[Journey] Road To 1.000.000 Words - Avalanche SEO Display Ads Journey

Hello there,



I decided to start this journey so I can keep track of my progress, share some experience with you all, and to lay out my master plan on "paper".

I am going to be testing out an SEO method on a 18 month old website. I operate in a very broad niche (maybe too broad), so the keyword opportunities are virtually unlimited. The primary goal is to reach one million words of content on it.

I outsource 100% of the content writing, the rest I do myself.

Where does this website stand at the moment?

- 131.686 Words / 1.000.000 [13.17%]
- 60 Published articles (Mainly Best X for Y stuff monetised with Amazon Affiliates)
- Total Balance: -$1063

Short Term ongoing objectives

- Re-design Articles' Featured Images [ 13/60 ]
- Post 25 articles in September [ 14/25 ]
- Get accepted by Adsense

The SEO Technique

Here's my current "Last 30 days" graph for organic traffic only. This will always be the point of reference to determinate which keywords I can go for:





2028/30=67.6
Current Tier: 4
Next Tier In: 972 Sessions
Keyword Volume To Go For: 50-100 Monthly Searches
Next Tier: 100-150 Monthly Searches

Articles Posted Following The SEO Technique (started 09/09/2020):

- Article #1 | Search Volume: 50 | Current Position: >100
- Article #2 | Search Volume: 30 | Current Position: 14
- Article #3 | Search Volume: 170 | Current Position: 15
- Article #4 | Search Volume: 90 | Current Position: 19
- Article #5 | Search Volume: 140 | Current Position: >100
- Article #6 | Search Volume: 70 | Current Position: >18
- Article #7 | Search Volume: 50 | Current Position: >100
- Article #8 | Search Volume: 170 | Current Position: 16
- Article #9 | Search Volume: 1300 | Current Position: 10
- Article #10 | Search Volume: 90 | Current Position: 9
- Article #11 | Search Volume: 70 | Current Position: >100
- Article #12 | Search Volume: 90 | Current Position: Non Indexed
- Article #13 | Search Volume: 70 | Current Position: Non Indexed
- Article #14 | Search Volume: 90 | Current Position: 16

#3, #5, #8, and #9 are above my tier. But I felt these were keywords I could easily rank for because of weak to non-existing competitors.

Current Rankings For Primary Keywords




Monetization

The site is currently only making money with the Amazon Affiliate Program. The reasons I decided to switch my focus towards Display Ads for monetisation:

- Get rid of the Amazon liability. we've seen them cut commissions over and over again. I don't want to wake up one day having to find an affiliate program for each of my products.
- I want to provide real value to my audience. Posting bland product reviews is not only time consuming, but it's also super boring, even if I don't write the content.
- The ability to go for non-buying intent keywords.
- This goes hand-in-hand with the above-mentioned point: Easier to rank for info keywords.

Here's the monetization plan:
0-10.000 Sessions:
Adsense
10.001-50 000 Sessions:
Ezoic
50.001-100.000 Sessions:
Mediavine
100.001+ Sessions:
AdThrive

That's about it for the premises of this journey, feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge. I look forward to exchanging with you all.

You are on the best possible path. Good luck

Looks like you have a solid plan in place and some good SERP placements to start with.

Keep up the momentum, I’m sure you’ll do well.

Seems like you know what you're doing. I wish you best of luck! I'm sure you'll reach your goals even sooner than expected if you keep continuously working on your website!

I don't think your Avatar is true. You actually do know what you're doing and on a great plan so far.

My only advice would be to niche-down. That way, you'd be able to cover almost everything within 1 million words and become an authority instead of writing about any random thing.

This will also help you earn more from display ad networks as the audience will be somewhat defined. Good luck!
.

Nice plan OP! Keep grinding!

Goodluck man, I wish I could become a content machine like you guys.

sabhan said:

You are on the best possible path. Good luck

Click to expand...

Thank you, good luck to you too!

