[JOURNEY] - My First SEO Adevnture on my Own

TooCorny

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Hey there!

TooCorny here...
You may know me from other journeys such as CPA / IG Botting or my Amazon FBA journey.
Lots of knowledge acquired from them, even though they weren't exactly a complete success.

------------------------

It is about time to move on and start my Own SEO Journey

I am not a Native English Speaker, nor I have time to write articles, so I will be outsourcing the work to freelance writers.
I have good financial stability thanks to my 9 to 5 job and my freelance Web design & SEO Jobs.
So I will be using a good chunk of my monthly income to pay for everything.

I have learned a lot about SEO thanks to BHW.
And since the first SEO journeys I read.... I always knew I wanted to start one myself, but never felt knowledgeable enough to do so with a site of my own.

As Plato said, "I know that I know nothing"

Decided to Fuck this Analysis Paralysis and finally take the first step.


Quick recap of where I am ATM:
  • Purchased an expired domain in my niche with around 400 niche related referring domains. The backlink profile looks superb whatsoever.
  • Urls of the domain are still indexed.
  • Bought a plan from the same host as the old owner used to have the domain.
  • Installed a really fast and good-looking theme for the site (Not Astra or Generatepress)
  • On-page optimizations with Rank Math, WP Rocket, Cloudflare & Server Tweaks
  • Restored the old site through Archivarix and kept the posts and pages with most backlinks.
  • Used Onehourindexing to ping every single backlink the site used to have, since some of them dropped.
  • Performed keyword research with various methods: Ahrefs content explorer, Semrush Magic keyword Tool with Filters, Lowfruits App, Looking for low DA domains with traffic and looking for forum posts with traffic, etc...
  • Made an Excel of articles to post plus content briefs inside it to avoid overcomplicating.
  • Posted and indexed my first article. Still not showing up for the keywords I aim for, let´s give it time
  • 5 more posts on the way from 2 different writers.

Expenses

  • Expired domain: 950$
  • Hosting annual plan: 60$
  • 6 Articles: 100$ (10$ per thousand words)
  • Lowfruits License: 29$
  • Group Buy SEO Tools: 25$

Total Investment: 1164$


SITE SPEED LOOKING GOOD!
1657142052971.png
 
Good luck with your journey mate. I hope you will achieve your goal. I have a few questions.

1. Where did you find the domain name?
2. Do you have licensed plugins? Like Rank Math and WP Rocket?
3. Did you work on your site structure.

Good luck again.
 
Good luck with your journey, can i ask what general niche you are in ? as you didn't mention anything about this
 
Good luck with your journey!

Feeo free to tag me or ask some questions if you get stuck on something.

Cheers!
 
Good luck with your journey mate. I hope you will achieve your goal. I have a few questions.

1. Where did you find the domain name?
2. Do you have licensed plugins? Like Rank Math and WP Rocket?
3. Did you work on your site structure.

Good luck again.
1. Godaddy auctions
2. I do pay rank math and theme, the rest from @Festinger Vault
3. Not yet, I am trying to layour my silo structure, but still need to do more keyword research to find the main topics I´ll cover

Good luck with your journey, can i ask what general niche you are in ? as you didn't mention anything about this
Thanks! Home & Outdoors

Good luck with your journey!

Feeo free to tag me or ask some questions if you get stuck on something.

Cheers!
Hey man! Always a pleasure to count with your help!

I actually do have a question.

The Expired Domain I purchased did not have SSL, I went ahead and installed it since its just a 301 to the og url
The thing is, will the urls that redirect to homepage index the backlinks since there are two 301 redirects taking place in this case?
 
Hey man! Always a pleasure to count with your help!

I actually do have a question.

The Expired Domain I purchased did not have SSL, I went ahead and installed it since its just a 301 to the og url
The thing is, will the urls that redirect to homepage index the backlinks since there are two 301 redirects taking place in this case?

I don't see in your thread where you reference redirects. So, can you tell me exactly what you're doing with the redirects?
 
