[Journey] My First Niche Website

UncleS

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Intro

So as the title says, this is my first go at a Niche Website. I'm not a total n00b. I worked really hard at college where I was studying advertising and when I graduated I got a bursary to do a short course in SEO. I recently finished and now I want to apply myself, work hard and make money! The reason that I didn't end up going into advertising is that, in my country, I would be earning $600 per month. :cow04:

My Niche Website

I've been working on this project for about a month already. So far I've picked a niche:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]Keyword[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]Monthly Searches
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]CPC
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]Google Results
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]#1[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]61,500
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$3.24
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]244,000
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]#2[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]9,900[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$1.87
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]95,700
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]#3[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2,500
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$3.014
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]17,200
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]#4[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]4,500
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$2.27
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]5,610
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]








#1 is the main one that I'm aiming to rank for, but I know it's going to be considerably more difficult in comparison to 2, 3 and 4.


Link Building so far:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500"]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="align: right"]Social Bookmarks[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Money Site[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]17[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Tier 1 (5x Web 2.0s)[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]55[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Current Strategy (Each week, spread throughout):


  • 3x Articles to Money Site
  • Reddit/Tweet/G+ Each article
  • Send Fake social signals (retweets/favorites/G+ Shares) - just a few for each
  • 2x Article Directory Submissions
  • 1x Set up Tier 1 Web 2.0
  • ~5 manual social bookmarks for money site
  • ~10 manual social bookmarks for each Tier 1 Web 2.0


What do you think of my little strategy? I'm doing everything manually myself at the moment as I don't have any budget for tools yet.

Here's how I've been ranking so far:

Google
Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 5.40.47 PM.png

Not really seeing much progress here.

Yahoo & Bing
Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 5.44.00 PM.png


As you can see I'm ranking at position #4 for keyword #4! Which might sound like nothing to get excited about to a lot of you but it feels like progress to me :)


Traffic:
Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 6.14.08 PM.png

With my current rankings I'm not getting any organic traffic, so 99% of the traffic that I'm getting is from the articles I post to Reddit. As a result my Bounce Rate is horrendous (91.59%). I think that's the reason anyway, let me know if my logic is sound: I think that people on Reddit are keen to get back to Reddit and are very unlikely to browse the website. That being said, I just installed a Related Posts plugin yesterday to try improve it as much as I can. Yesterday's bounce rate was 78.95%, so it looks like that could have helped.

That's it for now. Let me know if you think I'm on the right track, or if you think I'm an idiot and I should not be doing Y but doing X instead, please reply below. I'm going to be doing a proper update like this each Sunday so stick around, it's gonna be a fun (hopefully profitable) ride.
 
Last edited:
Good luck OP, you keywords are looking pretty good :D
 
good luck mate, ill def follow this one . As when I'm done with my journey ill be rocking a seo journey.
 
currently how many articles you have on your money site ?
 
Looks like some good keywords. How's the competition?

Google Competition for the Main Keyword:


[TABLE="width: 500"]
[TR]
[TD]Position
[/TD]
[TD]PR
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]Alexa Rank
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]Domain Age
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1
[/TD]
[TD]N/A
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>50
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]12 years
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2
[/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>145,000
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.5 years
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]3[/TD]
[TD]N/A[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>140,000
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.2 years
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]4
[/TD]
[TD]N/A
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>600
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]5[/TD]
[TD]3
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>55,000
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]6
[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>500
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]7
[/TD]
[TD]N/A
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>100,000
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]8
[/TD]
[TD]3
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]<300,000
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]9
[/TD]
[TD]N/A
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]>50
[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
 
Last edited:
currently how many articles you have on your money site ?

16 articles, a static homepage explaining what my niche is all about, and 1 really useful resource page :)

and then just the obvious about me, terms and conditions etc.
 
Last edited:
I don't think you should have revealed all those stats, it's pretty easy to find the niche you're in now.
 
Squidoo deleted the Tier 1 page I made on it despite it being, in my opinion, of high value. It got 5 squidlikes and 3 comments in its 2 week life. So maybe it was the actual subject matter of my niche that they weren't keen on. Oh well, RIP my brave warrior.

So today I did this:


  • 1x Bookmark for each of my, now 4, Tier 1 sites
  • Published a money site article
  • Submitted to a different subreddit as a test
  • Published a Second money site article for the day
  • Submitted to my usual subreddit
  • Tweeted, G+ed 2nd article
  • Sent 2 retweets, 2x facebook share, 1x G+ share

Been getting some traffic as a result, there are 3 dudes reading my articles as I type this.

Feel free to make suggestions on what you think I should do tomorrow. I'm thinking that I should build out my tier 1 a bit more?
 
So today I did this:

Been getting some traffic as a result, there are 3 dudes reading my articles as I type this.

How do you know they are dudes/guys and not ladies?? ;)

j/k good luck with a good journey though.
 
I'm busy bookmarking and I'm wondering what the best strategy is for SB's:

1. should I be bookmarking my Tier 1's on the same websites?
2. is it okay to bookmark a Tier 1, or my money site, on a site more than once? Delicious and folkd for instance, can I bookmark my money site on these multiple times? Like the money site having 5 different delicious bookmarks, using 5 different accounts
 
Okay so today I did:


  • 2x Bookmarks for each Tier 1 (3 Blogs)
  • 1x Tweet of yesterdays untweeted article
  • 1x Facebook share of same article
  • 1x Twitter Favorite
  • Got an Ezine article approved with a link to the money site

Yesterday's articles got 107 pageviews and my bounce-rate went down to 84%, though I see my one well-ranking article dropped from #4 on yahoo to # 54... *sigh* could this be some sort of penalty? My homepage went 35 ranks up to #41 at the same time.

Speaking of which, my homepage is >600 words long and has never been updated.

1. Are 600 words enough for a homepage, or would longer be better? I'm just thinking with the whole content-favoring Panda update.
2. Is it important to update the page now and then to keep it fresh in Google's eyes?

Thanks guys, this thread is helping to keep me focused
 
Good luck OP, looks like you really have your shit together
nice keywords too
 
Looks good. Good strategy. Subscribed. Good luck.
 
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