ContentExpert said:

Looks like you have a solid plan in place and some good SERP placements to start with.

Keep up the momentum, I’m sure you’ll do well.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I hope I can keep it up indeed, will do everything I can

SpezzNacci said:

Seems like you know what you're doing. I wish you best of luck! I'm sure you'll reach your goals even sooner than expected if you keep continuously working on your website!

Click to expand...

Hehe, I'm actually working on a ton of projects but this one is the one I enjoy the most. I hope I can reach 50k monthly sessions in 12 months.

FlipDime said:

I don't think your Avatar is true. You actually do know what you're doing and on a great plan so far.

My only advice would be to niche-down. That way, you'd be able to cover almost everything within 1 million words and become an authority instead of writing about any random thing.

This will also help you earn more from display ad networks as the audience will be somewhat defined. Good luck!
.

Click to expand...

Thank you, that's very kind. I could niche-down indeed. The problem is that I'm not operating in the best of niches for this kind of project. The main issue is that most of the content is not ever green and is subject to the news. That's why I needed to broaden the spectrum. We'll see how it works out I guess. If it takes 3-4 million words for me to become an authority some day, then so be it.

MrDenz said:

Nice plan OP! Keep grinding!

Click to expand...

Thanks man, that's all I do

Xdfffninja said:

Goodluck man, I wish I could become a content machine like you guys.

Click to expand...

Thanks, good luck to you too. I actually don't write the content myself. It took some time to find apt writers for this project but now I have a decent team that can produce content faster than I can post it (creates a bottleneck on my end which I'm working on). It's not about becoming a content machine, it's about committing to a project with the confidence it will work. It's tough because you're working for nothing in the early stages, you're working/betting on a hope, and on yourself.

Good luck Journey!

137.514 Words / 1.000.000 [13.75%]
Spent $87,42
Total Balance: -$1150,42


- Re-design Articles' Featured Images [ 14/60 ] +1
- Post 25 articles in September [ 17/25 ] +3
- Get accepted by Adsense [ Pending ]




2080/30=69.34
Current Tier: 4
Next Tier In: 920 Sessions
Keyword Volume To Go For: 50-100 Monthly Searches
Next Tier: 100-150 Monthly Searches







A pretty productive day and I'm overall satisfied. Added three new articles and internal linked everything nicely for a total of 5828 words. Also re-designed an old one.

As for the current strategy, I feel like I'm doing something wrong as most of my keywords start ranking page 1 upon indexation and then fall off to page 2 and beyond. This calls for an adjustment and I may actually be operating one tier below my natural one.

If I don't see anything landing and sticking to page 1 by the end of the month, I'll move down to Tier 3 for October.

On a positive note, yesterday was my first 100+ organic sessions in a day, which is nice. My non-KGR articles are moving up in the SERP.

Ice Geek said:

Good luck Journey!

Click to expand...

Thank you my friend, good luck to you too

142.903 Words / 1.000.000 [14.29%]
Spent $73,8
Total Balance: -$1224,23


- Re-design Articles' Featured Images [ 17/60 ] +3
- Post 25 articles in September [ 21/25 ] +4
- Get accepted by Adsense [ Done ]
Adsense approved, and installed. Will start to get some interesting data on RPM and average CPC.

- New! Fix Schema Markup [ Pending ]

I had all my schema markup done properly for articles, blog posting, breadcrumbs, and FAQ but some plugin or new update on my site has messed around with that, I'll spend 1-2 hours tomorrow to fix this issue.

- New! Install infinite scrolling on posts [ Pending ]

My average session duration is quite descent but I'd like to improve that along with other quality-related user signals. Infinite scrolling can greatly help there by improving the page/session, while of course reducing the bounce rate, and increasing time on site.





2175/30=72.5
Current Tier: 4
Next Tier In: 825 Sessions
Keyword Volume To Go For: 50-100 Monthly Searches
Next Tier: 100-150 Monthly Searches








Didn't have time to do much these last two days as I was swamped with client work.

