[SEO] Zero Competition Zero Effort

Site design 2 is underway. It's actually an interesting niche and I think I've found a good hook. Aiming for around 10 articles to start with. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to promote with it yet but there's a few options and I've a rough sales funnel idea.

Because of the niche in this one I'm adding in one more step. Designing a different landing page to feed into the main funnel which I'm going to plug into some Mass Planner accounts on Facebook and send to some sites in the niche. Any links Google see's won't hurt but I have an idea to have the niche build a bit of the site for me while I build leads as well. Not much extra work.

Looks like I've lost part of my graphics tablet during my last move which is a pain I wanted to flesh out this funnel a bit and maybe put together a small ebook to fit the niche. Going to ask my JV who's actually an artist if she can handle that part for me.

I've had a busy few weeks dealing with other work needing done this had taken a bit of a back seat for a while there.

Quick update as I get back to it:

I'm looking for a new JV. I have a pretty hard and fast rule when I work with others. I don't chase them to perform because if they don't do it under their own steam they're not worth my time and effort. I'm not an ass hole (most of the time) but I'm also not a baby sitter and if I'm working with someone it's to get more done - not less. I've maybe someone lined up I'll find out once I get the ball rolling properly again.

Ok for Site 1:

Main keyword is sitting around page 5/6. Some longtails sitting around page 2. Still done nothing to it since it went live about 2/3 weeks ago. Not going to change anything with it just leaving it to sit.

I've put together the content for site 2 and I'm adapting the structure a little bit I think it'll help it rank easier. I still have to write a second part of a funnel to link some of the Facebook traffic into that should go live tomorrow.

Keyword tool plodding along. I have a whole bunch of potential keywords to look through and it's still finding more as soon as I've got this second site up I'll start work on the next one.

I've been a little caught up with other projects lately but I'm back on it now. Just a quick update on how things are going.

Site 1: Main keyword on page 2/3 longtails on page 1/2. Not a thing done to it yet just leaving it to sit I might run a handful of links to it this week to help it out. Looking good pretty happy with it so far and a good proof of concept although the site is a little thin compared to the others.

Site 2: Live for a few days now. Trying a slightly different structure to site 1. Took more work but it might find it easier to rank. Needs a little work on the funnel still but I'll leave it to sit a while and see how it ranks.

Site 3: Trying a whole different design again. Changes the way I target keywords and the niches I can get into. Again takes a little more work to write the content but I really do thing it might be worth. Site 3 is an existing site with a couple of small keywords ranking page 1 already. The redesign might disrupt that but that's alright I want to test this theory.

The third site still focuses on very low competition keywords but in very different way. My whiteboards are a bit messy at the moment with the concept and site 3 is a little messy but it would let me drill into *really* low competition niches and hopefully still make the conversions worthwhile. I think I'll do a few of these.

I'm hoping to have these changes finished this week.

Once I'm happy with that I'm doing a little work on the keyword scripts. If site 3 works as I'm hoping I'll need to tweak it a bit to find different types of keywords and the whole thing is getting sped up and tweaked a bit.

I've been outsourcing some writing to beef up the sites a bit. I think I'll keep this up. What do they say - "Work on your business, not for it"?

Only other update is I'm starting the framework for the backlink script I want. I dug around a bit and found there is someone selling something similar but it doesn't perform very well but that's fine by me.

A lot of content going live this evening. The redesign for site 3 went pretty well I'll need to get some metrics and split testing setup if the rankings maintain but its generating hops to the sales page so the rough one I have up is doing something at least. I'm looking for more low competition keywords in this niche as soon as I'm done uploading the new content to site 1.

I'm really liking his idea. Less time spent writing crappy fluff articles and building links means I can spend more time working on the site itself to make it better for the user (and my conversion rates).

Outsourced some more content while I edit some of the ones from yesterday and work on part of the sales funnel.

If I have the time I'm going to tweak some of the code tonight to help find niches for the new site 3 structure.

Great approach to niche research and site creation!

1. Are you testing the sites first with "fluff" content them adding better content if it ranks?
2. Are you buildind the sites on expired domains?
3. WIth your backlinking script, what type of links are you building?

Thanks!

MonkeyJohn said:

Great approach to niche research and site creation!

