Finner

Hi everyone,

I would probably be the true definition of a newbie, had never heard of SEO, how to drive traffic, pretty much anything. Never had heard of wordpress, backlinking etc.

It is my first post, but I have been reading voraciously every bit of information i can get my hands on. Fantastic resources on this site.

I had originally had been reading about affiliate market on another forum. I had always been interested in starting my own site, and seeing what was available in terms of ability to earn cash online.

I finally decided to dive in and have decided i'll post what i've done so far, and what i expect to do in the coming days, and hopefully i can get some thoughts and advice from other WFers.

Just as a basic idea of what i've done so far.

In October and most of November of this year i just did reading, learned terms, what they meant, what tools could be good,etc. Pretty much everything was new, i'd be reading an article, have no idea what something meant, and i'd have to go figure out what that meant.

Finally by the middle of November i had a VERY general idea of how IM worked, and how to get started.

November 25th to 29th - I started keyword research with market samurai (trial). Again its hard to know everything, i was unaware of what to look for, looking for commercial phrases, etc. I settled on a #1 KW that had:
- ~10000 phrase searches per month
- ~4000 exact searches per month
- competition (SEOC) was 19000 sites.

November 29th- I found a domain with a EMD + the word "you" that ended in .com. I registered the domain, purchased hosting, installed word press, and posted my first self written article (about 400 words).

November 30th - Tweaked site theme. Figured out what the hell plugins are. Installed plugins. Figured out how to work them, and what plugins were supposedly best.

December 1st - Signed up for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. Submitted sitemap. Submitted my site to a couple different directories, and did research, stuff like "how many tags are too many?", and "should i have one page or multiple pages". Basically stuff that devolves into opinion and as i think another thread on the forum said, basically let me procrastinate.

December 2nd and 3rd - Continued to research, had never heard of article spinning, backlinking strategies, page ranks etc. Looked at possible tools to use to improve efficiency. I eventually decided that it was far better for me to learn how to do things manually the first time (write articles, some initial backlinking etc. then to pay someone as i'd rather know how to do it, at least to start). No ranking on google as of yet.

December 4th- I am ranked 44th for my main keyword on Google, hurray! I write a second self written article, ~400 words again that ties into main keyword and a secondary keyword and post on site.

December 5th - More research on article directories, how to build good back links, competitive research. Began doing some manual backlinking on about 6 blogs, leaving high quality comments and submitted site to a couple more directories.

December 6th - Post another 500 word article on site, and write a secondary 600 word article related to site content and submit it to Ezine as i understood it is the best article directory from research. Site still holding at ~40

December 7th - Setup blogger account and squidoo account with related content. Write unique content articles (~300 words) for each with ~2/3 backlinks to main site from each. Do another 3/4 blog comments with anchor links. Site has disappeared from top 500 of google rankings

December 8th - Write another 500 word article for main site. Site is still gone from rankings. Am concerned.

December 9th - Read for hours about the fresh bounce that new sites get on google. Meanwhile Yahoo and Bing have ranked me 7th and 5th respectively for my number 1 KW, however no listing on google. No backlinks have been found by google as of yet.

December 12th - Site has reappeared on Google! I now sit substantially lower at 62 for #1 KW, however sit at 52 for #2 KW, a more competitive one. I still am at #5 and #7 on Yahoo and Bing. I post another 500 word unique article on main site.

December 13th - Read more about backlinking, trying to determine how to potentially raise rankings, not a lot of time. Ezine Article is approved, hopefully helps with ranking.

December 14th - Write another ~500 word article posted to main site. Struggling with the fact if i should spend $10 and buy some quality links to main site. Google has indexed a couple of the directory backlinks.

Basically as i sit right now the site is ranked:

#1 KW
Google - #74 and #335 exact / #134 and #309 phrase
Yahoo - #8
Bing - Disappeared

#2 KW
No phrase matches, Google #52, 159, 204 and 443 for exact.

#3 KW (Best commercial keyword by my guess)
#159 exact search on Google.

So i guess a couple questions and comments.

-Is it worth it to spend $10 and get some high quality back links to improve ranking?
-I don't have any META tags, are they important?
-I also don't think i have H1 or H2 tags. What are these?
-How important is content, the articles i write are good, but i wouldn't say they are incredible?
-I'm looking at Adsense as more of a tool to determine potential commercial opportunity, and will likely settle on AM. Is that good or bad?
-What is pinging and when i ping am i pinging my own URL or the URL of the site with the backlink?

Money spent so far:

Domain(1yr) + Hosting (1yr) = $45

Basically where do i go from here. I'm likely going to continue to add an article of 400-600 words every 2 to 3 days, but in terms of backlinking, it seeems like a large time delay. Would a $10 purchase of some high quality page backlinks help?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated!

verdeithaca

You need more links. $10 in links can only get you so far. Up the amount you're willing to spend and check out some of the link providers on this forum.