Got a second 100+ organic sessions day, traffic is growing and positions for previously posted articles progressing nicely. Would love to see better results on newly posted articles but I guess it's just a matter of patience. Definitely looking to build up on that momentum, keep outsourcing content and posting as I get them.

Out of curiosity, how long does it take you guys to post an article on your site? For me it's about 30 minutes (down from a bit over one hour). This includes:

• Custom design of a featured image
• Sourcing visual contents (4-5 images/gifs/graphs per article)
• Image optimization/resizing
• Posting article on site
• Sharing on social media
• File reporting

Worked on a process/organization to make this task go more smoothly and earn back some of my time. Seems to be working as I'm catching up on my writer's delivery speed.

8 articles posted since last update

- 2 076 words
- 2 712 words
- 671 words
- 1 137 words
- 803 words
- 3 294 words
- 877 words
- 2 074 words

Total: 13 644 words posted

156.547 Words / 1.000.000 [15.65%]
Spent since last update: $172,63
Total Balance: -$1396,86


- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 23/60 ] +6
- Post 25 articles in September [ Done ]
- Fix Schema Markup [ Done ]
- Install infinite scrolling on posts [ Aborted ]

After pondering this option, I think the downsides outweigh the positive outcomes from this so I decided to not install infinite scrolling on my pages.

- New! Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 4/45 ]
- New! Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 0/31 ]




Traffic continues to steadily grow. I'm going to focus on the following plan to posts 180 articles in 6 months or less:

Tier 4 [50-100]: 20/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 7/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 0/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 0/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 0/30

2 articles posted today

- 1 267 words
- 1 283 words

159.097 Words / 1.000.000 [15.91%]
Spent since last update: $32,38
Total Balance: -$1429,24

Short Term ongoing objectives

- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 49 left ]
- Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 6/45 ]
- Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 2/31 ]

Last 30 days Organic graph





The Technique

Tier 4 [50-100]: 22/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 7/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 0/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 0/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 0/30

Tomorrow I'll need to do some keyword research and prepare new writing briefs as I almost ran out of the ones I had prepared.

I also started testing SurferSEO's Serp Analyzer and Content Editor features (for brief I send out). So far I'm quite impressed. I was using Cora before for on-page optimizations but this tool has impressed me so far.

Way cheaper, more tools, more factors analyzed, way more user-friendly. I have had it for 2 days so it may be too soon to have a fully-formed opinion, but the first impression is really good.

7 articles posted

- 1 485 words
- 1 402 words
- 1 659 words
- 706 words
- 2 132 words
- 2 511 words
- 1 570 words

170.562 Words / 1.000.000 [17.05%]
Spent since last update: $138,13


Adsense (started 23rd of September):


Amazon Affiliates


Earnings For September: +$92,69
Total Balance: -$1474,68


- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 46 left ]
- Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 13/45 ]
- Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 3/31 ]





Tier 4 [50-100]: 23/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 13/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 0/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 1/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 0/30

Been able to cut my posting time in half and all caught up with the delivered articles. Currently interviewing writers to add to my lineup to speed up the whole process. I would need 1 or 2 more if I want to reach my posting target this month.

My CTR for amazon links is quite high (above 70%) but the conversion rate on amazon is a bit underwhelming. I have started auditing my links and found out I have a lot of links pointing to out of stock items which can explain the low conversion rate.

How do you guys handle these? Do you simply look for corresponding products and do some minor content editing, or do you have the product reviews completely rewrote on brand new products?

10 articles posted

- 1 226 words
- 1 227 words
- 4 606 words
- 3 929 words
- 2 744 words
- 3 370 words
- 1 192 words
- 2 041 words
- 2 626 words
- 2 661 words

+25 622 Words
196.184 Words / 1.000.000 [19.62%]
Spent since last update: $344,59
Total Balance: -$1819,27

Short Term ongoing objectives

- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 40 left ]
- Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 23/45 ]
- Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 7/31 ]

Last 30 days Organic graph




The Technique

Tier 4 [50-100]: 25/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 19/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 2/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 1/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 0/30

Client work and other projects taking up most of my time lately. Have not been able to do as much on-page and updates on my content as I wanted.