I don't see in your thread where you reference redirects. So, can you tell me exactly what you're doing with the redirects?
I basically restored the urls from the old domain with most backlinks

The backlinks where pointing the the non https version of the site, but now there is Htpps, that means there is one 301 from http to https

Will this have a negative impact for google to attribute the backlinks to the https version of the site?

Also for the 404s I redirect to the homepage, so there are 2 redirects there. From http to https and then to the homepage
 
How do you plan to monetize your site once you get fair amount of traction? Where do you source your writer? Good luck with your journey OP, keep us posted.
 
$950 is a good amount of money you have paid for the domain. Is there any portal/website service from where you have bought the domain or have you vetted it down yourself?
 
How do you plan to monetize your site once you get fair amount of traction? Where do you source your writer? Good luck with your journey OP, keep us posted.
At first I will just try to get a decent amount of traffic, then once that is done
$950 is a good amount of money you have paid for the domain. Is there any portal/website service from where you have bought the domain or have you vetted it down yourself?
I bought it through Godaddy domain auctions. I just estimated the amount of money it would take to get all those relevant backlinks in DR90 domains and I cant imagine how much it would cost... It has around 300 Referring domains and most of them are sites in my niche with DR50+
Did you follow any guide on BHW for picking the expired domain ?
Many YouTube videos, also @fasttrak expired domain restoration guide. Basically checked how relevant the backlinks were to the niche, their authority and if the domain was still indexed.
Good luck with your journey
Thanks mate
 
Good luck in Your journey i like your form of share it's nice to read.
 
UPDATE #2

Tough week, lot´s of work ahead. I am really enjoying the ride, what has happened so far:

Team of writers:

I have begun testing new writers to include in the team. For this I have chosen the ones with the best writing style in my opinion: (Really close, as if it was a friend talking to you when reading their content). Also as a requirement, I need a commitment of at least 10/20k words per month.

  • First Writer: From the Philippines, excellent writing skills, but her fee after the first article tripled, so had to decline. Don´t really get what she was trying to achieve other than fiverr reviews.... (20€) (One 2000 words article)
  • Second one from Albania, pretty bad overall. Lot's of nonsense and spelling mistakes. (20€) (One 2000 words article)
  • Third one from Albania, really really good writing skills and really quick answers. (60€) (6000 words divided into 4 articles)
  • Fourth from the US, so far so good, the first article she delivered looks great. (4500 words divided into 3 articles)
Will be publishing articles once everyday that way google starts catching up with the site.

I have also run the dropped backlinks through onehourindexing to see if they start popping up in search console.

Also purchased a canva pro license to get my article images from there.

Will also start publishing content to pinterest. I will create 3 vertical feaured images per article and publish them in relevant boards.

Let´s see how it goes
 
Good luck with your Journey.



  • Second one from Albania, pretty bad overall. Lot's of nonsense and spelling mistakes. (20€) (One 2000 words article)
  • Third one from Albania, really really good writing skills and really quick answers. (60€) (6000 words divided into 4 articles)

For fuck sake, where did you find Albanian writers lol
I have been searching them for years and never found a good one hahaa
 
Expenses

  • Expired domain: 950$
  • Hosting annual plan: 60$
  • 6 Articles: 100$ (10$ per thousand words)
  • Lowfruits License: 29$
  • Group Buy SEO Tools: 25$
What site do you use to Group Buy Seo tools?
 
Good luck with your Journey.





For fuck sake, where did you find Albanian writers lol
I have been searching them for years and never found a good one hahaa
:D xD

As I said the first one was absolutely horrible haha

But this second one is actually great, she has some minor spelling mistakes, nothing Grammarly can´t fix, but what i like the most is the writing style. She makes it feel as if you were talking to a friend. Which in my opinion is the best way to make readers stay. I am going to bet on her and try to improve the weak spots.

What site do you use to Group Buy Seo tools?
It is called seotoolsaccess, I only have it to get ahrefs content explorer. I let’s you do 3 searches a day there. Not much, but enough to get some nice article ideas
 
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