My Journey to "The Big Brand" Lifestyle



Cloudflare blows in my opinion. On the advice of Bloghue, I snatched up MaxCDN and am not looking back. It's great, and sets up super easy with that WP Super Cache plugin or whatever it's called (just don't get the newest version. Roll back one version, newest one has a bug).

Yeah, indexing should be zero problem, even without any links, since Wordpress pings a certain aggregator that da Gorg loves. If you wanted to make sure and have more data on your site, you could get a Webmaster Tools account and submit a sitemap.xml. Plenty of plugins that create those for you as well.
 
Only time I managed to not get indexed was when I hid the page from Search engines by accident / tiredness / weird cocktail of stuff I sampled from the medicine cabinet

Take a look at Settings --> Privacy

::emp::
 
Still not indexed?

Please check your WP settings and / or robots.txt, .htaccess

My sites are indexed in a day (3 days at most) when I just drop one link somewhere.

Ranking is another story, bjut getting indexed should not be a problem.

If nothing else helps:
Google webmaster tools account, get crawled

::emp::

Maybe i'm looking at things wrong?
I use various google add-ons like SEOQuake for example.
Says Google index: 93
When I use "Site:mysitehere.com" on google, it shows majority
of my pages. But when I goto some of the "Check to see if your site
is indexed" places they all say i'm not indexed by anyone.

Maybe they are just messed up idk, but I think you guys are right.
I have to be at least indexed.

Since I also have some traffic from google under "(not provided)"
And some traffic from google for a few keywords. Via Google Analytics


Is it? I thought they took the 25 limit off already about a year ago, am I wrong?

:girl:

Yeah the 25 limit is off, I had my custom URL before 25.

Cloudflare blows in my opinion. On the advice of Bloghue, I snatched up MaxCDN and am not looking back. It's great, and sets up super easy with that WP Super Cache plugin or whatever it's called (just don't get the newest version. Roll back one version, newest one has a bug).

Yeah, indexing should be zero problem, even without any links, since Wordpress pings a certain aggregator that da Gorg loves. If you wanted to make sure and have more data on your site, you could get a Webmaster Tools account and submit a sitemap.xml. Plenty of plugins that create those for you as well.

I will definitely check out MaxCDN. && thanks for the advice on the super cache plugin. I have noticed some weird bugs with it, ill try to find the previous version and upload it.

I also just now submitted another XML Sitemap to Bing webmasters and got that all set-up. Says it's pending. Should of done this a long time ago though.


NOTE: Although I'm running into all these issues and mistakes, I'm okay with it! Cause now I know what to do next time and what not to do. So after this one is sold or even if I decide to keep it, my next project will go even smoother. And then the next one will go even smoother than the previous.

By the way thanks to everyone who is following and pitching in advice, much much appreciated. Saving me so much time and heartache.

Keep on keeping on!

Question: So i'm having some issues with my mobile version. Just bugging a lot mainly and kinda distorted. Since i'm not efficient enough in wordpress's coding to really fix it myself(I've tried and no avail) - are there any mobile places you guys recommend? What I mean by this is dudamobile for example. They completely set it up for mobile, I've used them before and it wasn't too bad but I'm not sure if there are any other ones out there for the price or if not free.
 
Building a site, ranking it and actually making money is hard work. So personally I spend most of my time doing things that I'm good at or like doing. I try to eliminate as many distractions as I can by outsourcing or make due with what I have.

With that said, I suggest you just get a responsive wp theme and go on to the next item on your to do list.

Don't worry, you will get plenty of chances to edit your layout/theme (slpit testing traffic, landing pages, ad placements etc)

Check emp's post here for some free themes

http://www.wickedfire.com/design-de...-lightweight-responsive-wordpress-themes.html

Also I really like studiopress stuffs, they have good support, theme are easy to understand/edit, good looking and light. I use their theme with their hosting at websynthesis. So I dont have to worry about hacks, back up and speed.

Thanks for the journal and good luck :thumbup:
 
Building a site, ranking it and actually making money is hard work. So personally I spend most of my time doing things that I'm good at or like doing. I try to eliminate as many distractions as I can by outsourcing or make due with what I have.

With that said, I suggest you just get a responsive wp theme and go on to the next item on your to do list.

Don't worry, you will get plenty of chances to edit your layout/theme (slpit testing traffic, landing pages, ad placements etc)

Check emp's post here for some free themes

http://www.wickedfire.com/design-de...-lightweight-responsive-wordpress-themes.html

Also I really like studiopress stuffs, they have good support, theme are easy to understand/edit, good looking and light. I use their theme with their hosting at websynthesis. So I dont have to worry about hacks, back up and speed.

