Second attempt, this time with SEO

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Killface

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Mar 20, 2013
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So I jumped into the deep end of PPC too fast a few months ago and ended up breaking even on the venture. It was rather scary given my current finances post car accident, and I am now interested in getting into something with low startup expenses and high long term potential instead of this short-term, risky, high-cost PPC business. I think I want to try organic SEO.

So let me get this straight with this SEO thing:

I pick an offer that is converting well on my network. I get a .com domain as close to the product as possible. Install Wordpress, throw up a blog.

I brainstorm keywords and plug them into ubersuggest.com. I plug the resultant list into google keyword planner and spyfu to figure out which ones actually get traffic and how hard it is to rank them.

From here, I write 400 or so word articles on the blog incorporating the exact match keyword without being overbearing about it. I include the keyword in the URL, in image tags etc.

I continue doing this until all the high traffic (or low traffic but laser targeted) keywords have their own unique articles.

I add Facebook, twitter boxes etc and post to them every now and then.

Then what? I sit back and hope google ranks me? Build backlinks if necessary? Is it that simple?

Do any of you outsource your content writing (to the guys on fiverr)? It seems tedious and at 2.50$ for a 400 word article, I think maybe it's more effective to do it this way? I could pay $100, get 40 articles, and with a $40 payout offer I'm pretty much guaranteed to recoup that eventually, no?
 


Why not go for it, let us know how it turns out! Try going for better content will be my only unsolicited advice to you. We have some excellent writers on this forum, but check carefully credentials by researching forum post.
 
Uh… No. You haven't gotten traffic to your site. You will most likely need backlinks for offers since other affiliate also do SEO and are probably ranking. SEO has a serious cost to it. With PPC it's more direct, but with SEO, there are also costs that you may not be aware of.

You got the content down, good. Now backlinks - how are you going to get them, doing it manually? You are playing the time = money game. So the time you take to do that manually is your cost. Content costs money. If you buy "SEO services" - that costs money. Getting the initial website built costs money - or your time.

Realistically there are faster ways to get targeted traffic - depending on the niche, than SEO. The timeframe you are waiting and praying to rank is time - which in your formula is money. As you go down this journey, you'll start asking yourself, what types of backlinks do I need for SEO, you'll learn of several dozens available to you - which you will need to somehow figure out how to get.

It's not as easy as throwing up a website and praying search engines will send you traffic. #SEP

And God-forbid the cheap fiverr content sucks and people don't like it cause the quality is not there - A/B Split test bro. Google does pay attention to reading levels as part of the algo, how much, I dunno. But if your articles suck, they aren't going to convert that traffic into a click-thru to your affiliate sales page anyway.​
 
CCarter said:
Uh… No. You haven't gotten traffic to your site. You will most likely need backlinks for offers since other affiliate also do SEO and are probably ranking. SEO has a serious cost to it. With PPC it's more direct, but with SEO, there are also costs that you may not be aware of.

You got the content down, good. Now backlinks - how are you going to get them, doing it manually? You are playing the time = money game. So the time you take to do that manually is your cost. Content costs money. If you buy "SEO services" - that costs money. Getting the initial website built costs money - or your time.

Realistically there are faster ways to get targeted traffic - depending on the niche, than SEO. The timeframe you are waiting and praying to rank is time - which in your formula is money. As you go down this journey, you'll start asking yourself, what types of backlinks do I need for SEO, you'll learn of several dozens available to you - which you will need to somehow figure out how to get.

It's not as easy as throwing up a website and praying search engines will send you traffic. #SEP

And God-forbid the cheap fiverr content sucks and people don't like it cause the quality is not there - A/B Split test bro. Google does pay attention to reading levels as part of the algo, how much, I dunno. But if your articles suck, they aren't going to convert that traffic into a click-thru to your affiliate sales page anyway.​
Click to expand...

The more you go down the internet marketing rabbit hole the more you'll be confused on a minutely basis* Haha.

Anyone starting out really only has their time. I have a little money stored away but I'm using my time because I don't know how to optimally spend yet. I think that's the only way to operate at first (unless you're a rich kid).

Writing is a form of art that we all have to depend on more and more as time goes on and our lives become more digitized. I'd honestly use this time (I know I am) to improve your writing and not outsource it. Even CCarter and other experts here write articles for their money sites when it's an absolutely critical mission I bet you, so...
 
If you buy that content, also buy some fiver links to spam that site to #5 in the SERPs for a week or two. Then pick another domain.

If you plan on ranking that site for more than a fortnight, write every page yourself, or hire someone for $20/article. Remember that you can rank for many KWs per page if the content is good enough.

Write 2000 word pages yourself, optimize the site for your products/aff links, add FB open graph + twitter tags + G+, start outreach marketing, and then you can start trying SEO.
 
This is exactly the info I needed! Thanks guys.