I'm on pace for the 45 contents this month but I dramatically need to find 1 or 2 more writers for this project.

Other than that, traffic keeps growing nicely, Sunday I came really close to 200 organic sessions which would have been a cool milestone to hit. Next time I guess...

I also became Jr VIP here which I had been meaning to do for quite some time now.

Good luck in your journey !! will be looking this thread

6 articles posted

- 1 739 words
- 819 words
- 3 715 words
- 828 words
- 4 013 words
- 557 words

+11 671 Words
207.855 Words / 1.000.000 [20.78%]
Spent since last update: $137,46
Total Balance: -$1956,73

Short Term ongoing objectives

- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 19 left ] (-21)
- Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 29/45 ] (+6)
- Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 28/31 ] (+21)

Been playing around with HARO and should have landed a link on a high-authority site in my niche after about 15 pitches. Waiting on it to go live before screaming victory. With that being said, I've been able to catch up on client work and I can safely add an objective for the rest of this month:

- Make 10 High-Quality Pitches on HARO before the 31/10 [ 0/10 ] (New)

Last 30 days Organic graph




The Avalanche Technique

Tier 4 [50-100]: 25/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 21/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 3/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 3/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 1/30

Back on track on all monthly targets, article delivery has slowed down a bit, been trying out tons of writers, some were bad, some were plagiarising content, the rest were terrible. I have to make do with what I have so far.

6 articles posted

- 3 658 words
- 3 932 words
- 1 458 words
- 1 643 words
- 4 058 words
- 3 873 words

+18 622 words

226.477 Words / 1.000.000 [22.64%]
Spent since last update: $270,58

Monthly Earnings - October 2020

Adsense



Amazon Affiliates



Earnings For September: +$213.67
Total Balance: -$2013.64

Short Term October Objectives

- Deadline: 31st October - Re-design Articles' Featured Images and layout [ 0 left ] (-19)
- Post 45 articles before the 31st of October [ 35/45 ] (+6). Failed by 10 Units
- Do on-page optimization on one article per day in October [ 44/31 ] (+16). Objective complete +13 Units
- Make 10 High-Quality Pitches on HARO before the 31/10 [ 12/10 ] Objective complete +2 Units

October Organic graph

The Avalanche Technique

Tier 4 [50-100]: 24/30
Tier 5 [100-200]: 14/30
Tier 6 [200-500]: 4/30
Tier 7 [500-1000]: 1/30
Tier 8 [1000-1500]: 1/30
Tier 9 [1500-2000]: 0/30

Link Building

Got a link through HARO outreaches here:



I feel like my pitches are of decent quality but my strike rate is very low. I'm expecting 1 or 2 more links from my previous pitches.

I believe my site looks too much like an affiliate website for journalists to take me seriously. I need to brainstorm ideas to change that.

What's next for November?

Now that I have updated all my posts, I want to start focusing on developing a new traffic source. Even though my niche isn't very visual, I want to test the waters with Pinterest (I am a complete noob when it comes to Pinterest and social media for that matter).

- Finish Anastasia's Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets course
- Create an HQ PSD template for my pins [Done]
- Post 30 HQ Pins

New Objectives for November:

- Post 45 articles [ 0/45 ]
- Do on-page optimization on 30 posts [ 0/30 ]
- 20 HQ Haro Pitches [ 0/20 ]

I'm losing momentum with my article posting. I miserably failed my objective last month due to several variables that were out of my control (some may call these excuses). Nonetheless, this is 100% on me and I need to think about ways to prevent this from happening again in November.

Here's my plan:

- Constantly have 1 fresh Upwork job post for each of my site's 8 categories (by fresh I mean less than 72 hours).
- Increase the /1000 word rate by 33% to attract more writers of better quality.

Any update? very interesting thanks for sharing !

Good luck with the journey.