[Journey] My First Authority Website Experiment

This is my first take on building an authority website.

The domain (single-word.com) is two years old, but it never had any traffic. A few months ago I've published just one article with 170 search volume for the main KW.

I also have an Instagram account with 5k followers for this domain, but I won't rely on social traffic (as there isn't any).

Here are the current stats from the Semrush dashboard:



Besides this one article (which even isn't finished) I've published a few more pages with headlines and intro text (less than 50 words). The plan is to focus on informational content and, when the time comes, monetize it with ads.

On the content production side, I'll write only the highly competitive and complicated articles and outsource the rest to Fiverr/Upwork writers. All content will be paid from my POD income (Teepublic) which is about $300 monthly with $450 for December. I'll also try to scale it some more.



Although I have wishes, right now I can't even guess what is possible with this site. So, the goal of this journey is to learn as much as possible - as fast as possible. And of course, to share the experience.

Good luck with the journey

You said about content but I wonder how many articles do aim to have?
How about links? Are you going to build any?

Kind of messy experiment but still you'll learn from this experience.

Good luck for your journey.

praetserge said:

Good luck with the journey

You said about content but I wonder how many articles do aim to have?
How about links? Are you going to build any?

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Thanks!

I don't have a plan for a specific number of articles. The main reason is that I don't have a system that I could scale. Whatever I make with Teepublic I'll invest in articles. So for January, I plan to publish some 20 articles.

I don't plan to build backlinks in this phase.

GenesisOne said:

Kind of messy experiment but still you'll learn from this experience.

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I certainly hope so.

M0n3y. said:

Good luck for your journey.

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Thanks!

Good luck! try buying all articles and looking at profits. when plus - I would work. and then the site can be sold

Good luck with your journey, sounds promising, especially since you plan to invest consistently.

It is good to lay out some goals and targets, like number of articles, traffic, earning, etc. You can change them at a later stage but it's good to have something to strive for.

Amazing, How you finding low competition keywords? any suggestions?

Good luck for your journey!!

How do u make money from teepublic btw? Mind sharing that? Where do you get designers and stuff?

100500usd said:

Good luck! try buying all articles and looking at profits. when plus - I would work. and then the site can be sold

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Thanks!

For now, that is the plan.

Aleksandar916 said:

Good luck with your journey, sounds promising, especially since you plan to invest consistently.

It is good to lay out some goals and targets, like number of articles, traffic, earning, etc. You can change them at a later stage but it's good to have something to strive for.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Initially, my plan (or fantasy) was to scale Teepublic income to $1k monthly and buy 50 articles every month. So, hypothetically, in two years I would have 1,2k articles and maybe $15-20k in ad earnings.

Instead, I did almost nothing on the POD front and focused on learning about SEO and writing. With that in mind, I would be very satisfied with 200 published articles and 50k sessions to join Mediavine at the end of 2022.

Thomas6 said:

Amazing, How you finding low competition keywords? any suggestions?

Good luck for your journey!!

Click to expand...

Thanks!

I use the Surfer SEO Chrome plugin and alphabet soup to get KW search volume fast. I also check the competitors with Ubersuggest and Semrush tools. After finding good keywords I check the SERPs manually.

When you have at least some traffic Google Search Console is a great source of keywords you can actually rank for.

Since I'm targetting US traffic but I'm located in the EU, I use Proton VPN and a clean Opera browser to get the actual US SERP.

All tools I use are free, but when I'll have more articles, I'll buy Semrush or Ahref trial. These tools work great when they have something to work with.

Stay tuned for more information.

freshpeppermint said:

How do u make money from teepublic btw? Mind sharing that? Where do you get designers and stuff?

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I design everything myself using Illustrator and Photoshop. When I first joined Teepublic, I bought one month of Skillshare for $16 and took all classes I could about illustration and t-shirt design. This was the best decision I made regarding POD.

Initially, I had a bit of luck since the niche I choose wasn't saturated and designs started to sell after a month or two. If I started with designs tagged "cats" or "pizza" I would abandon the POD a long time ago. Then I've published 100 more designs in the same niche and basically now I own it. This single, small niche is making about $40-50 every month.

Now I own a few more small niches.

So this is basically like checking the SERPs manually to see if you can rank.

Update #1

I've picked up 20 keywords for the first content batch. As you'll see below, they are very different in metrics and SEO difficulty. The reason lies in my desire to learn as much as possible from the very beginning.

I said earlier that I'll take Semrush or Ahrefs free trial when the site will have some content, but I've changed my mind and paid $0 for a Semrush 7-day trial. Now I need to find at least 100-150 keywords, and then later I'll do the same with Ahrefs.

For now, Semrush seems promising.


Let the experiments begin.



Keyword #1

This is the article I've already published and it ranks pretty well. In fact, it sits on position #1 for a few months. The content is ca. 3k words long but it is unreadable and full of copied and translated paragraphs. The conclusion: long-form shit ranks well.

I'm only concerned that it will lose the number 1 position with time, so, although I don't have any proof for this statement, I'll pick a writer from Fiverr to rewrite it and some visuals.

I've already hired one Fiverr (India-based) writer and paid $25 to do this, but the result was worse than it is now. So I've canceled the order. I have some experience with Fiverr (30+ articles for another project) and I found that India or Pakistan-based writers never perform well in my niche. On the other hand, I was more than satisfied with the UK and Eastern Europe-based writers.