I will suck it up and start writing my own shit.

I don't want to use spammy methods that will hurt long term, so I will be sure not to buy fiverr SEO. Is there a comprehensive noob tutorial on how exactly to build backlinks? I understand the basic concept but finding sites to post on, what to post, at what frequency not to seem suspect, etc eludes me. I know to sometimes use anchor text with the keyword and sometimes not. Is there a way I can look at competitor's backlinks and copy them, and thn expand from there?

Any recommendations for good backlink building services for small sites (affordable)?
 
I don't think I'd copy anyone's backlinks at this stage of the game but looking at the top ten in your targeted SERP could be helpful. You need tools son. Ahrefs will show you most of your competitor's backlinks. For finding sites to post on you need to first decide what kind of links you are going to build and learn how to build them.

For education try Moz and Quicksprout. For links to buy, I know there are some good providers on here I just don't have any personal experience. I'm sure they will step in.
 
Ok so for $20, I just bought an exact match top level domain for a review site on a keyword with 6000 exact searches per month and NO competition on the front page of google. This keyword also has about 50 or so other directly related exact match keywords with 250-2000 searches per month an similarly weak competition. The product I am selling will net me about $30 per sale on average. The total searches for this keyword group amount to about 100,000 per month.

If I can write reasonably coherent articles and design a nice looking Wordpress, how much could this realistically make for me and how soon?

With the top spot on google (40% clickthrus,), 10% conversion, I'm looking at $120,000 a month. The worst case scenario I can imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) is like 10% clickthrus, 1% conversion, and say the average price drops to $15. That's still $1500 a month, which I would be ECSTATIC to achieve

Am I dreaming?

Also should I build the site bit by bit or launch it all at once or does google care?
 
Killface said:
With the top spot on google (40% clickthrus,), 10% conversion, I'm looking at $120,000 a month. The worst case scenario I can imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) is like 10% clickthrus, 1% conversion, and say the average price drops to $15. That's still $1500 a month, which I would be ECSTATIC to achieve

Am I dreaming?
Click to expand...


Killface said:
Am I dreaming?
Click to expand...

Yes, yes you are... I don't know your experience with designing converting websites, so your conversion are pretty much pie in the sky. To bring you down to earth, if someone got 2-4% conversions on a digital product - the owner of that product would go nuts with excitement. Again it depends on your niche. But it's doubtful you'll hit a homerun right out of the gates. A/B split testing the traffic is a must. Testing the content, button placement, images, every element on the site is a must. But that's when the traffic gets to your site.

Your assuming you are going to get #1 - but haven't stated any backlinking plan. Shhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttt. Don't let me discourage you, but come down from the $120K to $1.5K a month dream out of the gate. Aim for $100, then $500, then $1K, then $5K, and so on. Otherwise you will be highly disappointed when reality hits, and you might get discouraged, when you might be 3-8 months away from decent income.

Another think you are assuming is that you alone are going to get ALL #1 spots for the 100,000 a month volume group of keywords. That's pretty brazen and not thinking clearly. Let say you have competition, you honestly think they won't notice a competitor coming along and taking $120,000 a month away from them in revenue? (Using your pie in the sky number). They also have SEO teams, and probably visit this form and others, and have probably been in the game longer than you, so they'll be more prepared for a counter strike than you will be. Come on, all you've spent is $20 and putting time in you are going to make $120K a month... what magical timeframe are you looking at in, 10 years? 10 months? If you can pull that off, can I come be an intern for you?

How about you concentrate on getting the #1 for that's 6,000 exact search and the related. At 40% CTR and 10% Conversion rate that's 240 sales @ $30 per sales that $7200. I think 1% is probably more realistic meaning $720 a month after 3-4 months, even then, it depends on your copyrighting skills and a/b testing your lander. But again this depends on your overall backlinking strategy, and HOW you are going to get traffic. I strongly encourage you to look at more than SEO for traffic.

But ALL of this is assuming the product will even sell.
​
 
Killface said:
The worst case scenario I can imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) is like 10% clickthrus, 1% conversion, and say the average price drops to $15. That's still $1500 a month, which I would be ECSTATIC to achieve
Click to expand...

I can imagine a much worse worst case scenario...
 
Thanks CCarter, you've commented on like every one of my posts since the beginning of time and I appreciate your input/help/reality check.

In no way will I be disappointed if I don't make $1500-$120,000. If I can clear $20 I'm in the black, and I find this stuff fascinating and enjoyable as a hobby. I just got excited with this keyword, did the math, and wanted to see if I was crazy.

Not to boast, but I assure you I can write some absolutely badass sales copy.

I know the product converts because I can see the stats on my network, and I also used to run it PPC with success, but barely recouped my losses after I was forced off of search PPC and exiled to POF, PPV, etc.