Thanks for the journal and good luck :thumbup:

Although I like your concept, I'm just not too sure this would be a good idea?

All those free themes are just bad in my opinion, i'm running a magazine style website - not a MFA site.
I also don't have enough coding experience to just take a free responsive and just whip some magazine style into it.

You're telling me to just ditch my current theme and go with a completely different one? I'm not expert in any of this but just a bit confused. Right now i'm in the middle of trying to rank for keywords and build backlinks via guest blogging and what not. I don't think it's a good idea to start messing with my site and have it under construction during my first impression so to speak.

Can anyone else pitch in on this?
 
How many pages does your site have at this point? If you don't have 75+ articles, I personally wouldn't start backlinking efforts. If you're going on CCarters big brand blueprint, after you get some of those 1500+ word articles for your main keyword categories, you need to be slamming your site with those lower search volume longtail articles and then work your way up from there. If you're worrying about backlinks already, you're just falling back to standard issue SEO shit. That's not what the big brand mentality is about, at least not this early in the game. You need the content on site to start building your authority. Get 200-300 pages indexed. Keep pushing out social stuff via hootsuite or similar. Not just links to your own content, but tweet other bloggers stuff. Look the part of a big brand. Mimic what they do on whatever level you can pull off. Keep your interlinking and on page tight. Then start sweating the links. And if you want to stay on the good side of the next animal update, be sure you're very selective about what links you decide to go with. For a long term site like this, you'll need some squeaky clean links. Shit in the middle, grey, area is begging to get whacked. I learned this the hard way.

Maybe you're doing all of this already, but these are some of the lessons I learned, and follow from the big brand concept.
 
How many pages does your site have at this point? If you don't have 75+ articles, I personally wouldn't start backlinking efforts. If you're going on CCarters big brand blueprint, after you get some of those 1500+ word articles for your main keyword categories, you need to be slamming your site with those lower search volume longtail articles and then work your way up from there. If you're worrying about backlinks already, you're just falling back to standard issue SEO shit. That's not what the big brand mentality is about, at least not this early in the game. You need the content on site to start building your authority. Get 200-300 pages indexed. Keep pushing out social stuff via hootsuite or similar. Not just links to your own content, but tweet other bloggers stuff. Look the part of a big brand. Mimic what they do on whatever level you can pull off. Keep your interlinking and on page tight. Then start sweating the links. And if you want to stay on the good side of the next animal update, be sure you're very selective about what links you decide to go with. For a long term site like this, you'll need some squeaky clean links. Shit in the middle, grey, area is begging to get whacked. I learned this the hard way.

Maybe you're doing all of this already, but these are some of the lessons I learned, and follow from the big brand concept.

I only have around 20x Articles and 100ish pages indexed with google.

You just really opened up my eyes man, and now I understand things a bit more with the whole "grab the lower hanging fruit" aspect. It makes sense now; It's the easiest way to grab traffic fast, which will build not only authority faster but in turn building the authority faster will then give me more juice for my big volume main keyword articles that I created in the early stages right? If i'm not correct on this can you elaborate?

And yes i'm staying active on twitter, retweeting some related articles, favoriting a lot of things and responding to a lot of niche related brands.

I was going to start guest blogging but now I'm going to hold back on that. It only makes sense to wait until I'm bigger in the authority part.

Also efeezy what did you mean by "Keep your interlinking and on page tight. Then start sweating the links." ?
I'm interlinking my content a little like if I have another article that is kinda similar I will put a "We also discussed this aspect on *Other article link*"

I really appreciate your reply man, definitely changing my strategy for the good!
 
For your interlinking, your posts should be interlinking to other posts in the same category, as well as your main category pages that are related (those 1500+ word pages that are the top of your page hierarchy). Wikipedia is the old example. Sure they have a zillions of pages of content, but they interlink the bejeezus out of everything. Not only will you be giving Google a perfect roadmap of your sites content, you'll be building your authority by grouping/linking all of those similarly related posts together. You can also throw in the outbound links on your posts as well. Nothing wrong with linking out to a quality article related to your post. Let's Google know you're trying to better the user experience by linking to good related content. Take a look at this for some additional insight.