1. Are you testing the sites first with "fluff" content them adding better content if it ranks?
2. Are you buildind the sites on expired domains?
3. WIth your backlinking script, what type of links are you building?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

1. Kind of. I'm putting more work into them than originally intended but that's because we're testing different structures and things. Once the sites start to rank and convert I'll be putting more work into them - potentially.
2. Let's call it a mix.
3. Ones with a limit so I'm not exactly sharing it out. It's been done in the past I'm just taking it a little further.

Updates!

Site 3 conversion hasn't caused a massive SERP fluctuation yet which is good because I'm really liking the prospect of doing this. Still early so that might change of course. Will be looking for new keywords for this site to add more to it.

Site 4! Keyword script found a niche I'm really excited about. Competition is super low, plenty of traffic and plenty of converting Clickbank products for exactly this search. Actually amazed we're not up against tougher competition found some really low hanging fruit in an otherwise pretty competitive niche. A bunch of keywords around it I'm working on the site now should have it finished over the weekend. It's a niche I'm only a little familiar with so I'm going to have to get my head down and do some reading before writing the sales funnel part. Sending some of the keywords to a writer today to get him started on some articles to bolster up the index count as well.

Covered some theories with a new JV. Going to see if they're able to actually put the work in.

No fucking chill today.

Longtails? Check.
Content outsourced? Check.
Pages of notes? Check.
Whiteboard covered with sales copy points? Check.

This site is going up so I can take the weekend off and come back Monday to put together site number 5.

Any earnings so far?

An earnings update would be nice motivational factor here

Nice journal OP Goodluck

spectrejoe said:

Any earnings so far?

Click to expand...

globalseopoint said:

An earnings update would be nice motivational factor here

Click to expand...

Sorry guys this isn't one of these fake SEO journals where I claim instant rankings then plug some product. This is actual SEO it's going well but no sales yet. It's getting targeted, warmed leads to an affiliate products which do convert, It'll eventually pick up sales like this, but we're on a trickle of traffic still so it's nothing to write home about.

When the rankings improve for these sites they'll convert and make sales.

In the meantime I'm going to keep making new sites.

Site 4 went live Friday night. Probably the most exciting niche so far if I'm honest. Loads of traffic for products which sell. Took page 5 for it's main keyword this morning which is a good start 2 days in. Site is very thin though need to edit and upload more of this content I had outsourced.

Got a bunch of work to catch back up on for the programming job for the weekend. Once that's done for the day I'll be looking for site 5, some more keywords for site 3 and I have two backlink scripts I really want to start writing tonight.

Rankings improved across the board. Site 4 moved up to page 4 which is a good sign for a few days in. Still an extremely thin site I've been editing the content but it's been a busy day with the coding job that'll hopefully get finished tonight. Site 2 finally on the SERPS for it's main keyword as well that one is a little slower than the others have been.

I finished most of a new backlink script. There's a few kinks I need to work out but the results have been good so far. Keyword tool processes *a lot* more data now but has a similar kink which stops it from running after a few hours. I'll need to take a look at that at some point but it's fine for now. Next step is going to be to start developing the main one. Shouldn't be too hard just a million small pieces to do and I'll need to find some of that API code I had from a few weeks back.

Picked up a domain I quite like the look of today and potentially a new set of keywords for site 3. I've a bunch of niches to scan through from the keyword tool so that'll hopefully be site 5 going up in a day or two and then site 3 pages after that. Want to finish this editing for site 4 first.

It's been a lot to juggle but since the plan is to pump these out and only come back to backlink any that need it I think it's going well. Rankings are getting there and I'm happy with the niches so far.

I was trying something new yesterday. I guess it's as close to white hat link building as I've ever actually been. Took a few hours of manual work but scored me a a fairly decent link so far.

Far too much like manual labour though. The service is also going to cost me a few hundred bucks. More if I have to hire someone to run it because I'm sure as hell not sitting around doing the manual labour. This might be something I work towards with some of the bigger sites but not for these ones.

If the plan here is to pump out these sites then I don't really want to be spending hours of mindless plodding along to build a few links. Especially when the design I'm using might not go to well with your average blogger.

The service also doesn't do certain parts I'd like it to. So I've put together a script on the server last night to do some cool stuff. It's found some really good opportunities so far but it's a numbers game so I guess I'll see how worthwhile it is. It's looking potentially cool though. I want to tack on a rough client to connect to my server so I get a bit more control though might get that done later tonight.