Finner

Any recommendations for a good provider, and how much to spend to make a difference in ranking? Ideally i don't need to be first page (yet) i just want to test the commercial viability of the traffic i receive.

emp

OK, here we go.

-Is it worth it to spend $10 and get some high quality back links to improve ranking?

Yes.

-I don't have any META tags, are they important?

The opinions on these varies. The <title> is extremely important, and a description meta does not hurt. Ignore the rest.

-I also don't think i have H1 or H2 tags. What are these?

<H1>Is a headline of the first order, the most important headline.</H1>, all the other <Hx> tags follow in order. These are a great way to structure the text visually for the user and also make it easier for search engines to determine this structure semantically.

As a rule of thumb, you should only have one H1 headline. If you go below H3, you are doing it wrong.

-How important is content, the articles i write are good, but i wouldn't say they are incredible?

Good is often good enough.

-I'm looking at Adsense as more of a tool to determine potential commercial opportunity, and will likely settle on AM. Is that good or bad?

Diversify. Adsense can be used as a great income or as a filler. Never rely on one source of income.

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

verdeithaca

Social Bookmarking Bomb • 1000+ SB sites, minimum footprint, blasts or drips. • v.5

thank me later

Finner

Today i signed up for google adsense (waiting for approval) Site has moved around a bit in rankings. My main domain does not seem to rank that well however my pages do.

For #1 KW i'm at
54 exact, 56 phrase (Each a different internal page)

Is it bad that my main domain does not seem to rank well, but the internal pages do much better?

Quick question regarding the backlinking services (thanks for advice BTW with that referral verdithaca), these services offer say 1000 backlinks. Doesn't it look very suspicious to have a 3 week old site with 5 or 6 backlinks currently indexed to suddenly have 1000?

Also when selecting a URL for the backlinking service you should select your "main" domain right? not a internal page?

Also is dripping better than a single blast?

Thanks again for any and all help. Much appreciated.

www.kfm24.com

finner my recommendation to you is to set up you blog, choose a niche market you love, start blogging about it, start building your email list and find affiliate products for you to promote relating to your niche market.

thehobbster

If that's just some ranking you ended up getting incidentally, cool. Good for you. If you chose to target that phrase as a main keyword, those numbers are retardedly low. That's less than one visitor per day at #1 spot. I mean, I guess it's cool if you get a $50 CPC.


All depends on the terms you are talking about and the on-page seo on the domain and inners. You aren't providing enough info for any of us to say anything of value about it.

Yes and no. Sites go viral all the time. 1000 isn't too big of a deal and 3 weeks is a nice little age buffer. And it depends on the type of link. Social bookmarks is something I feel is safe to do early in big quantities. Things are meant to go viral in the social realm.

Learn about link velocity and PR juice and you'll start to figure some of this stuff out.^

You select the URL you want to send certain text anchors and PR Juice to. Rank what you wanna rank. It's all good. Dripping isn't always better than a blast. A blast can act just as a drip if you don't ping, because it takes google time to find the links. However, if it's all high PR links then google is likely to find them all pretty quickly. This is back to link velocity. Search about it.

Hollaaaa!

__________________

Share Deez Nuts

Finner

Just a note, when i'm posting the rankings (phrase/exact) thats my rank on google, not the number of searches users do for the keywords. So 54 exact, 56 phrase is my ranking on google for the keyword in quotes/not quotes.

The keyword #1 gets 4500 exact and 10000 broad searches per month, Keyword 2 about 2 times that, and keyword 3 about 30 times that.

For my update today, i added a privacy policy to my age as per googles adsense requirements, and wrote a 600 word unique article.

Waiting for google adsense to be approved prior to purchasing a backlinking service.

Meanwhile am adding the adsense boxes to different posts, with different boxes on each, so once i do begin to receive regular traffic, i can identify which has the largest click through ratio.

Appreciate the help Hobbster.

Finner

Just some updates from last couple days:

December 17th - I added another ~500 original article on the site, and purchased 150 social bookmarks on fiverr. Seller seemed reputable based on reviews,and delivered in under 20 hours, with report linking to each link.

I split the 150 into 3 groups, so 50 each targeting my 3 main KWs. Hopefully that makes sense. Will look at adding more potentially based on results. As of right now it doesn't look as if google has crawled any of these links (as i assume they would show on webmaster tools)

I will likely continue to add 2 or 3 articles per week and hopefully i see some results.

As of today for my 3 main keywords i rank in google search results:

Keyword #1
57th in broad position
55th in phrase position

Keyword #2
107th in broad position
45 in phrase position

Keyword #3
159th broad position
83rd phrase position

Once the backlinks are indexed hopefully i see a move!

verdeithaca

skip the fiverr bullshit and get the SBB in the link i provided earlier. if you're worried you can drip feed them over several days/weeks.

just be sure to diversify your anchor text. guarantee you'll move significantly with just that service alone.

then start to work on moving up ranks by getting different type of links, usually contextual and high PR links will do it.

www.kfm24.com

Finner,

create a wordpress blog, start building your blog and your email list

fuzzface

You are doing an awesome job so far, keep it up!

