GuruWannabe SEO Advice, and Why You Need to Avoid The Traps!
Every now and again, I hear things about bits of advice written on other websites and realize why there is so much confusion spread to the masses! This post is likely to add MORE confusion for sure…
So… I got an email from a reader who wanted me to take a quick look at her site and try to help her figure out why it was failing so suddenly in terms of traffic and conversions. She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the research and discovery side of niche site planning, but when it came to the presentation of her content, it was way off.
She is aware that this post is being published so others don’t fall into the same trap she did, wasting 2 months of time, on something that has had a negative effect on her otherwise growing site! She also asked that I do not identify her or her site.
My site is 8 months old, gets about 150 visitors/month and seems to be trailing off versus picking up. I spend at least 2 hours/day doing SEO on the posts & have changed all my post titles to reflect the phrases I want the site to rank for. It actually seems to be hurting more than helping. Should I just dump this site and move on? Is it a dead niche?
After 3-4 email exchanges to learn about the site itself and then figure out exactly WHY she has spent so much time on modifying ONLY the page titles, she told me that she was advised to change all her page titles to reflect the terms she wanted to rank for, and by simply changing the titles, it would result in almost instant profitability!
She had literally rewritten all of her post titles (175+ pages) to reflect her desire to rank for shiny blue widgets on pages that were about green garden rakes, car transmissions, and just about everything under the sun… COMPLETELY UNRELATED to what the actual page content was!
My Own GuruWannaBe SEO Advice
As you begin building a new, or modifying an existing site, it’s best to relate to your site as a pyramid. At the top of your pyramid, are the MAIN and HIGHEST VOLUME shorter phrases that you ultimately want your site to be recognized as a resource for. As you work your way to the bottom of the pyramid, EVERYTHING on your site is related to, and falls somewhere into the same genre! This is the foundation of the site and will be the ultimate lever that drives the most traffic in the early years of a site.
- Pyramid Top Levels – 1 to 3 words phrases, higher search volume, your overall target niche!
- Site Pyramid Second & Third Levels – 2-4 Word Phrases, that make up the Supporting Categories of your Top Levels!
- Mid and Lower Pyramid Levels – Long Tail phrases within Articles, Titles, and Content that Support Everything Above it in the Pyramid!
Onsite SEO consists of these 3 Primary Functions:
- Writing Unique, Interesting, and Highly Relative Content to Attract and Fill the Void of the Target Niche you have Researched and Chosen to pursue!
- Presenting The Content in a Properly Formed and Optimized Fashion!
- Make Sure Visitors Can Find the Content from Within Your Own Site (which can be challenging with a blog)
Highly Relevant & Unique Content
If your site is about womens shoes, and your category is about high heel shoes, make sure the content you are writing is relative to BOTH, and unique to your site!
Properly Formed and Optimized
If you write a post/page about Sexy High Heel Shoes, make sure the content of your page is related to just that, and put in the right places that it makes sense to readers!
- Your H1 (Heading 1) should contain or match your target phrase (5 Sexy High Heel Shoes Every Woman Wants)
- Your H1 should be presented at or near the beginning of your article content
- Your Content should meet readers expectations. (Include images, related words and phrases, links, etc)
- Your Content should support everything above it in the pyramid structure!
As you write your content, keep in mind that you have the ability to Funnel Your Traffic exactly where you want, by putting the right pieces in the right places!
Making Sure Its Found!
Since you have gone out of your way to build some foundation into your site pyramid – you need to be sure you create a map of how it fits into the site, within the content of each post! It’s like adding a set of stairs from one level to the other, directly to other rooms in your pyramid, related to the topic!
Many of us rely on plugins like “Related Posts” to link back and forth within our site content. Related posts are great, but in-content links are clicked more often than ANY other type of link! If you don’t think so, just drop in a contextual ad plugin like Chitika and compare the results to other ad links on the same pages!
- If older posts exist on the same topic – find them and link to them! (Brings old posts back to life)
- If older posts exist – edit them and link them to the new post! (If your target phrase is in an older post, link it to the new one!)
- As you write new posts – continue to link both higher and lower in your site pyramid, giving readers MORE reasons to stay on your site!
Bottom Line
There is no single magic cure to making a site rank better! You need the right combination of demand, properly formed and unique content, and marketing on and off your site, for any single page to have an impact on search.
Are YOU a GuruWannaBe like me? If so, add your Onsite SEO Advice below!
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Great Advice and Reading from Affiliate Confession
- Adding Relevant Content to your Niche Store Website – FAST!
- Questions and Answers about Build a Niche Store
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Hello Mark,
Apologies if you have commented on this before but what are your views on WPRobot plugin. Frequent new content clearly helps but are there dangers in using such a plugin for new content? ( I am looking at buying it)
Merry Christmas
Steve
@steve freeman – I haven’t used WP Robot, but have used Caffeinated Content, WP-O-Matic and a few other content solutions. Some even have ways of making the content unique to your own site, so it appears to be unique to you.
Truthfully… they each work to a certain degree, some more than others, but don’t expect the same type of results as if you were writing your own content, and make SURE you proof read EVERY post before it is set to display on the site.
Its like anything else – as long as you use reprinted content in moderation, like 1 out of 5 articles, (4 uniques, 1 reprint) or something to that affect, it will compliment your own work. The further you lean toward using all repurposed content, the more your site will suffer.
Mark
Honestly, if a site just gets 5 visitors a day, and it’s 8 months old, I would do one of two things.
I might just focus on the top 1 or 2 pages that are drawing traffic. From experience, it’s likely it’s the domain name that’s carrying the organic keyword load, so using what you said above, you could pyramid out from there.
Or I would just leave it be, and start researching another niche and site to work on. It’s tough to give up on something that you’ve spent 2/hours a day for 8 months building, but I would rather spend that next 2 hours on something new.
@Brian – Cannot argue with either suggestion Brian.
3 months ago – she was seeing several hundred daily pageviews… and only after the site-wide title fiasco did she lose all her traffic.
My guess, which is just that, is that the site looked so much like spam after the completely irrelevant title changes, that people and search bots just started started flagging it as spam. In effect, it was.
Mark
Tough way to learn a lesson, but I’ve been there too unfortunately. A positive she can take away is that she apparently can build a good site that will get lots of visitors. If she did it once, she can do it again!
I have read some real BS on the net about SEO and the like. One blog said if your not getting traffic to change meta titles and urls to match.
I couldnt believe it.
Just the other day I put up a blog got found the same day then I relized I misspelled some thing in the 1st post. Next time the crawlers came by the site got sandboxed because the first page went 404 as my redirect didnt work.
My point is you cant change certain things and these guys who say these things are hacks.
When I see bunk advice on the net I really feel for those listening. I find the best advice comes strait from the engines themselves.
People need to remember to that some sites just are not worth the time trying to revive. We need to know when its time to move on. It took me years to get that concept.
A comment on CC & Wp O Matic. You need to be very careful and proof read every post. I set the retrieval at 10 in CC. People set it and forget it and post some content that isn’t relevant. Reader can tell.
Sorry to say, I disagree with you Mark. Your post DOES NOT add more confusion, it clarifies it! Great post!
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