brolli

So I have a blogspot blog on a "niche" topic that I really enjoy writing about (and am knowledgable of). I have written ~60 articles on it so far, and have adsense on the page.

I know it is small time compared to what I can grow to. I've made 200$ so far since I began the site.

Now I've read through a number of other threads on this forum and have some questions:

1) Domain and hosting: Almost everyone is recommending purchasing these two. I assume it is because of scalability in bandwidth? And the domain name for keyword issues?

2) Keyword research: I've looked up a bunch of keywords on google's keyword tool and found some nice ones that have high global searches but low competition. I assume this is what I want.

3) Backlinks/link building: This is a murky area for me, I assume the premise is that the more pages that link to my page, the higher my page rank is? SEO people are good at writing/using scripts to automate this process in a non-suspicious way to boost page ratings? Please correct me if I am wrong here.

4) I have 3000$ that I would be willing to invest after properly doing more research and understanding how all this works. I feel like I am heading in the right direction, just a bit clueless on how to do it efficiently.

All help is greatly appreciated.

brolli

and also, how would I go about finding directories to submit my link to? (i.e. what am I searching for exactly)

kakaboo

No, but because blogspot can remove your site at any time without reason(due to violation of their TOS or crap) and "boom", all your hard work would have been gone..

even though you can try to be extra cautious with the blogspot site.. sometimes it still happens.. so some people feel it is not worth it to take the risk.. plus ranking your own website and a blogspot site is 2 very different things...

Telboy

As your other questions are answered above, The only thing I'd like to add, is cautious about becoming too attached to the domain, I'm in a situation where I love a certain domain, but it's just not profitable to keep working on it. ( in the sense I'd earn more on others )

3,000 will give you an advantage in your first project, so really dig deep into how profitable this niche can be before pumping too much into it.

dchuk

you're already making some money, you're ahead of 99% of people here. Don't invest a dime of your savings, use that to buy a comfortable chair or maybe a new computer.

Reinvest your capital. You're already doing something right. Use that $200 to buy a domain and some hosting, toss up a blog on that site about the same topic, and keep on producing content. You'll learn how to research keywords along the way.

Good job so far, keep pushing hard now.

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brolli

thanks for the motivation, I do feel good that I am able to make "some" money.

But in order to get advanced, (like 100$+ a day), is SEO services combined with really good keywords the next step? (assuming I know little to nothing about creating backlink networks myself)

RidiculeSEO

The best way to get a knowledge of building backlinks efficiently is through reading forums such as WF. The general rule for building backlinks is quality over quantity.

Bompa

Exactly. With your own domain and hosting, you have control.



Excellent advice!



The next step is to get more traffic. Check your stats. How are people
finding you? Where do you rank for those queries?

Buy a few small packages of dofollow, high PR comments in
Links & SEO, but go slow there, shop around.

As your traffic increases, look for affiliate offers that match your topic
and your readers interests. << That's where the real money is.


Bompa

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BoldBacklinker

+1 for what everyone else said.

When you're using blogspot you have no ultimate control over your business. They can lock you out of your blog or delete it at any time, and it's happened to many. With your own domain and hosting, you are in control.

brolli

I made a post earlier but it said something about awaiting moderation. I assume it is because I copied and pasted a link.

Anyways, most of my traffic right now is from facebook/reddit/twitter. I do have some people coming to my site from search terms (and I rank on the first page it seems for those).

Does using an SEO service that puts me on the front page of google for a good keyword seem like the next good/logical investment? Or should I go through the list of social bookmark sites and register/submit links myself?

dchuk

there's no service here that can guarantee a front page placement. I honestly recommend only buying high PR comment lists and doing manual blog commenting, along with submitting articles to ezine, goarticles, hubpages, and squidoo. You can make some huge ranking gains with just that stuff, and you can do it for free (except for the cost of your time).

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brolli

Thanks for the tips. I've begun submitting articles to those pages above, however I am not sure if I am "doing it right".

The only connection back to my website/blog is a link I put in at the very bottom of the article. Is that good enough?


And also, assuming I do get on the front page of google for a particular keyword that is very popular... is that pretty much the best I can do for the website in terms of traffic/monetization OTHER than providing good content?

brolli

bump for some answers please

dchuk

go test, you'll learn more by doing than asking

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potentialeight

Just throwing this out there, but since you're on blogspot, make sure you have a backup copy of all of your content.

__________________
High-Quality Content Writer

$3 per 100 words, discount rates available

http://www.potentialeight.com

PHPGator

Man, you are already doing something right. SEO is important, I would read some basic SEO suggestions that you can find online. Heck, even running a quick little "SEO analyzer" will give you some tips.

Maybe start looking targeting a few basic keywords, but I wouldn't change a ton off of what you're doing already. It sounds like people are capable of finding your site as is, which is great! All you need to do is continue to write content that people are interested in reading. I've seen some websites that are clearly optimized for search engines. The content is repetitive and less informative at the sake of hoping to rank for more competitive keywords. This is not what you want... you want good content, and let a lot of your keywords land where they may. You'll naturally land some good longtail keywords. I just want to stress the importance of not changing your writing at the sake of search engines.

brolli

thanks, I intend on continuing trying to add quality articles. My main problem I guess is "the next step" for growth.

I am not sure if buying SEO services at this point would be better than say trying to get my page rank higher by submitting my links to as many link directories/web 2.0/etc myself.

dchuk

don't take this the wrong way, but judging by how you worded that sentence, you should not go purchase SEO services. You need to spend some time learning how aggressive SEO works. Go read Eli's blog, bluehatseo.com, then come back here.

You should outsource to increase your personal bandwidth, not because you don't know how to do things or how they work.

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