehat and it's worked well for me in the past.

Next I will think about some BHW services (that's how I got the keyword to 25th so far anyway - got to look up which service I used for that, think it was the one in my sig).

Edit: yes it was linkpwn (http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/buy-sell-services/341699-linkpwn2-0-www-backlinkfuel-com-newly-designed-latest-formula.html) that I used on this keyword originally.

Keyword has already dropped to #19. Think that must have been the on-page SEO amendments (adding keyword to title etc).

I have also linked to the page from my homepage (pr4).

Blogroll links should go live today.

Update: site is now floating around #19-#21.

Have ordered mohsins 250 bookmarking service and seo lovers manual blog commenting package.

Will update again when I see some movement.

competition stats? I agree MS is slow but doesnt take more than 30-45 seconds even on my crappy 1 mbps connection, why dont u use TT, its fast

whats ur budget? gud luck in ur journey

Dave you are doing a great job by letting others know about your case study

Thanks I was planning to run Linkpwn next to see how that goes.
Now though Im considering going for a comprehensive service:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ization-packages-dominate-google-no-time.html

Sounds like a pretty good deal... If I go for it, I might start another more comprehensive review thread

Decided to keep this going. Linkpwn 2.0 has been started for this keyword. Will post back with results in a few days.

LinkPWN is currently in progress for this term.
Site is now sitting at #9

Oh yea forgot to mention that I have been using http://dripable.com to drip links to all of the backlinks I bought from TLA. Think that's maybe explains the rank boost - in my experience TLA links normally take a lot longer to take effect!

David now that you are on page 1 (CONGRATS!!) I would look into posting articles on some higher PR blogs. There are some good services here but I found one on fiverr that I like, the guy who does it is also a member here on BHW and if you mention BH to him he doubles the amount of links. His user id on fiverr is insurgo, I think its the same here on BHW.

The PR range of the blogs I have gotten results from are 1-3

Getwhatchuwant said:

David now that you are on page 1 (CONGRATS!!) I would look into posting articles on some higher PR blogs. There are some good services here but I found one on fiverr that I like, the guy who does it is also a member here on BHW and if you mention BH to him he doubles the amount of links. His user id on fiverr is insurgo, I think its the same here on BHW.

The PR range of the blogs I have gotten results from are 1-3

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Thanks for the tip! Il look the gig up tomorrow!

You're plan looks solid man. Looks like your keyword is moving up, which is great. I'll be keeping an eye on this. Keep at it bro!

thedon23 said:

You're plan looks solid man. Looks like your keyword is moving up, which is great. I'll be keeping an eye on this. Keep at it bro!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement ! Hopefully will keep moving up! between #1-#3 id be happy!

Keyword has dropped again and is now dancing around #25 - #35 ! I'm hoping that's the google dance

Keyword has now landed back on page 1- #8 =wicked

Linkpwn should be complete in 7-10 days and hopefully that will give it another boost

Web content studio does a nice job of finding keyword phrases that sounds like it will do a slightly quicker job than what you've been doing initially in sourcing your keywords.

There's a download somewhere in the download section on bhw too.

Enjoying the journal btw

Sure the keyword's probably bouncing around a bit, but it's sitting at #4 at the moment

Keyword has dropped to #8. which is still good. I have added all the linkpwn urls into dripable and scheduled that to run over the next few days so we'll see what happens

Blogrool still works but is better to use your money on blog networks,bookmarks,article directories,home page backlinks.