Im about as new at this as you are, but you seem to know a lot more than I do. Where did you do all your readings aside from this site? Still a bit unsure about a lot of the terms & where to start.

Best of luck!

Finner

Fuzzface - Thanks for the kind words, its definitely been a learning process. Pretty much i picked it up as I go. I did tons of reading prior, but i think the biggest thing is to jump in and actually figure it out on the go. You can read night and day about all sorts of tools and techniques, but just doing the research, setting up the domain, researching plugins for SEO for word press etc. is invaluable.

Wickedfire has been essentially my main resource, and google the other. I did some reading on "the challenge" website, didn't love it, but they have great videos regarding specific tasks, and Market Samura (The 30 trial) has been fantastic for my initial keyword research and tracking my ranking and competition.

This in the end is my first site, i'm very much unaware of best themes, if a 1 page sales copy site vs a blog is the best way to go, how to optimize the site for search results or what.

To date i've only received 1 visitor from organic searches. I've received another 26 or so from the social bookmarks, but it still seems as if google has not noticed these backlinks.

As an update:

December 20th - Adsense was approved, and i also signed up for amazon affiliate marketing to market at least the 1 product i have so far reviewed.

One question i have, all my posts have adsense code in them, and the ads appear when viewing the individual posts, but on my main page which shows my last 10 posts, only the first post shows the ads, the remainder just show the boxes as they did prior to adsense being approved. Any reason for that?

I'm leaning towards ordering the package that verdeithaca mentioned, however as google still has not indexed the 150 from the weekend (or perhaps they have and its not in webmaster tools yet) i'm unsure if i should wait or not. I'm also concerned about cost before determining if the site will convert enough visitors to either click or purchase.

One other thing is according to google analytics, my site average visit is like 8 seconds. The content is well written but i suppose the sample size is small so i should wait.

Also according to webmaster tools i've had over 600 impressions (of course many are from me) but only 1 or 2 actual visitors. That seems low, but perhaps its due to my ranking.

As an update to my current rankings in google for broad/phrase searches for my keywords i'm ranked as following:

Keyword #1
49/54

Keyword #2
79/82

Keyword #3 (high commercial potential)
Unranked/190

Keyword #4 (newly ranking on this one...very high commercial includes "buy ______"
Unranked/84

I'm still unsure where to go from here. Leaning towards buying the service mentioned, but may wait another 2 or 3 days to determine what fiverr package had on ranking. I'll likely post another article in the next 2 or 3 days.

Vegashobo

I would uninstall google analytic - change it for Web Analytics in Real Time | Clicky - one site is free - that's all you need right now.

Another note from the n00b (i am learning too ) - original unique content belongs on your site, not somebody else's, therefore ezine and squidoo - spin somebody else's content

Note ++ - red virus or SBB are the shit for bookmarks and are de facto standard start for emds on this forum. You can xrumer blast them later or live them like they are - up to you, but you can do them first week without too much worry.

drgirlfriend

I am in the same boat you are! I'm going to start one of these threads soon too, but I wanted to wait until I had a few days worth of info to post.

I've had the same thing happen, numbers in google analytics are extremely lower (4 people to my new website) than my webmaster counts.

Also, when I search for my keyword phrase in incognito window, I have very good rankings, (#4 google, #2 yahoo, #2 bing) but when I checked it with pageranking.com it said I had a rank of 0....

Question: I'm at the same stage you are at in building my website. Would you like to do a joint newb thread or I can start my own thread. Could be cool to work simultaneously with someone and make a super-thread

Vegashobo

You can rank #1 for your keyword and still have a pr=0, that's ok.

Finner

Vegashobo - Is there a reason i wouldn't want Google Analyics linked to my account? Is it more likely that purchasing back links is likely to be "caught?"

drgirlfriend - You are welcome to post in here, and share your journal.

An an update from the last couple days:

December 21st - I added an additional article of unique content (~400 words). I also then realized the reason my ads were not showing is that you are limited to a maximum of 3 adsense ads per page, and i have 2/3 per post, with full post showing on the main site.

I changed my posts so only the first paragraph/few sentences show (usually with a photo) with a "Read more" link going to the page, and placed only 3 ads on my main page. I also added the sidebar template on my main page to each of my other pages as well as to each individual post page. Basically i cleaned it up a bit.

I received my second organic search visitor (hurray!)

The night of the 21st my rankings went up substantially (potentially from the fiverr 150 social bookmarks, although they are still not showing in webmaster tools as backlinks)

For night of 21st my top rankings (broad/phrase) were:

Keyword #1
18/24

Keyword #2
32/25

Keyword #3
34/29

Keyword #4
37/250

Keep in my mind i have many other pages ranking in top 200 for search results but these are just my top results.

Today however when i checked my rankings I've disappeared for phrase search on my #1 keyword (have a second page ranking 98th), and dropped in most other rankings (in some case minor, a few spots, in others significantly, either disappearing all together or 20/30 spots)

Going Forward:
Will likely add another article today or tomorrow geared towards my #3/#4 keywords.