WORDPRESS SEO Tutorial - A Guide To Successful SEO Using Wordpress - Pagerank Shaping
 
For your interlinking, your posts should be interlinking to other posts in the same category, as well as your main category pages that are related (those 1500+ word pages that are the top of your page hierarchy). Wikipedia is the old example. Sure they have a zillions of pages of content, but they interlink the bejeezus out of everything. Not only will you be giving Google a perfect roadmap of your sites content, you'll be building your authority by grouping/linking all of those similarly related posts together. You can also throw in the outbound links on your posts as well. Nothing wrong with linking out to a quality article related to your post. Let's Google know you're trying to better the user experience by linking to good related content. Take a look at this for some additional insight.

WORDPRESS SEO Tutorial - A Guide To Successful SEO Using Wordpress - Pagerank Shaping

Awesome link! Golden information man.

I guess I was too caught up about hearing methods of backlinking like "Try to have all inbound links and fewest outbound links". I guess this doesn't really apply when you're really building a true white hat foundation.

No, just no. This will get you absolutely nothing.

I understand what you mean by this, but at the same time this is how I looked at it: When I go through my twitter and click on related niche accounts - i'm more prone to follow a bigger looking brand than a new looking account claiming to be a brand.

Before I got myself around 3k followers(Used addmefast). I would barely have anyone start following me, I had to really go out there and try. Now I do the same thing but I get double the amount of followers.

I think the same concept works with facebook pages.

People are prone to like what other people seem to like. I feel like it's a trust thing because they see it as "Well there is a reason 3,000 people are following this company - they must produce decent content and or products"
 
^^ This is the only reason I'll buy a few thousand followers or likes. Your visitors will feel all warm and fuzzy inside if they follow your twitter feed with 10k followers. Not so much if you only have 10.
 
Only reason I buy any social stuff is for the custom FB url. So I get ~100 real US likes from Fiverr, nab my custom URL, then don't buy any social stuff from then on.

Another thing you can do as far as content is start buliding relationships in your niche immediately and landing guest posts and interviews. Just kickstarted a new site myself this way. I got a 40% response rate on 50 emails and have already landed 8 guest posts and 2 interviews. Referral traffic is biggest driver right now, and 10 "free" HQ links. Easy work!
 
Awesome link! Golden information man.

I guess I was too caught up about hearing methods of backlinking like "Try to have all inbound links and fewest outbound links". I guess this doesn't really apply when you're really building a true white hat foundation.



I understand what you mean by this, but at the same time this is how I looked at it: When I go through my twitter and click on related niche accounts - i'm more prone to follow a bigger looking brand than a new looking account claiming to be a brand.

Before I got myself around 3k followers(Used addmefast). I would barely have anyone start following me, I had to really go out there and try. Now I do the same thing but I get double the amount of followers.

I think the same concept works with facebook pages.

People are prone to like what other people seem to like. I feel like it's a trust thing because they see it as "Well there is a reason 3,000 people are following this company - they must produce decent content and or products"


I would still stay clear of it. Sure, your fb fan page may have 100,000 Likes but every time you post a status update, it will get a couple Likes and 1-2 comments. That doesn't look very natural IMO. I would never buy Likes or Followers. Its just not natural looking. I understand why you do it but I would go the Quality > Quantity route. Run PPC campaigns direct to your FB fan page and get REAL fans for 0.01-0.03 pennies on the dollar. These people are REAL and will INTERACT (share, like, comment) with anything you post + they are actually INTERESTED in your page, not forced or tricked into liking it. This is way more important to me for long term growth instead of just a quick fix.

You can easily spot accounts who inflate their numbers by looking at their Like history growth chart.

To each their own I suppose. c'est la vie and best of luck with your journey.

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I would still stay clear of it. Sure, your fb fan page may have 100,000 Likes but every time you post a status update, it will get a couple Likes and 1-2 comments. That doesn't look very natural IMO. I would never buy Likes or Followers. Its just not natural looking. I understand why you do it but I would go the Quality > Quantity route. Run PPC campaigns direct to your FB fan page and get REAL fans for 0.01-0.03 pennies on the dollar. These people are REAL and will INTERACT (share, like, comment) with anything you post + they are actually INTERESTED in your page, not forced or tricked into liking it. This is way more important to me for long term growth instead of just a quick fix.

You can easily spot accounts who inflate their numbers by looking at their Like history growth chart.

To each their own I suppose. c'est la vie and best of luck with your journey.

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You make some really valid points. I dont think either route is wrong but I do believe your strategy will produce bigger results if not faster. I appreciate your feedback.