Once I'm done with the coding job today I'm putting up the content for site 4. God damn editing crappy articles takes so long. But I have trust issues when it comes to site content. I'm not the best writer but I control the tone and most of these writers just work in way too much fluff.

Really thinking I'll start interviewing for a writer for this tonight. Not looking forward to that though.

I love this journal!

Three questions:
1) what programming language is your keyword tool in?
2) how much time are spending writing the content for your sites? It seems like that part is the most tedious, especially if you throw the site away if it doesn't naturally rank.
3) are you using Wordpress or creating static html websites?

cnick79 said:

I love this journal!

Three questions:
1) what programming language is your keyword tool in?
2) how much time are spending writing the content for your sites? It seems like that part is the most tedious, especially if you throw the site away if it doesn't naturally rank.
3) are you using Wordpress or creating static html websites?

Click to expand...

In general for me anything scraping or going through data is done with Python and anything I want more user friendly is a vb.net app - maybe connecting to a Python script on a server.

Originally I was going to throw a couple of crap articles together and just move on to the next site. But I rethought that plan.

I'm still not building backlinks (though I am coding two backlink scripts now I'm excited about got a few great links for another site of mine during testing) or pinning a lot of expectations on just one site (though at least two of the current four I think have a lot of potential).

But at the moment I'm doing about a dozen pages per site including a sales funnel. I enjoy writing the copy but it's padding it out to get the word count which is killing me. I've dumped maybe $150 into article outsourcing but it always requires so much editing it's not worth the bother.

So it's a weird structure I'm currently going for. Not something I've tried before and not something I've seen others do. A take on an original concept and the theory of it is exciting. But it does mean the up front onsite is a bit of a slog. Oh and they're a mix of cms/static pages. Depends on what I plan to do with the site.


Updates:

Been slammed at the day job but it was a productive week there at least. Should be able to get back to this now. I've finished editing and site 4 is now more than a single page. Potentially this is a really good niche but staying true to the project I'm leaving it be and moving on.

Got a quick meeting this evening then I'll see if I have any keywords ready for site 5.

I was reading a case study of someone who claims to look at the individual SERPS metrics when planning a site. A specific niche might have different ranking factors is the theory. Technically true in some cases but I don't know how much it's really worth looking at.

It would be interesting to build something to track the top 50 results and their metrics to see if I could see a pattern in a specific niche and how that compares to another.

This is why I should really take the time and money to hire a decent writer I can trust to get on with it. At he moment my time is probably spent writing content for these sites and just getting a bunch of them up.

I guess that's why people say content is king... Being able to quickly pump out quality writing that is informative and engaging is an art that most don't have, myself included. Sadly, the good writers get good money because they know they are good and trying to find someone who is good and doesn't realize it and willing to work for cheap is like trying to find that 100k monthly search keyword that is untapped.

Have a look at Jekyll to greatly boost website deployment. As a developer, you might like it. If anything, you will have a nice collection of articles in markdown.

Couple of updates this morning.

First of all a few weeks back I posted I'd stumbled into someones golden goose. They were literally ranking for keywords they had no reason to be ranking for and the "content" was all affiliate links. I'd written a script which let me scale up what they were doing 100% automated I just give it the keyword.

But there was a part missing.

I kind of accidentally stumbled into that part the other day when I'd forgotten about this project aaaaaaaand now we have page one ranking. Literally I gave this thing a keyword. 20,000 searches a month and it landed on the first page 48 hours after indexing.

I won't be giving it out for obvious reasons. It's not a long term business because we're relying on too many external factors. But I know the other guy doing it is making some serious bank and I have it automated. I'm actually fairly tempted to hook it up to the keyword tool and let it find AND rank a site for me.

So this isn't replacing my current project but I'm taking a day or two to work on the script for it to advance it a bit. Then there's never going to be a point where this script isn't running. I kinda feel bad for the other guy doing this. It was only a matter of time before another SEO spotted it but I don't see it being long term enough to go slow. So I'm going to take the piss with it.

Outside of that:

I've potentially found a niche for site 5. About 30,000 searches a month for the niche. No authorities in the niche the competition isn't anything too scary. It's... a weird one though. There's not a ton of commercial intent there although there is an affiliate product which would fit. In fact it's perfect for one of the 5k terms. I think I'm going to set this as site 5 cap it at 10 pages dump it on a domain and leave it be. I've some code to finish for this other project then I'll put this together. Probably aiming for Tues/Wed to have that live - maybe sooner.