Have decided based on reviews i will order a SBB as recommended above dripped over 3 weeks, however I am considering holding off as my keywords have some potential to do well as they could be part of a New Years Resolution (in a minor way). As the bump in rankings from the SBB occurs relatively quickly (from what i've read in the reviews) , i'm considering ordering on maybe the 28th or so to take advantage of that.

Questions:

Does having google webmaster tools/analytics increase the likelyhood of being sandboxed or de indexed if purchasing back links?

Does webmaster tools accurately reflect what Google shows as backlinking to my site?

Why are my site rankings so bipolar? Jumping 100 spots, or 30 spots, then disappearing the next day.

Any thoughts on best time to order the SBB? After the SBB (Say 3 weeks) should i be looking at adding some high PR blog backlinks? From what i've read on link velocity, you want to be adding links consistently.

As always thanks for any and all help. Always informative and appreciated.

StackCash

Ok, a few things to note here....

1) Read all the posts in the Enlightened Member section. There are a ton of awesome case studies going on that answer just about all the questions you have been asking. Enlightened Members - WickedFire - Affiliate Marketing Forum - Internet Marketing Webmaster SEO Forum

2) You're not going to get penalized for buying 1000 links. You'll get penalized for 100,000 links, maybe. Also, just because you purchase 1000 links doesn't mean that they are getting indexed right away. Yes, the links may be active immediately, but Google will count them slowly over time. Get your SBB package now.

3) This may be argued a bit, but the only match that counts is exact match. Don't worry about the others. If you're doing well with the exact match keyword, then you should be doing well with the others. Also, there really isn't anyway to optimize specifically for phrase or broad match.

4) Start getting other links. Buy a 1000 directory submission package. Create about 50 article directory links and point shittier links at them (think xrumer/scrapebox).

5) Build out some really good web 2.0 sites. Think squidoo and hubpages. Make these QUALITY. Optimizing pictures and videos from youtube. Multiple headings with kw's, etc.

6) Learn your onsite SEO guidelines. Keyword should be present in title tag, h1 tag, h2 tag, h3 tag, img alt tag, meta description, em tag, and strong tag. While widely argued, try to keep your keyword density around 1%-2% of your content length. Onsite SEO is not an option. It is necessity. Airtight onsite seo + an emd can more often than not rank you higher than you are right now - with minimal links.

StackCash

7) Research different plugins for adsense. Try to find one that will rotate ads to different positions on your site/posts/pages. Keep track of which position and ad sizes are performing the best. Once you have a good cross section of data, you can do one of two things. 1) Permanently place the best ad in the best position. 2) Look at the ads that are being displayed by Google and advertise for them directly. Acctually, do both of these.....or none. Test and see what works for you.

8) Don't be paranoid about Google. They know everything about your site whether or not you're using their products. Try to work with them instead of against the grain and you shouldn't have any problems.

9) Your rankings are 'bipolar' because your site is relatively new. Google is trying to determine the relevance of your content and find out where your site really belongs in the rankings. This "Google Dance" will start to settle once you have a good link profile going on that can compete with the first page.

10) Do competitive research. Look at what sites are ranking top 10 for your keyword. What types of links do they have pointing to their site? How can you get those same links? How are they monetizing their site? With Adsense? With CPA offers? Are they building a list? Do they have an exit pop? Is their content quality or trash? What secondary keywords are they going after? What does their site structure look like?.....You want to get on the first page so that you get traffic and make money. So, at first, copy the strategies of your competition. Then, take over your competition by doing it better.

Vegashobo

Solid stuff, bro.

fuzzface

+1
Good post

Finner

StackCash - Thanks a ton, awesome advice in there, didn't even know about that forum, some great information.

I have written a well done ezine article and a squidoo page, however have not pointed any links to them to improve the juice they pass on.

As an update in the last few days:

After experimenting with different adsense plugins i eventually did away with all of them and inserted adsense code directly into the pages. The adsense plugins were terrible at inserting into text and wrecked a lot of the formatting on various pages. I researched the best location and sizes for adsense bars and placed the highest recommended bars into the highest recommended spots on my page.

I also amended the style, created a new header image while shrinking it down a little, and changed the margins in order to make the site look more professional while fitting the large banner size from adsense.

I also added metatags and a description to the site, which will hopefully improve the clickthrough ratio from the google search results to my site.

I purchased the SBB from river recommended above on the 22nd of November in the evening. As of yet i have not heard from him regarding the reports though from recent posts it looks like he completed the request but the report has not yet been mailed.

I also pinged about half the links from the fiverr purchase i did last week and will be pinging the rest.

I saw a major jump in rankings late in the evening on the 22nd. I would assume it was from the fiverr 150 SBB purchase.

On the morning of the 23rd I as sitting in SERP for keywords at:
#1 - 12
#2 - 3
#3 - 13
#4 - 14

Since then i have fallen off a few spots, (From 3-7 from 12-15, etc.) I imagine that once the SBB links get indexed i will jump again, ideally to a top 3 spots.