I've also tried the content agencies and expensive, native US writers, but it wasn't worth the money. The content agencies were the worst - they hire writers who know nothing about the subject.

Now onto the next...

Keyword #2

This one seems like a piece of cake, but after manual SERP inspection, I found that the site (the direct competitor) which ranks #1 for this KW has 6.9M monthly search traffic and thousands of backlinks. The good thing is that there are no videos or snippets and all other SERP positions are weak. I think I could rank in the top 5 here.

Keyword #3

Here we also have the 6.9M site at SERP #1 and #2. The good thing is that #3 and below aren't relevant to the search term at all. For example, the #3 site is an online shop, #4 has only 300 monthly search traffic and a 300 words unrelated article. The aim is to rank in the top 5 here and maybe pick up some other keywords by the way.

Keyword #4

This one is difficult, but I'm an expert in this domain and have a ton of experience. I'll write this article myself and ad some super high-quality illustrations. So let's see does Mr. Google respects high-quality content. Long-form, of course (at least 3k words).

I personally don't believe so, but on the other hand, it may pick up some good backlinks. I've seen that a lot of my competitors have Wikipedia backlinks, so I need to dig deeper and find out how they got them.

Keyword #5

This one should be easy. I'll hire a Fiverr writer for this article. There are no relevant SERP results, so I'll go for the #1 SERP position here.

Keyword #6

Although the Semrush says easy, here we have the 6.9M site again at #1. The manual SERP inspection revealed strong and relevant domains ranking up to #7. None of those content is transactional. I'll be more than happy with the Top 10 SERP position.

Let's see how much we can trust Semrush KD score.

Keyword #7

This one should really be a piece of cake and I am certain I can rank #1 here. The interesting part with this keyword is the YouTube video above the #1 SERP position. Here we'll see how much of the traffic can a video take. This keyword is very similar to Keyword #1 that I already rank #1 but w/o video above #1 position.

Keyword #8

This keyword is difficult by any means. I would give it KD of at least 80%. SERP is full of strong sites with very relevant and quality content. The reason I'll go with it anyway is that I want to build an authority site and this is something that is very important for the reader. I also have a lot of experience and knowledge here so I'll write this article myself.

If it is about the traffic, I would never choose this KW, but as this is an experiment, it is a nice addition to "low competition" keywords.

Keyword #9

This one is a golden nugget:
Position #1 is the site with 1.5k monthly search traffic and 3 backlinks, #2 site has 500 monthly visitors and it all goes downhill from there... Plus no videos, and just one snippet. I'm quite confident I can rank #1 here with a $20 Fiverr article.

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So that's it for the "experiment" keywords. As I said, I have 11 more KWs that I know I can rank for to get some initial traffic. When I publish the articles, these 9 examples will serve us to learn more and adjust the strategy accordingly.

The next step is to research the topics and prepare the briefs for writers.



Stay tuned.

Powdered Sugar said:

The domain (single-word.com) is two years old

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How much did you pay for the domain? (if it was premium).

Good luck with your journey!

blogmen said:

How much did you pay for the domain? (if it was premium).

Good luck with your journey!

Click to expand...

Thanks!

The domain wasn't premium, I think I paid $11 and it was never used before. It is a niche name ending with -ist, like Economist for Economy.

I got it first with SiteGround hosting and then I forgot about it. After the domain expired, they wanted me to pay $120 to get it again. Then I checked a few more times and after 3 months they removed "premium", so I've bought it again for $11.

The moral of the story: never let a good domain name expire.

Update #2​

While trying to milk out every imaginable low-competition keyword from my 7-day Semrush trial I almost ended up with Karoshi, which can be literally translated as "overwork death". And of course, I forgot to cancel the Semrush subscription. Luckily I've signed with my prepaid Visa, as the Revolut card didn't work.

On top of that, just now, while reading another thread, I've learned about the BHW partnership with Semrush which gives us 30 DAY TRIAL! This doesn't work for me anymore.

So, for anyone in a similar position - use it, it's worth it!

On the bright side, now I have a nice stack of high-volume, low-competition keywords.

I found the winner just two days into my keyword research project: a keyword with a 60k search volume and only 19KD. It is basically a brand name and a model, like iPhone XR for example. On top of that, the SERP is clean with a few product images under 2nd position, no videos, and only "people also aks" snippet.

If we can trust the Semrush KD score, I can rank at #1 easily. The first and only article I've published now ranks #2 for a 34KD keyword and this KW brings 150% more clicks than the main keyword, which is 21KD, and ranks #2.

These are current results (last 28 days, one article):






On the 3rd day of manic keyword research, I've started the search for my new boat. I've found the Jeanneau Merry Fisher 795 Serie 2 would satisfy all my desires at only $80-90k used.



At the end of this manic keyword research, I've manually analyzed all of the stacked keywords and found that maybe just 3 or 4 high-volume/low-competition keywords are worth chasing if we take search intent into account.

Basically, just like in any popular niche, there are a ton of 500-1k search volume underserved keywords that will eventually bring consistent traffic.

For the sake of the experiment, I'll hire the best writer I found so far on Fiverr to write a 3k-word article for 60k search volume keyword and create my own 1k-word snippet to answer all "people also ask" questions.

We'll see what happens.



Stay tuned.