I will also definitely consider running the site PPC on adwords. But only once it is entirely fleshed out with 50+ pages of good unique content. I have the privacy policy, about, contact, and the site is not super salesy, so I should be OK. My QS should be 9 or 10 which will hopefully drive my cost down significantly, because when I experimented with adwords on day 1 of my affiliate marketing journey of fail, I was getting like 3s and 6s and paying exorbitant amounts on phrase and broad match. Just had no idea wtf I was doing.

I'm actually feeling confident this time. I hope I'm over that initial curve they talk about...I think I know what I'm doing now (or well enough to have at least SOME kind of little success) and all I need to do is focus on the execution. KW research, content, a/b split testing for conversions, on-page SEO. I'll fuck with backlinks later.

And yes when my poverty site starts ceoing 120k/day I will be happy to have you as an intern
 
Heyooooo

My pages load slow as fuark. Talking 66/100 on Google. I'm using the cache plugin that came with Jetpack. I've heard w3 total cache is better, so I downloaded it but I'm getting some error that the wordpress tech guys are sorting out for me. So that'll help. I also submitted my site for google pagespeed but I don't know what their standards are for selection? My sites probably only have 10 pages of uploaded content ATM.

What else can I do to increase speed?

I'm on hostgator shared hosting. I was using a VPS from Beyondhosting before. Fantastic service, but shit was expensive (to me ok, to me). If going back would be way faster I'll do it.

Watdo
 
Thanks, great article. I will do the recommendations. On that ping site, mine is UNGODLY slow. I'm wondering if the biggest marginal benefit might be obtained from just plain ditching the hostgator shared hosting and going back to beyondhosting VPS. Would it make a huge difference? The extra money is a bitch for my poor ass, but if it would boost me up in the rankings and thus make me more money, it makes sense.
 
Fack it.

Upgrading to VPS. 2.5 second load time on 150kb is not acceptable. Going with Hostgator Level 3 VPS @40/month. I'm hoping this will cut that in half at the very least. I don't have the skill to do most of what was in that article ATM, although I am going to force myself to learn. In the meantime, I can't have the site that slow.

Apparently W3 Total Cache does not work with wordpress 3.6.1...kept getting a fatal error. So I'm using WP Super Cache. Is W3 significantly better?

Signing up for Google Pagespeed cut my load time from 8s down to 2.5s. FYI.
 
Digital Ocean has a SSD VPS for $5/month.

It's unmanaged, so if you want help setting that up - PM me.

My 250kb site loads in around 650 ms using that VPS.
 
CCarter said:
Yes, yes you are... I don't know your experience with designing converting websites, so your conversion are pretty much pie in the sky. To bring you down to earth, if someone got 2-4% conversions on a digital product - the owner of that product would go nuts with excitement. Again it depends on your niche. But it's doubtful you'll hit a homerun right out of the gates. A/B split testing the traffic is a must. Testing the content, button placement, images, every element on the site is a must. But that's when the traffic gets to your site.

Your assuming you are going to get #1 - but haven't stated any backlinking plan. Shhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttt. Don't let me discourage you, but come down from the $120K to $1.5K a month dream out of the gate. Aim for $100, then $500, then $1K, then $5K, and so on. Otherwise you will be highly disappointed when reality hits, and you might get discouraged, when you might be 3-8 months away from decent income.

Another think you are assuming is that you alone are going to get ALL #1 spots for the 100,000 a month volume group of keywords. That's pretty brazen and not thinking clearly. Let say you have competition, you honestly think they won't notice a competitor coming along and taking $120,000 a month away from them in revenue? (Using your pie in the sky number). They also have SEO teams, and probably visit this form and others, and have probably been in the game longer than you, so they'll be more prepared for a counter strike than you will be. Come on, all you've spent is $20 and putting time in you are going to make $120K a month... what magical timeframe are you looking at in, 10 years? 10 months? If you can pull that off, can I come be an intern for you?

How about you concentrate on getting the #1 for that's 6,000 exact search and the related. At 40% CTR and 10% Conversion rate that's 240 sales @ $30 per sales that $7200. I think 1% is probably more realistic meaning $720 a month after 3-4 months, even then, it depends on your copyrighting skills and a/b testing your lander. But again this depends on your overall backlinking strategy, and HOW you are going to get traffic. I strongly encourage you to look at more than SEO for traffic.

But ALL of this is assuming the product will even sell.
​
Click to expand...

I love the dream but reality is a bitch. Just get started and be glad when you start earning anything, period, regarless of how much it is. You have just got to get in the game. Once your in the game you can always look at ways to improve your bottom line, wether that be landing pages, content quality, link quality etc. With that knowledge you can move into other niches with experience under your belt and your $120,000/month will seem a lot more plausable but you cant be afraid of putting in the time because my god you will have to put in the time.
 
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