Interestingly i had no meaningful traffic despite ranking 3rd for that short period of time (720 exact searches per month on #2 keyword), although being around christmas, it doesn't mean a lot.

Some additional data.

Unique Visitors (to date) - 40
Number of Impressions (to date from search on webmaster tools) - 1600 (about 150-300 per day right now)
Number of clicks (to date) - less than 10
Queries (to date- assuming number of keywords i've had an impression on) - 62

From what i can see in Analytics i've only had about 6 visitors from google. Hopefully this improves. I have earned 0$ on adsense so far, despite 177 impressions.


New questions:
Since i adjusted the theme i tested the page in different browsers with no problems, but on my mobile phone it renders the sidebar underneath the posts instead of beside....any reason for this?

The adsense ads are not very relevent to my content...can i "specialize" it more? ALso i only specified text ads, as i understand they have a higher CTR, is that correct?

Looking forward:
I'm going to likely sit and wait to see the effects of the SBB and potentially add another article in the next day or so. I'm going to continue to see how i can tweak the page for onsite SEO. I'm also going to google how i can correct how the page is rendering on mobiles.

Likely next week i will add other links in an effort to push myself upwords. Right now i feel like the site is there, it has good content, but i need to get visitors. A waiting game i suppose until i can rise in the rankings.

Finner

In above post i mean Dec 22nd is when i ordered the SBB....post won't let me edit now.

proplayer44

FYI, I've bookmarked your thread and I'm enjoying the read. I am right at the exact point you are at. Built my site, have about 8 1000 word articles hand written by me. Just considering spending the money on the social bookmarking bomb. This is also my first site and my major concern of course is failure. Do I spend the $40 and move up the serps in google and rank well, get traffic but still make no money? I kind of fear that is what is going to happen. Then I've wasted the money that could be spent on other things. I'm a tight wad with money and any little bit that gets wasted just burns my hide. I've researched my main competitor and his content is complete crap, spinned content that makes no sense. He barely has any content at all. But I assume he also is making no money.

Don't quit this journal, I gotta know how the social bomb turns out and if it turns into monies. MONIES MONIES MONIES!!

Finner

Updates!!!

proplayer44- Thanks for reading. I was kind of in the same spot as you, didn't want to spend the money, but figured i had to, at the least as a learning experience.

Got the SBB report on December 27th. As of yet have seen no noticeable change in rankings, so i'm unsure if the big leap on the 23rd could have been because of the SBB. I think it must of been because of the fiverr purchase, as from what i can tell on the report, most of the SBB links were put in on the 25th and the 26th, but who knows.

I'm sitting in SERPS between 9 and 15 on my 4 main keywords on Google.

I'm still receiving very little traffic although my impressions have gone substantially up, about 320 per day. I have 45 unique visitors (total from start of website a month ago), up from 40 from the evening of the 27th, so still little traffic.

The visitors who do visit seem to be reading the articles though, and my bounce rate has dropped to 38% (although i'm unsure if that is a good or bad number).

I posted a new article yesterday (About 500 words).

I also signed up for Backlinkgenie (BLG - basic 9.99 a month). Had seen the service recommended on WF, and figured that as pretty much every backlink was pointing at my main domain that i'd do about a week at some of the pages on my domain, and then in early January i'll switch to juicing some of the links that the SBB hit, and the ezine/squidoo lenses i'd already set up.

It seems like a big waiting game right now. I am rising in impressions but no traffic, and i likely need to sit at top 3 to get some meaningful hits.

I did have 1 person click on my affiliate link, however they did not buy. Adsense income is still 0.

I signed up for SERPIQ(free) and MicrositeMasters(free). The main keyword i have is a SERPIQ of 40 (unsure how difficult that is considered).

To be quite honest, i'm unsure what to do now. Content is there, but no traffic.

Should i build another site? Another keyword? Part of me thinks this would be a good idea, as essentially i feel i have tapped out the "work" portion on this site until traffic begins to flow, and based on the month long period to get here, it might be a good idea to start keyword research for a new domain (which should be a learning process in itself).

PostUp

What plug in are you using for social sharing?

yasiryar

I would like to appreciate the management and the whole team of wickedfire.com who has set this forum for the newbie who are seeking for any advice or information. A Newbies Journal is one of the best services provided by wickedfire.com. The people who are looking for the information regarding Search Engine Optimization or about the ways to add more traffic to their website etc can enjoy the benefits of this Journal. Thanks a lot for starting this unique Journal. The experts come and provide assistance and enough knowledge to the newbie through this journal. It would help them out from any confusion in IT field.

Finner

As a quick update, not a lot of changes, however my homepage has disappeared from ALL google rankings for the last 2 days.

IT was my highest ranking page so I hope it returns soon.

I checked sitesite URL) and it shows, so ideally no penalty.

