This thread is for newbs like me

[gomez204]

I just wanted to make a thread to document a campaign that I am about to embark on. I am going to create a landing page for a clickbank product (yes i know ebooks aren't the best but i don't have a site to get approved by other programs with) with a domain name I will buy soon. I just wanted to show other nwbs what I am doing so they can learn from the mistakes I will inevitably make.
I am going to try to obtain my traffic using organic traffic only from google..
I'm using a trial version of market samurai.
I found that about 700 people a month search my keyword or one very similar.
there are less than 30,000 competing websites with a search to broad > %15
The top ten spots look very easy to dominate.
My product is a health/fitness product
8/10 of the spots have less than 15 backlinks and very few have the keyword in their url/head/title [2 of them are youtube vidz.. idk if this is indication of weak competition]
my url will hopefully have the exact search phrase in it..
Once I get home from college tomorrow I will embark on creating a website and updating the format of my site on wicked fire

Note: I realize my newbishness is severe so sorry in advance
Questions for readers: What was the competition like for your first niche?

[jryan21]

700 searches a month and ~30,000 competing websites?

Unless you're getting $1000s per sale, you might want to rethink your strategy.

[gomez204]

ok so an update about search results:
market samurai says 2,433/month
google keyword tool says 1600/month locally and 74,000 globally

its one of the first niche's i've found that i could pretty easily get into to organic rankings so i figured i'd go for it.. my main goal is to learn seo and site building. What is the minimum number of searches you would accept for attempting a #1 position on google organic results?

[jryan21]

Take a look at some longer phrase matching, those are pretty easy to find and also easy to get onto page 1 quickly.

Your visitors will be better-targeted, but the downside is that you won't see as much volume as you might like.

Once you are able to develop a proven method, you can scale upward.

[alwiser]

I will be following this thread, do keep us updated.

[Free Dating]

i will subscribe this thread, waiting for updates....

[The Great Lord]

Howdy,wish you luck.As a noob myself,I'd love to hear how it goes.

[wahdey7]

yea im new too, been really racking my brain, let me know how it goes

[gomez204]

Hey guys, thanks for all your support. I am going to do some more research to find a long tail keyword w/ a little more traffic.. hopefully I can get a little something going before I head head of the country on monday..

[gomez204]

damn those clickbank affiliates always getting to keywords before me...

[jargle27]

if someone has already tapped the keyword atleast you know you can do what he did and rank for the same term.

[gomez204]

genious. i smell an seo battle

[gomez204]

hmmm if the offer you're working on has the number one spot for a keyword do you a) try to beat it on that keyword? or b) move on, theres no point

[gomez204]

To beat this guy i'll need 400 backlinks to my domain... i know nothing more than social bookmarking, digg, posting articles, and blogging. can anyone point me to a good backlinking thread?

[anthony.bill17]

I am a new member too and really excited to join. Hope to learn more.

[DBWebDev]

Originally Posted by gomez204

To beat this guy i'll need 400 backlinks to my domain... i know nothing more than social bookmarking, digg, posting articles, and blogging. can anyone point me to a good backlinking thread?

If he has 400 backlinks you need to take into account the authority of the links as well (PR, anchor text). I think the term you were targetting originally (1,600/month) would be better for a complete newb.

You should be able to get that pretty easily as long as no one else it actively targetting it - that'll teach you want you need to know to get the more adventurious keywords. You probably won't make much money with it, but if you just want to learn SEO then I'd start small and work your way up.

[pickledegg]

Originally Posted by DBWebDev

If he has 400 backlinks you need to take into account the authority of the links as well (PR, anchor text). I think the term you were targetting originally (1,600/month) would be better for a complete newb.

You should be able to get that pretty easily as long as no one else it actively targetting it - that'll teach you want you need to know to get the more adventurious keywords. You probably won't make much money with it, but if you just want to learn SEO then I'd start small and work your way up.

Yea, maybe this is good advice for now.

Best of luck keep us posted

[giovani09]

Good luck. I think I'm trying to learn from the same product. you have a head start on this tho because I am completely new to this. You already def. know more about this then me.

[gomez204]

Hey guys, if anyone is still following this I am still working on my first campaign. I've decided to work on creating my website first and worrying about SEO after. For anybody reading this and wishing to start there first campaign, GO OUT AND BUY A DOMAIN and get started learning how to create a website. I'm using Hostgator for my hosting. I've just recently been figuring out how to use CPanel and stuff but my site officially exists.. it just has very little information. I'll update this diary as soon as I fill out my website with multiple pages and atleast a crude landing page. Oh and i'm using Nvu for page design.. Its the only free program for mac that I came across but does anyone recommend anything else?

