What I usually see when building an authority site on a fresh domain is this:
Let's say we are targeting a one word-keyword with 1k exact searches per month. We write a page around the keyword "keyword", we also want to rank for "keyword reviews".
URL for this particular keyword would be the domain slash keyword-reviews
"keyword" has 1k searches per month
"keyword reviews" has 300 searches per month
I only focus on high quality articles, 750 - 1000 words.
1 - Article enters top 30 after tweaking the title, body etc. after similar rules to phpbuilts. This is usually 2-3 months after the site was built.
2 - I start adding exact match internal links in a "silo" structure. Like a "top rated products" listing in the sidebar (or topnav) with "keyword" as anchor.
3 - I then add exact match links from my niche specific PBN, let's say 3-10 links, depening on the response in the SERPs
The above usually gets me to page #1, best I've had is 3rd position. And, it stays there for about 2-6 months or so. But when the site gets around 1 year old, rankings start to drop. I can easily end up on position 50-100 somewhere. What todo at this point? Why does this happen when the site ages? I thought it was supposed to be better with age?
Does anyone have similar stuff happening? I would really like to figure out where in process I am failing
Take care,
Enano