I've been pinging 100 of the SBB links i ordered daily. Hopefully the disappearance is just the google dance. I have no messages on webmaster tools, and the only backlinks to the site are from 150 SB from fiverr and the river SBB, plus another 80 or so, some manual and some from backlink genie.

I've changed backlink genie to backlink the top 50 PR urls from the SBB from river to increase the juice they give.

I've been doing some research for keywords for my next site, but so far no cigar. Been doing some looking on the godaddy domain search for some older domains as ideally that will help me rank easier for my next try.

Based on my backlink profile, i doubt that i'm in the penalty box, but who knows. I"ll keep my fingers crossed that i'll pop up on the first page again.

My top ranking for any of my google keywords is now 85 as its all sub pages.

Carpetflood

Any change?

Finner

Nope, my home page is still not ranking anywhere on google. It is being indexed on Yahoo and Bing and i'm ranking fairly well there for a few keywords (top 20) however in Google my home page has still not come back.

Unsure what to do at this point. Content is being updated weekly but my impressions and visitors are dropping as i'm not ranking.

I disabled my plugins, checked the robots.txt, but still nothing. The only thing i can think of is because my posts are "duplicate" content on the home page (ie. i write a post, it shows on homepage and on its own page) that google is discounting the home page.

StackCash

Make a post that you want to be the main content of your homepage and make it "sticky" in WP so that it stays on top always.

Then, create excerpts of each additional post. By doing this, you will have a brief description of each post on the homepage, instead of duplicate content of the inner pages.

Carpetflood

I have a new website that am first in yahoo and bing and nowhere in google. It first showed up a little on google for like 2 days and then disappeared. I have done some link building and it is not penalized . Hopefully it will pop up again.

theactiveactor

What do you mean by "disappeared"- did the keywords drop your domain does not show up at all?

Finner

Stackcash - I'm following what you recommended.

theactiveactor - My main page no longer is ranking for ANY keywords at all. A few of the subpages are ranking far lower then the home page for those keywords but my main page is not in the top 1000 results for these keywords (some of which are extremely low competiton) Prior to disappearing, i was in the 10-25 spot.

The Apostle

I got on board with affiliate marketing in August, before that I had absolutely no experience.

My site went live near the end of September and I am still struggling with traffic. I was fearful of the sandbox, getting blacklisted, all of it. So I made my backlinks slowly, made them quite diversified, and still nothing. I was/am getting anywhere from 3-10 visitors a day. Quite depressing actually. All of my articles were written by me, same with the content. After devoting so much energy to it and still seeing nothing, I started using scrapebox to build my links each day rather than manually, quit submitting articles, and went with some paid links - fiverr, directories, etc.

Still nada. Don't know what I did or didn't do right or wrong. Quite frustrating to come up with what you feel is a quality site and get nothing. I feel like Google rewards you with 7 visitors. Then you go online, search "good traffic numbers" and read about 500 visitors, 1000. I don't think I am at 1000 total.

Finner

I've added an RSS feed to the sidebar of my page, with the results from my main keyword on google news as the URL.

I've sticked my main "intro" post as it were, and moved it to the top.

One problem, the only way i can get it to stay at the top is to change its date to the newest post. The stick ensures it stays on the front page, but in the same order it was in before. Any idea how to ix this?

I've also added links to my homepage from my sub pages.

I am again ranking with my home page but MUCH lower. I'm on the 7th or 8th page for most my keywords in google and 20-30 on yahoo/bing. I'm down to about 90 impressions per day from 400.

I don't get how i'm ranking so low when i've done a SBB/ 150 links from fiverr. I also ordered some blog comments on higher PR blogs but order hasn't been completed yet.

A bit disheartening, in a month i've only had 56 unique visitors, and no money earned via adsense. I've had 2 clicks through to amazon affiliates but no buyers. Interestingly my content must be relativley good, almost every visitor is spending a significant amount of time and viewing multiple pages.

At this point i need to rise in rankings back to first page to start getting visitors. I guess i'll keep buying links.

Any other tips?

Should i be pinging the links from the SBB? Should i start directing the BLG links to my homepage instead of my subpages/ezine articles/sbb? If i've done the SBB, some BLG, and now some higher PR blog comments, what is a good next service to go with?

Also for the exerpts you mentioned, i've been doing it manually with a read more link. Should i be using the aside/gallery features in wordpress instead?

I'm going to re enable the SEO plugin as well, unsure if it was the cause at all but it can only help;.

mikeshinobi

You can make your main "intro" post into a "page" instead of a post, then set that page as a static page in Settings >> Reading >> Front page displays

That's good - a solid internal linking structure is important. In fact, it's ideal to have every page on your site link to every other page on your site. I'm pretty sure this can be achieved simply by having a list of all your pages on your side bar - but contextually linking to them is cool, too.

Patience, padawan. In reality a SBB and 150 links isn't that much. Not to mention it takes a long time for all those links to get indexed. I'll answer your question below right here - yes you NEED to be pinging those links, otherwise I think it's possible that they would NEVER get indexed. The best way to get your backlinks indexed appears to be services like linkilicious and lindexed, but pinging is free, so it's what I'm using for now.