[More$ThanBrains]

notepad

[borris101]

Notepad if you know how to use CSS and Html or some other language like PHP. Checkout WIX.com. they allow you build flash websites. It can get pretty good results in quick time for Free. It's web based so no issue of MAC or PC. They say their flash sites are SEO friendly.

[c0c4in3]

if your a newb do not be using notepad, learning complex html will do you no favours at this point it will piss you off, use nvu or another program that allows you to design websites from scratch easily. youll learn all that other shit when you get used to fucking with websites.

[godfly]

If you use firefox, do not forget to install the Web Developer Toolbar.

[webetricky]

yeah if you don't know shit about design or coding you'd probably be better of with wordpress or pligg or something like that...

Also I dunno if anyone above me explained this cause i just kinda scanned through, but the issue you're going to have with targeting keywords that get so few searches is that after you consider the ctr to your site (which hopefully will be pretty good since there's low competition) and then ctr to your ads and finally conversions, you will not be pushing much traffic through your offer. The other side of this is that you'll be doing less work to rank for those keywords and it will be easier to rank, so maybe after you do the first one you can move on and try to rank for another kw and then just do some maintenance linking for the other kw now and again.

Just my 2 cents but sounds like you're on the right track so good luck, i'm interested to see what happens so keep updating..

[Pedobear]

Originally Posted by c0c4in3

if your a newb do not be using notepad, learning complex html will do you no favours at this point it will piss you off, use nvu or another program that allows you to design websites from scratch easily. youll learn all that other shit when you get used to fucking with websites.

Don't use notepad. There are too many things to learn all at once while starting out, so unfortunately you have to skip some corners where possible.

Wordpress has SEO plugins available that should help you out. Don't worry about making $$$ right now, especially because you mentioned heavily relying on organic traffic.

[Lil_C]

notepad is ancient _-_

Notepad ++ or editplus is what i use =\

[More$ThanBrains]

[albertw]

Im just starting out too, this looks interesting, will follow

[jryan21]

Now that you have gotten around in cPanel and had some time to generate data, go into the stats and start tracking what search terms people are using to find your site. You may find yourself ranking for things you weren't aware of.

[Big_0n3]

notepad !

[l3msip]

Login to cpanel > scroll down to software / services > click fantastico de luxe > click Wordpress > do what it tells you to do (choose install to root).

Go to: WordPress › Free WordPress Themes > choose pretty theme that will suit your niche and install it (google if you cant work out how)

Result = Much better site than you will ever make in nvu.

**Do i think nvu sucks? No, but people find nvu by searching 'free wysiwyg website editor'. These people build crap sites.

[gomez204]

Hey everyone, I started this thread way back in December and have only recently made any notable progress..
I'd say its a weak attempt but at least its something: Learn Spanish Online!
i'd love some feedback!

[unrealalex]

learning spanish online is not an easy niche to SEO...when a famous program like rosetta stone is fifth you know the competition is hard.
Feeback: get rid of all that crap in the sidebar, start a youtube channel for the site, make slideshow videos and post them on the sidebar.
I'd also make a quick image of bullshit reviews and put it on the side.

Open index.php and get rid of this section
Posted by on March 31, 2010 in comments blah crap
You dont want your site to look like a blog unless youre doing reviews of multiple products or something.

Other than that looks ok I guess.

[GerardWon]

Hi I clicked your link and checked out your site. It appears that the link in the upper right goes straight to the originators page. I filled name, etc. to get to the clickbank order form --at the bottom it says affiliate=none

Then I used a diif. link and your affil ID came up

Yep, just double checked it-- one of the product options would be credited to the creator/owner of the product affiliate = none

[gomez204]

thanks guys! Yeah basically i'm doing this for practice and to actually learn the basics of making a landing page. SEO would be tough as hell but maybe feeding it with adwords would work? maybe more than a sell/ $80 spent? after some more work to the site of course

[sgtryan]

1600 searches a month? I'd say that is not worth it at all. even if you get ranked in the first page, do the math... you probably won't get much traffic at all.

Originally Posted by gomez204

thanks guys! Yeah basically i'm doing this for practice and to actually learn the basics of making a landing page. SEO would be tough as hell but maybe feeding it with adwords would work? maybe more than a sell/ $80 spent? after some more work to the site of course

it's not even worth it for the practice.. if you want practice then find a less competitive niche with more monthly searches (aim for something that gets >15k/month maybe) and you will see how easy it is to rank with the lower competition and you will get a LOT more traffic

traffic = data = practice