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Chabrenas

Another tyro experiment in page promotion

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by
Chabrenas
, February 12th, 2012 at 02:32 AM (769 Views)
Although I've been running web sites for more than a decade, none has ever done any more than pay for its hosting (if you discount an e-commerce site, whose success is down to the man who runs the business). A bit belatedly, I'm trying to learn to do nothing without an eye on its effect on the traffic I get.

Now, when an idea for a blog post enters my head, I check for high-paying, low-competition keywords and adjust the subject and its title accordingly.

Yesterday, my local newspaper had an article and photos about French railway workers using pneumatic drills to remove ice that was accumulating in tunnels, but I found that very few people searched for anything directly related to freezing cold weather. However, the Adwords Keyword Tool showed me a phrase that stood head and shoulders above any of its other suggestions: "Does Cold Weather Make You Sick". CPC was high (why does anyone want to pay $12 for this?) and competition was low, so I put on my lateral thinking hat and cooked up a story that mixed the key phrase into the tale I originally wanted to tell. I posted it 16 hours ago, and it is now in position 4 on page 2.

This could be a good exercise for learning a few SEO skills. If I start to get it right, it may even be worth putting Adsense back on the blog.

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Updated February 12th, 2012 at 09:00 AM by Chabrenas (typo in title)

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Comments

  1. Chabrenas's Avatar
    3 days later, it's moved up to No. 2 on page 2. It's beginning to look as if I stand chance of moving it to page 1. I'll try adding a related EzineArticle.

    ... and I'll start looking for more low-competition long tail keyphrases. I'm beginning to enjoy this game just a little bit.
  2. crabfoot's Avatar
    If you're running Adsense, get another line on the page with the keyphrase all run together as one - something like DoesColdWeatherMakeYouSick and is there a remedy?
    It may look awful, but it helps the Adsense spiders to concentrate ... hyphens also work, but then the result looks contrived, running the words together just looks like you had a bad hair day.

    It is also a good idea to work the keyphrase into a page title, using hyphens - but I suppose you're using WP for blogging.
    Updated February 15th, 2012 at 04:50 PM by crabfoot
  3. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Thanks. I have already repeated the keyphrase in the closing paragraph. I could run that together and it might even look a deliberate joke. Yes, the site is WP-based. The domain is mature (more than 10 years old), and I moved the best content from FrontPage to WP several years ago. Since then I haven't run any ads at all - AS or affiliate.

    I thought I'd concentrate on learning how to build traffic a bit before working out the best way to monetise. In its FrontPage days, it used to bring in about £100 a year from AS. In the last couple of years, it earned three lots of 120 Euros for one-year text links. The first time, a webmaster approached me directly, and the other two came from agencies. All were interested because of the site's PR. If they bothered track responses they will have been disappointed because the traffic levels are low. If I can build them to something useful, I may be in a position to approach the agencies myself.
  4. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Stuck at number 2 on page 2, behind the New York Times. I've just added a string of keywords in small font as the last line. Maybe I should write a related, rather than identical, Ezine Article now that I've got the hang of creating them. Took me a while to get my 'resources' box legal.
  5. KenW3's Avatar
    A string of keywords in a small font could be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate SERPs and could get your site deindexed. There are places for keywords, but not as a string on the last line.
  6. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Thanks, Ken. I'm glad someone said that. Doing it goes against my instincts.
  7. grynge's Avatar
    Check the sites on page one and see where they are getting their links from and try and get them from the same place. If they are generic huge sites, then just get a couple of ontopic links from a decent blog or 3, make sure the link providers also use the title attribute in the link as well.

    If the sites are smaller sites why not do a link request, this is where a secondary high pr site comes in handy, you offer to link to their site with a pr6 or above and they link to your site from their page in the serps. You won't believe how fast you will rise.
  8. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Thanks, Grynge. I've just downloaded SEOspyglass, and am now learning how to use it. Going to be short of opportunity for the next 3 weeks, though.

    Any advice on how to judge the value of the links I find? Go to the linking site and check its traffic and search ranking? Sounds like I'd better get methodical and use a spreadsheet.
  9. grynge's Avatar
    Spreadsheets are quite wonderful for this kind of work, so easy to make and can show so much detail.

    Judging the value on a link is hard, and it sort of needs a range of things
    How many links out the site does
    What kind of links out the site does (redirect, no follow, title attribute, banner, in content, in footer etc etc)
    What other sites link to the sellers site, to the page with the link
    Is the site an authority?
    Where on the site the link will be placed (in a widget, in content, in footer)
    If the site is ontopic to your site and also to the content of the page the link is on
    Where the site is ranked for the keyphrase you want to rank for

    Thats just a few of the main ones but the list goes on.
  10. Chabrenas's Avatar
    In other words, a time-consuming process to analyse, but once you've been doing it for a year you get a nose for things? I guess I'd better start practising...
  11. Chabrenas's Avatar
    Just checked again. NYT has moved to page 1 position 10 - and I have leapfrogged them to position 9. If I show personal results, I find that there are 4 of them. Two turn up because my WP theme shows the title of previous and next posts when you visit an individual post - so it looks as if that little feature has SEO value as well as encouraging those arriving directly at the page to take a look at other pages.