Diary of a Niche Site Duel Pt. 3
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last report on participation in Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel with Tyrone Shum and I’m happy to report that as a result of these strategies I’ve achieved spot #17 in Google for my broad position , and spot #9 for my phrase position which puts me on the pages 2 and 1 on Google respectively for one of my keywords. With about 146 backlinks (and counting) built already, these results show that my efforts are paying off which is a great feeling!
If your coming across this post for the first time you can follow the links to Part 1 and Part 2 to catch up. In Part 2, I discussed how I had my graphics created, added content to my landing pages, setup an autoresponder, and performed on-page SEO. Today I’m going to talk about my 21 Day Traffic Blueprint which includes my specific link building tactics, including article marketing, blog commenting and forum posts.
At this point, the base web site is complete. I have everything setup and the only thing to do now is generate traffic. Thanks to Adam Short’s excellent 21 Day Traffic Blueprint I have a methodology which I can follow to organically build traffic to the site that will eventually convert into sales. The 21 Day Traffic Blueprint is consists of a daily marketing routine to get promote a site for a period of 21 days. The reason for 21 days is because its an adequate amount of time to begin seeing organic traffic arrive at your site. It can be done for longer of course, but I will stick to 21 days because it provides a good timeline for work. The process involves the submission of one article to 3-5 top article directories, along with the building of 1-2 additional backlinks to my site using any number of tactics (I choose two, outlined below).
To track my progress, I created the 21 Day Traffic Blueprint to target a different keyword written article, and a different keyword link text every day. The reason for that is simply to vary the link text because Google likes to see a variation of text used when another site points to your site. It appears natural and allows for more organic ranking for a keyword. If you constantly build articles and create links with the same link text, it will look spammy and it can hurt your rankings so a good way I discovered is to create a linktext schedule in a spreadsheet to help you keep me organized with what keyword to target each day, as shown in the following image. The highlighted sections are the linktext and keywords that I’ll be focusing on that particular day of the blueprint.
Since I had 7 original articles created, I created an additional 14 variation keywords to use in my linkbuilding. So on Day 8 when I go back to submit another article for Protoss Strategy (a main keyword), I’ll will instead use a variation of that keyword for the linktext and submit completely a complete different article, but still related to Protoss Strategy, and I’ll vary the linktext this time around by using something like starcraft protoss strategy or protoss gameplay. Again, this is extremely beneficial to help increase rankings and avoid getting busted for posting spammy looking links.
With 7 main articles on the site created and the spreadsheet created, I needed to get the additional articles created for my traffic strategy. For that I turned to Craigslist and found an excellent writer (and Starcraft 2 player) to create 500+ word articles for a fee. I’m opted for a mix of original and rewritten articles to keep costs down. Pat Flynn decided to use an article spinner which I may consider down the road once I have enough articles to spin, but for now I’d like to go 100% original or rewritten.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is a form of link building tried and true method of achieving search engine ranking since it essentially allows you to gain valuable links to your site by submitting articles to high page ranking article directories.
Once I had a good a portion of the articles completed and received from my writer, I narrowed down my Top five article directories to use for article submission.
The reason I choose only 5 is because I wanted to ensure I’m submitting articles only to high page ranking directories which will generate high quality links. I chose EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleRich, Ideamarketers, and Amazines. There are quite a few other Top ranking article directories, but since I don’t want to spend more than an hour or hour and half on this a day, I’ll stick with those 5. I also chose those because they don’t have terribly strict submission guidelines or require editor approval (like Suite101).
Once I have a list of my directories, I simply follow my Traffic blueprint by submitting the corresponding article for the days keyword, ensuring that I populate the “author bio” or article footer use the appropriate linktext and link to my website.
Commenting
To round up my linkbuilding strategy, I’ll use a combination of forum and blog commenting strategies. (I may also consider using video submissions, but more on that later..)
For forums, I create profiles in some popular relevant forums and offer insightful comments to topics, ensuring that I leave a link (with appropriate linktext) in my signature. Of course the more good comments I leave the more linkjuice I’ll get back. For blogs, I’ll spend some time leaving quality non-spammy comments on relevant or high page ranking blogs, including .gov and .edu where possible. I setup a simple Google Blog alert with some niche keywords thats delivered daily to my inbox to help me out.
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Since the majority of the sites setup is complete, in future posts I’ll be reporting on the sites Google ranking position and testing additional marketing strategies. Thanks for following the duel!
To the readers: Have you built a niche site before and if so, how have the above strategies worked out for you? Have you seen better success in certain areas than others? Please leave your comment below.
-M
Another milestone down; another amazing blog post completed – loving your take on the niche duel Mike; by far my favorite reads from the lot.
Thanks, btw, for sharing the blueprint, haven’t previously heard about it (although the link does seem to not be working atm) but Google helped
I have a niche website which, ah hell, no point in keeping it secret called Laserjet 4 Toner – it’s a site just about the Laserjet 4 series printers which has adsense and Amazon affiliates. I built it from scratch and really didn’t do much in terms of link building, after a couple months it eventually just floated to page one.