And lastly I've started using this to try and keep myself accountable for the time I'm working https://toggl.com

I wrote a script a while ago which legally wrecked competitors PBN sites. I know that sounds like a bit of a claim but we tested it and it works. It's common sense if you look at how most PBN domains have their power. It's actually really straightforward. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done it but I enjoyed automating it. Potentially getting a contract to provide this to an agency alongside some other negative SEO stuff so that might take up some time if I end up doing it.

It'll depend on the $ offer at the end of the day.

But project updates:

Fell a bit behind as I was sick Sunday/Monday and had to play catchup for the day job after that. I've reversed my decision on site 5 since I honestly don't know if I like the niche. There's no real competition to speak of but I'll have to get my creative cap on before deciding if I'll build the site. There's only one affiliate product which really suits the current plan and it's a bit of stretch if that would even convert. I think there is some commercial intent there - just not sure how much.

I'll see. I might completely outsource/JV this one.

I am potentially looking at adding two physical product sites into the mix. Same format target the low comp keyphrases and if it ranks for the bigger ones that's a bonus. I think I'm going to try and decide for sure today and if I go down this path I'll outsource the content and start building the two sites.

Site 5 would be an existing domain in that niche sitting page 2-4 for a main keyword. It's not really been touched in a long while. I'm not planning to chase the main keyword but instead overhaul it into a better quality site and target the lower comp keywords. Keep the pages targeting the bigger ones and if the new content helps it rank then - bonus.

Site 6 would then be a new one. Plenty of traffic (we're talking about 30k US/UK searches for the main keywords) for an evergreen niche. Products which convert around $10-50. This is a curious one. It's one of those keyphrases Rankbrain tries to cater to with a few intents. Either intent I can sell to but I'm trying to work out exactly what the competition is like. Some stuff is seriously weak (we're talking a small Twitter account in the top 3) whereas other listings scare me a little more. I might honestly test this one to see if I can rank on something like this by battering Rankbrain with onsite relevance.

I've been taking a look at some Amazon affiliate sites ranking just now. I think I'll need a bit of content on each one so I'm looking at least 20k words between the two to start with and I'll see how they go from there.

Side project:

I've updated the tool a bit and created a few dozen new sites with it. I'm going to leave it a week or two and see what Google does with it if they rank then I'll start to scale things up. I'd rather spend the development time creating more sites for the main project until I know the results from the other day weren't just a fluke.

Site 5 underway. Rewrote a bulk of content up to about 5k so far tonight and toyed with the conversion stuff a little. Outsourced another 4k words and I'll get some more done tomorrow. I'd like to have this finished by tomorrow night so I can move on to site 6.

Time for an Update:

Between a new business (created a system to find things cheap I was selling on - profitable but I'm not sure I like having to be in the house waiting for things to be delivered) and crunch time at the development day job I've not had a lot of time to work on the SEO project.

I never got around to putting the scale of sites up I wanted but I have a lot of them stuck on page 2-3 now. They've generated hops and sales while I've been doing other things but not quite the rankings I was hoping for.

So time for plan B.

I have some domains sitting there I could retool as a PBN. Honestly I'm tempted to do this for the larger site at least.

I don't really want to go down the outreach path. A lot of these smaller niches don't really have much choice in that area and the style some of them are built would take some convincing to get a link to.

But I'm still not a fan of manual labour. I'm going to throw some manual blog comments and a few forum posts to get the ball rolling on them again but the focus is going to be getting a few scripts up and running which can help make life easier. There's a couple of things I really want to automate and I can start with a few of the easier ones for sure.

I think I'd mentioned a while back I found a site which was ranking for terms it had no business ranking for. I'd stumbled across someone else doing it and they were up to a couple of thousand pages. I'd wrote a script to automatically create a mini site for a keyword and left it at that. Turns out they are slow to get indexed but they got there. They're also picking up rankings and driving traffic so I'll be dusting off that project and starting to scale it back up as well.

I'm really taken with the idea of geographic arbitrage at the moment. Being happy to live out of a van I'm hoping to get my passive income up a bit over the next year so I can toss my gear and a laptop into a van to head somewhere sunnier. So I better get started.