Its been a while on an update mainly because I've been going through a new theme change so ive been doing a lot of front end customizing(My favorite!).:hitit_sml:

I'm also going through a huge debate with myself.

Currently my on-page SEO content strategy is this:
With 30x~ articles right now about 15x are short tail relevant keywords with high search volume and against competitors that I believe I can definitely out-rank.

The other 15x articles are long tail keywords, very low competition and the obvious low search volume. I'm now going to continue to bust out all kinds of content for long tail keyword articles + current media news articles + the occasional short tail keyword article.

Then I start thinking like what the fuck does it matter? Why arent I allowed to just have any relevant article name that I want? No more keyword research. Isnt this what big magazine companies do?
 
I would still stay clear of it. Sure, your fb fan page may have 100,000 Likes but every time you post a status update, it will get a couple Likes and 1-2 comments. That doesn't look very natural IMO. I would never buy Likes or Followers. Its just not natural looking. I understand why you do it but I would go the Quality > Quantity route. Run PPC campaigns direct to your FB fan page and get REAL fans for 0.01-0.03 pennies on the dollar. These people are REAL and will INTERACT (share, like, comment) with anything you post + they are actually INTERESTED in your page, not forced or tricked into liking it. This is way more important to me for long term growth instead of just a quick fix.

You can easily spot accounts who inflate their numbers by looking at their Like history growth chart.

To each their own I suppose. c'est la vie and best of luck with your journey.

(〜 ̄▽ ̄)〜

For the initial batch of followers though I think the Fiverr follows are ok. It's when the numbers start looking ridiculous that your following looks a bit too fabricated.

I agree with the PPC advice, and good old fashioned guerrilla marketing is also great for getting social media followers. It is all about creativity after the first 'phase' if you can call it that.
 
Only reason I buy any social stuff is for the custom FB url. So I get ~100 real US likes from Fiverr, nab my custom URL, then don't buy any social stuff from then on.

Another thing you can do as far as content is start buliding relationships in your niche immediately and landing guest posts and interviews. Just kickstarted a new site myself this way. I got a 40% response rate on 50 emails and have already landed 8 guest posts and 2 interviews. Referral traffic is biggest driver right now, and 10 "free" HQ links. Easy work!

Good stuff.

I have been preparing a pitch to a medium sized manufacturer of a niche product in the UK and he is releasing a new version of it soon. I hope to get an interview from him for the new product (publishing it as an article for the site) and try to think of a way to take the benefits of their brand marketing as a way of funneling more permanent traffic through my site. Hopefully, it is through newsletter sign ups mostly, that is a big priority for me at the moment. All worth a try.

I am also creating 3000 word guides (working round the clock) which I think will have a good chance of being bookmarked by the readers. It has all the interlinking I need to funnel traffic to the pages I want them to go to. I am not going crazy with the links though, the few i give will make it seem (hopefully) like they are "must visit" links.

Still early days but I hope to get 10,000 visitors per month to my site soon, asap. It takes time however with a low budget.
 
Sweet niche. A well cared for authority site will win you in the long run, seems to be a good plan.

If you find yourself scrapping for cash, pump out a few local business websites or what not. You can easily charge $500+ for little catalog sites that don't require much development or maintenance and you can usually get them done within a day.

Having clients is never anyone on here's dream, but man it's a quick and easy way to some good money.

Great call, you can really quickly grow a $1k per month doing this but you do need to interact with humans more than affiliate networks and tracking codes which is a bit of a downside for me.
 
I was having a bunch of issues with cloudflare messing with my WP theme quiet a bit. Tried every option possible and even a few supports, no avail.

I've run into this problem too. Are you using W3 Total Cache? This seemed to help me with the cloudfare issue as it lets you connect your account and modify plenty of items. :xmas-smiley-016:

Run PPC campaigns direct to your FB fan page and get REAL fans for 0.01-0.03 pennies on the dollar.

This.

When I build a new site, whatever, I use a couple things:
- Adwords Coupon
- Facebook Coupon

Usually you can get 100$ worth of credits from just those two, maybe more. Take that spend, create ads that are built to do one thing, nothing more. Gather real likes, clicks, etc. Use the Newsfeed ad with a high demographic, probably 1 or 2 specific keywords in interests.

While you're driving this new traffic, track those bitches. Get a free trial at Crazyegg, or use something from CodeCanyon (Search: Heatmap) and start getting an idea of where you can improve.

Also, I'm not reading anything about you having a newsletter. Mailchimp is free and has wordpress plugins available.

After 120-160 days, rinse and repeat.