It doesn’t get much traffic but the clicks are really nice since most keywords related to it go for about $5-$10. I think it pulls in somewhere like 40 bucks a month or so.
It’s funny too cause it’s so micro that I didn’t expect it to do anything; I was wrong.
I think you’re going to really rock it with SC2; just talked to my buddy the other day – he’s a long time SC player and now doing SC2.
Looking forward to see some stats in the next post – keep up the great work
Murlu recently posted..How To Say Danke! To Your Readers
Shit son! I didn’t even realize my redirects were kiboshed. Thanks for mentioning it, I think that might have been screwed up for awhile.. I wonder how many affil sales I lost?! Oh well. Thanks. Nice job find a micro-niche that brings in a lil bit each month. You could probably sell it for a low 4 figure. And organic ranking! Thats the holy grail buddy. Thanks for reading and good luck with your site! Why is your site showing a mobile version on my desktop browser, you aware of that?
Hey Mike, I found your page on Pat’s Niche duel hub.
Your marketing tactics are pretty inspiring, and it seems like the NPC program is helping you out big time. I’m interested in this program and just wanted to know how much it costs after the initial trial period. It’s not anywhere on their homepage.
I’m pretty successful with a Japanese blog that recommends products of iherb.com, pulling in from 300-500$ a month.
Also looking forward to seeing some stats. Good luck with your duel.
Samuel recently posted..How to learn languages by watching movies
Hi Samuel
Way to go on your successful blog dude! NPC is great, I’ve learned a lot and they have a vast amount of content. Even if you have some experience they have so much material that I think you’re bound to pick up something new. And if your just starting out with IM its perfect because the videos are over-the-should and show you things step-by-step. They also just release a Level 2 for more advanced marketing, which is great for when you already have a foundation. Anyway give it a try, they have a free trial for 2 weeks I think, then its $67 / month after that.
Good luck!
Hi Mike.
Thanks for the reminder about using Craiglist to find content writers. Any suggestions for writing an ad?
@Murlu Congrats on your niche website. The beauty of $40/month sites is that you can build a whole bunch of them and multiply your income quite easily. I’ve got a couple of sites that also rank with no backlinks just due to the fact that the main keyword is the domain name, also known as an EMD or Exact Match Domain.
Rob, I can share you my exact posting used, remind me to send that too you. Fairly straightforward, just set your expectation in the ad, what your looking (how long, how frequently, and how much), then watch the inquiries poor in. I even had a few resumes and cover letters get sent in.
Hey, Mike
I just have a question… did your freelance writter had any knowledge about Starcraft? Because in order to put up some high quality content, it is important to know the field you’re talking about, otherwise you might end up writting about the same topics borrowed from elsewhere.
Thanks,
Daniel.
Daniel, Yes I put out a posting on craigslist asking for someone willing to write articles about the specific subject. I opted for CL cause it was recommended to me by a friend of mine for finding good people for work, and he was right. Absolutely agree with you, I made sure that the writer knew what he was talking and and actually had real knowledge on the subject.
Hey mike, quick question on the articles that you submit to various directories. Assume you have an article “starcraft 2 campaign” do you submit the same article on all the 3-5 directories or do you rewrite and submit them. Then it becomes like 21*5 articles?
Hi Sam. You can submit the same article to the 3-5 directories, but make sure its a different article from whats on your original site. The articles which get submitted to the article directories are considered syndicated by Google and there’s no harm in doing that. However having a particular piece of content point to another piece of content that is identical is a no-no.
Hope that helps
Mike
Hey Mike!
I have to say that of all the duel participants I have been reading up on – yours looks the most promising.
Loving the details and transparency you are providing, almost to the point that I have to stop myself secretly creating a replica site based on alll YOUR work LOL, but I would never do that man!
Besides, I hate computer games LOL.
Your link building start looks like it is a goer man, definitely something I would agree with doing.
Have you considering Xrumer for the forum side of things?
Alex recently posted..Geez- I wish I knew THAT when I started Blogging!
Alex, appreciate the feedback you know this is an experiment for me much like the others so even if things go south I’m going to bust my ass and learn everything I can along the way. The details and transparency will hopefully inspire people to get into their own niche markets and yes the thought of copycats did cross my mind but a little more openness in this game is what I think is whats needed to foster better communication and sharing of best practices. Too much of IM is secretive.
I havent tried Xrumer but I’ll check it out. I’m assuming its a forum commenting software?
Awesome to hear that your site is climbing the google ranks. Never heard of the 21 day traffic blueprint before. I’ll have to go check it out. Have you done a review of it here?
Ian @ Holistic Internet Marketing recently posted..Adland – The Business Book That’ll Make You Cry
Hi Ian, I haven’t done a review yet of Niche Profit Classroom but its on the to do list. I can tell you now though its a pretty good and comprehensive program with a TON of content. It’s step by step so if your somewhat a beginner its perfect, like when I started with it. At lot of the techniques i’m applying in the duel i picked up from NPC =)