Pushing A Site Up the SERPs
The site that makes me the most money is also the site that I have been building the longest and have the most backlinks to. It doesn’t make me very much money - maybe $7-$10 a day and I have been working on it for almost a year now. A whole year!
The reason that it has taken me so long to get things rolling with this bad boy is that when I first started out I didn’t know what I was doing and ended up targeting a niche that doesn’t have any traffic or any money in it. I currently rank #1 for the term I targeted - lets call it “Pack Gangster Switch” - and I have gotten a grand total of 199 visits from this keyword since the beginning of the year.
I could probably blame this colossal failure on not knowing any better, but that would be too easy. I made a mistake and squander a lot of my time because I didn’t take the time to do my homework (i.e. read from people who knew what they were doing and ask questions) and find a niche that really was going to work. Luckily, I have come to realize that “Pack Gangster” is a very, very good keyword to target. Lots of traffic (according to the Google Keyword Tool) and a high CPC (according to the Google Keyword Tool) - both are a recipe for making good money online.
Targeting a Long Tail Keyword
Unbeknownst to me, I actually did something right in targeting “Pack Gangster Switch” - it was a long tail of “Pack Gangster” with relatively little competition. Ranking #1 for PGS (it is easier to write it this way, so bear with me) has helped push my site up to 42 in the SERPs for PG.
By focusing in on the long tail I was able to gain clout in the eyes of the search engines for the shorter, money rich keyword. This relationship between the long tail and the money word is something that I am going to be exploring in this experiment and it is a little more advanced than my make money online experiment for beginners.
For this experiment I will be focusing on ranking well for a new long tail of PG. If everything works like I hope, increasing my ranking for the new long tail will further push me up in the rankings for the money word.
The Current Condition of My Sites
In addition to having one site that targeted PGS, I have two sister sites that also have been targeting long tails of the PG keyword. Neither site has made money either, but they have been gaining age. It is time to dust these sites off and get them ranking much better for their keywords. If I can do this, I will be making more money (from all three sites instead of just one) and will help push my site that is closest to ranking well for PG up in the SERPS.
Aside from these three sites I don’t have much else. I do not have a good portfolio of sites to send links to these sites. I haven’t made a lot of friends who will magically swoop in and help me out by sending perfectly optimized back links to my sites from their’s. Nope, I am going to have to do this hard way - write like a dog.
The Plan
Being a planner at heart, I put together the following plan using my trusty Google Docs (boy do I love Google docs):
Strategy to Rank For Pack Gangster Switches Net
- write long winded post on with links to other pages targeting other related keywords (3/5, 2524 words)
- use subheadings of long winded post for hubpages
- Hubpage 1 (words, links: )
- Hubpage 2 (3/5, 1157, links: S1(a), S2(i))
- Hubpage 2 (words, links: )
- Hubpage 3 (words, links: )
- use hubpages for article runs w/ one link to S1, one link to hub
- Article 1 (words, links: )
- Article 2 (3/6, 623, links: hub2, GFT(a))
- Article 3 (words, links: )
- Article 4 (words, links: )
- submit to long winded post to a blog carnival
- write post on S2 that targets “Pack Gangster Switches Net” (words, links: )
- do S2 article run (words, links: )
- write post on S3 targeting “Pack Gangster Switches Net” (words, links: )
- do S3 article run (words, links: )
- submit to a blog carnival
- write hub for S3 post (words, links: )
keyword targets
keyword - searches - rank prepublish - 7 hours - 1 week - 2 weeks - 4 weeks - 8 weeks
Pack Gangster Switches Net 1 - 140 - (24) - (11)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 2 - 260 - (62) - (20)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 3 - n/a - (56) - (19)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 4 - 210 - (-) - (37)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 5- 140 - (36) - (13)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 6 - 480 - (-) - (60)
Pack Gangster Switches Net 7 - 320 - (-) - (139)
Packing Gangster - 201000 - (42) - (37)
Gangster With Packing - 54000 - (36) - (34)
I apologize if everything is a little cryptic here - I heard that it is best to make money online quietly so I am really taking that seriously.
The basic strategy that I outlined above was this - write a really long article on the money site for the a long tail (Pack Gangster Switches Net) of the money keyword (Pack Gangster) and to use my existing sites, hubpages, and article directories to support the money site.
I have already completed parts of this experiment and have seen some results in the SERPs for both the targeted long tail and the money keyword. Before the post was published I ranked 24 for the long tail and 42 for the money word. 7 hours after publishing the post I improved to 11 and 34 respectively.
I think that this is only a temporary jump because of the recency bias that search engines has where they push the most recent content to the top of the SERPs. If I want to maintain it I will have to get the links that will tell search engines that my site is the authority on Pack Gangster Switches Net which will help them think that I am the authority on Pack Gangsters. Since I am one of the few individuals (as far as I know I am the only individual) who writes 2500 word posts on the topic I might just be the online authority on the topic.
But to make sure I am going to build some hubpages and write some article to submit to article directories. These articles will help give some keyword relevancy to my hubpages and my money site. I am also going to write related articles on my two sister sites and link them to my money site - solidifying its relevancy in the eyes of the search engines.
I hope to have the whole scheme completed in 4 weeks. In that time I also hope to rank in the top 10 for the long tail that I have targeted while significantly increasing my rankings for the money term. If at the end of 4 weeks things look good I might target another long tail or just wait to see how things work out after 4 more weeks of waiting, I’m not certain. What I really want to see is my rankings improve so that I can make more money online.