But your site isn't even ranking well right now, is it? You can't really expect to have good traffic without dem ranks...

As good as the services in BST are, I can hardly recommend that you keep sinking money into them considering you're new at this, like me. Outsourcing tasks is valuable when you're balling and have dozens of sites to manage, but when you have a few (or just one) it shouldn't be a problem to build backlinks yourself.

Invest in scrapebox, and something like BMD or Sick Submitter (never used BMD personally but I know a lot of people use it). You can use scrapebox for blog comments, and can also use it to scrape bookmarking sites/etc to use with SS/BMD.

You don't have an EMD, and with 4k ELMS I'm going to bet the term is at least somewhat competitive. If you really want to rank well, then yes you'll need to continue link building/etc, but patience is most important. I know how maddening it can be staring at your sites in the SERPs thinking "c'mon rank damn it!!!" As your backlinks slowly begin to get indexed, your site will magically begin to rank on its own - not to mention the added bonus you get from having a more aged domain.

It wouldn't hurt. Don't be afraid of pointing backlinks right at your homepage - I know that's something a lot of people seem afraid of and have gotten bitten by, but those people were doing over-the-top 100k forum profile xrumer style blasts. 100 or even 1000 links at your site isn't going to get you a penalty with the possible exception of if you were able to somehow get every single one of them indexed at the same time (kudos if you do this).

I'd suggest going with what I mentioned above - Scrapebox and SS/BMD. Or if you don't get both, at least get Scrapebox. You can get it here for only $57 instead of the usual $97 or whatever it is.

Carpetflood

Kw ranked for like 2 days right on to 2 nd page
Then not ranking in google for kw but 1st place in yahoo

Finner

Well I purchased Scrapebox. Played around with it but haven't used it yet.

Site is ranking for 2 or 3 keywords between 16-20 on Bing/Yahoo. That is for my main home page.

Home page has pretty much disappeared from Google rankings again.

Still averaging 1 to 2 visitors per day, good bounce rate and visit time.

Webmaster tools says i have Total links : 3,198.

Have no idea how i have that many, but hopefully i haven't been sand boxed.

Finner

Updates!

Site homepage has been re indexed by Google!

Keyword #1 sits at 8
Keyword #2 at 6
Keyword #3 at 16
and Keyword #4 at 26

Its not a lot but i'm getting about 8-10 unique visitors per day. No clicks on ads but i did earn $0.16 (probably on impressions, does adsense do that?)

Still doing some cleanup to make the site look nicer and make sure the internal link structure is solid.

I've only had about 75 unique visitors total since the site was started but still 0 clicks on adsense.

As of right now i have a full leader banner (text) at the top and bottom of each page, and a square ad box (again text) displayed on each post at top left.

Any recommendations on improving the click ratio?

I recently purchased Stacy's blog package so will hopefully will help improve my rankings.

I'm up to 700-900 impressions according to Google WMT.

I will post a new article today, maybe scrapebox for some high PR blog comments manually and ping some additional links.

wayn3

Adsense sometimes has rogue income where you get a small amount of earnings but no click. Sometimes that vanishes after a couple hours, sometimes it stays.

Some people here advise on buying Bookmarking demon instead of getting a blast.

Heres the thing:

River already knwos what hes doing and its cheaper than getting BMD. You start purchasing software at 100 bucks a piece you sink more money into this than youll ever make. If the term isnt super competitive and your content is somewhat good, SBB puts you somewhere on the first two pages.

Depending on the commercial intent on the term, you can do a rough estimate of your earnings potential.

For a very conservative calculation, use 5% ctr, 25% of the search volume google claims and 30% of the cpc google displays.


Assuming a $1 cpc and 4k searches a month, that would be $15. If you end up making 3-4 times that, cool. But dont spend a couple hundred on a site that can only make a couple hundred a year.


About the linkbuilding. People in this thread claim that you should not pay for links because you can do them on your own. The hot new thing in linkbuilding is high pr blog posts. You can not build those yourself because you dont own sites to them on. If you want to go that route, youll have to pay some. There are providers in the BST forum that offer 20 such posts for 9 bucks. In my opinion, thats affordable. Be economical. If you scavenge for blogs with comment sections that you can actually post to and end up spending an hour to find a dozen blogs, you could as well work a job where you are paid 15-20 bucks and spend all that money on services.

This is either a business or a hobby. Dont expect a hobby to make you rich.

Finner

Appreciate the advice wayn3.

It turns out the 0.16 was a click. I got a 2nd one today worth 1.63. Its pretty crazy the variability in what a click is worth, with this one 10x what my first one was.

I had 32 unique visitors today. Oddly when i search i'm ranked 4th for my #2 keyword on broad search which gets ~30000 searches globally a month but i have received 0 traffic for this keyword. Any idea why?

A new article was posted. I had a clickthrough to amazon associates but no buy.

I just received Stacy's blog package. Should i ping these links or let google find them naturally?

I've switched BLG for the next few days to general keywords like "click here" to improve my anchor diversity. I do agree with you in that spending money is fine, as you can pay a pro who can do it in half the time and do a far better job.

Assuming i can maintain my traffic today i'm on pace for ~1000 visitors a month.

As of right now my phrase rankings for the keywords are

#1 - 8
#2 - 4
#3 - 8
#4 - 27

Keyword #2 only gets ~300 searches per month by phrase but 19000 per month by broad and when trying different computers/locales for google its ranked 4th for both, but i've gotten 0 traffic from it. Any thoughts why?

Total expenses to date:

Domain - $5
Rivers SBB - $20
High PR Blog Comments - $14
Stacy's Blog Articles- $30
Fiverr links - $5

I'm not including hosting.

Cost so far - $74
Earnings - $1.83

Other stats from today from analytics:

27 people visited this site
27 Visits
27 Unique Visitors
79 Pageviews
2.93 Pages/Visit
00:00:35 Avg. Time on Site
3.70% Bounce Rate
96.30% % New Visits

Are those good stats in terms of bounce rate / etc? Time on site seems low.

verdeithaca

Use exact match to determine search volume, not broad match.

wayn3

Google often displays ads based on history. Like Im getting ads from some guru douche all the time at the moment because he seems to be high on retargeting. Means some of your visitors dont get ads served that revolve around your keywords and are thus not subject to the same cpc.

Rivers is at least $33, not 20.

If you check your rank for a search phrase and try to calculate the visitors you should have gotten from that, try exact match.

paulseowork

Does anyone know why his site got de-indexed, then popped back? Is that par for the course after buying links?

PHPGator

I have no idea why he got pulled from the SERP's for a little bit. I keep reading trying to determine the timeline when packages were ordered. But I haven't been watching the thread and there would be a lot of content to sift through in order to figure it out exactly. Sorry, OP! My assumption is that Stacy's Blog Posts (Higher PR?) and all he really had was volume of links, but didn't have the authority links to push him up. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it's fairly normal (as my site did the same thing) to see a site drop from the SERP's all together or very low for a while. I think Google really gives new content a bump at the beginning, but if there aren't any backlinks from authority sites being pushed to it, then it's going to fall quickly. This is a little bit different than it was Pre-Panda from what I remember. To me things seem a little bit different. More emphasis placed on being brand new content, so it's easier to rank higher early on. However, your site is quickly pushed aside without the backlinks that it needs to push it on up towards the top.

I think that bump in the early stages is encouraging to people, then they see their website fall which is discouraging, but if you build some authority backlinks to it, you'll see it being brought back up as you would in the past. I don't have a ton of data to really make this claim with much accuracy, it's just an observation I've had.

I'm just thinking in my head, Google wants to begin pushing a lot of the social networks and latest news into their search results. They're already driving Google+ a lot with the personalized searches and such. My assumption is that this change in behavior of websites is a direct result of those changes. They want to see the most relevant up to date results in their search results. Then, if it becomes outdated (a week or older), throw it aside unless people are talking about it and it is still relevant.

So the result for our small websites... a big boost early on. Quick and easy rankings to begin. Once the website is a week or so old, it drops... it's not going to come back without some backlinks pointing to it. They need to look like people who care talking about it too. I think that's why directories and low quality links won't do it for you. You need quality backlinks (Good PR, Related (if possible), Authoritative links)) pointing to it.

Finner

Woops River is $33. Just was going off the top of my head.

PHPGator i think you must be correct. I fell off the top 500 results in Google for weeks. I don't know if it was the High PR blog comments that pumped me back up, or Google just re indexed me around that time.

Traffic continues to slowly build. As of right now i have 18 unique visitors, which should put me over yesterdays total (Albeit not by much). No clicks today as of yet. I jumped a few more spots in the SERPs.

I hope that the traffic generated makes this site a profitable endeavor, but we will see.

paulseowork

So it might actually be more that you got a free boost in the beginning, not that you're getting penalized later on? Also, given what you are saying, shouldn't adding fresh content on a regular basis help?

Hey Finner, hope you don't mind my questions in your thread, as they are relevant to what you are doing.

PHPGator

paulseowork, I would assume you are right just based on what I've experienced recently.

I think Google after the newly created content gets a few days old, they push it down to where it would have have been originally a year ago. It's almost as if the "honeymoon phase" is shorter but stronger than it used to be.

Like me, I had some longtail keywords that were ranking okay, I had no backlinks, so my website was pushed down to something like 330th. I don't know that this could explain why websites fall off the radar all together. My guess is that the site is still indexed, just not pulling up in the SERP's for SERP checkers. I'm guessing if you did a "site:domain.com" in Google it would still show results for the website. I think what this shows is the importance of backlinks as well. You can create additional content, but that content will continue fall off the radar (except for longtail keywords) a few days or a week after creating it. Google wants to encourage those sources of content that are being talked about and relevant up towards the top of their results.