60 Day Newbie Goal - First Page on Google

[jagy23]

After reading Pat Flynn's Nich Site Duel and Joseph Archibald's 40 day challenge, I'm inspired to see what Newbie with no internet marketing experience can accomplish. I've dabbled with blogs, etc. before, but nothing serious. I understand how much work and effort it will take to get on the first page of Google, so I'm planning to chronicle my activities on this forum, to hold myself accountable to my goal. I kicked off a new website this week, on March 1 at vendingbusinesshq dot com (I can't post links because I'm new) . My goal is to be ranking on page 1 of Google for "vending machine business" and "vending business" search phrases by May 1st. This isn't as extreme as Joe or Pat's challenge, but I'm also a N00b and need time to learn this stuff.

My goal for this thread is to hold myself accountable to my goal and also get any advice from all you with load more experience with internet marketing. I'm going to make tons of mistakes, but the key will be to identify them as early as possible, so hopefully you can call me out if I make a huge flub.

My strategy so far is to build a link wheel with web 2.0 blog sites and a handful of articles (10-20) all linking back to my site through the targeted keywords. This is what I've accomplished so far.

- Launched Wordpress-based website at vendingbusinesshq dot com(remember I'm new to this, so that was actually a learning experience)

- Published content to site and rearranging to make the site more functional

- Created XML sitemap and submitted to Google.

- Setup Google Analytics plug-in and account for monitoring traffic

- Hired an SEO firm on eLance for $100 (Traffic Jam in India) to jumpstart this and work in parallel with me. They are creating an article to post to 8 web 2.0 sites, 4 blogs and post the same article to 4 article directories. They do not spin the articles. They will bookmark each link (web 2, blog link and article link) with 15 bookmarking sites.

They will also post the article to 25 press release sites also. I'm not sure if this is a good price or not, but I can sacrifice $100 to see how it works.
I'm not willing to hire out all SEO work as I need to understand how this all works. I have a tough time hiring people unless I thoroughly understand what their doing, this allows me more power in negotiations and should help me keep tabs on their work.

- Wrote an original article and spun multiple versions of it using Best Spinner with 65% unique content

- Published Web 2.0 blogs at the following sites: wordpress: vendingbusinesshq
- Published articles to eZine, Goarticles, the freelibrary, Article Alley, many are waiting for approval. Here are the 2 that are out there already:
I can't post links, but 2 are published already. One at Free Library and One at Go Articles. Search phrase vending machine business or vending business
- When I have the anchor backlinks completed (20 articles, 10 web 2.0 sites) I will use Unique Article Wizard to publish mass articles linking back to the anchor sites. I think this will take the most amount of work, so I hope to be ready to get started on this by March 15th.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong?

I'm still waiting for my site to get ranked by Google, I'm not sure how long this usually takes, but I am very impatient about it. I want to see it ranked, so I can watch the progress I'm making. This would sure keep my motivation up!

-Jay

[Tautology]

I'm in a similar situation to you (start wise), so will be watching this thread with interest.

Good luck!

Ben

[jpr106]

Good idea about link diversity, its a good start.

[jagy23]

Quick update on progress made today.

I'm submitted the url (vendingbusinessHQ dot com) to DMOZ directory, hopefully it'll get approved.

I wrote an article on how to succeed in the vending machine business and spun it for 63% uniqueness using Best Spinner. I just submitted this to the BlogSpot as another post with two links back to vendingbusinesshq dot com.

I submitted the atom.xml sitemap for the blogspot Vending Machine Business HQ site to Google Webmaster tools. Google has now indexed 3 pages from that site, so hopefully it will start throwing some SEO juice to the primary site through the targeted links.

Market Samurai is still showing that I only have 11 indexed pages and am not ranked by Google. Google webmaster tools shows 13 indexed pages.
Neither tool is showing any backlinks to my site yet. I'm not sure how frequently this gets updated, but it would be nice to see some recognition that I'm doing something. So far the only progress I can see is that Google is indexing pages on the primary site and blogspot and I have received search traffic and referral traffic from Blogspot. Something to hang my hat on at least!

I'm already getting a couple hits from Google for vending machines business plan (long tail, not targeted) and I'm also getting some hits from the Vending Machine Business HQ page that I created at BlogSpot. So far, this "original" traffic is < 10, but it's encouraging to see that some people are already finding the page just days after getting started.

I will submit my latest spun article to 5 article websites and 5 web 2.0 sites today. Hopefully, I'll start seeing some recognition of the backlinks next week.

-Jay

[jagy23]

Quick update before calling it a night.

Submitted new spun article to 5 Web 2.0 sites ( Hub Pages, Tumblr, etc) and 5 article directories (ezine, goarticles, etc.). The article directories are a pain in the butt. Most don't allow links high in the article and most take days if not weeks to approve before they even post the article. I'm liking the web 2.0 sites much better. I have much more control over them, I can publish more content and media, and it happens immediately. Also, I can't help but think that tumblr, squidoo, wordpress, and hub pages get ranked higher in Google than ezine and goarticles (who reads those anyway?).

Still waiting to see what my eLance experiment will produce. They put together one article so far, which is on par with a spun article, even though they actually did write it, go figure. They'll start posting it tomorrow. Hopefully, by the end of this week I'll have some backlinks being recognized by Google.

I'm out.
-Jay

[jagy23]

Last Update of the night, I swear.

I just realized that I have been laser focused on Google and had totally forgotten about Yahoo and Bing, so I just signed up and authenticated for both of their Analytics sites (Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools) and more importantly I submitted my vendingbusinesshq site to their crawlers. Maybe they'll be quicker to index than Google? Time will tell.

That's all for now.

-Jay

[ibagayan]

Hey Jay,

Good luck to you. I just started my journey in December. I am also working with small niches and following the guides on Pat's niche site duel. I have been working on my sites for about 2.5 months and was able to get to the #8 spot for my main keyword.

We'll see how it goes.... Good luck to you

[jagy23]

Thanks ibagayan,

Do you remember how long it took Google to index your pages and start recognizing your backlinks? How long did it take to get to page 1 for you?

-Jay

[Nubieteky]

thanks for making this thread! Im a newbie too and got index shortest period of time maybe just 2 - 3 weeks. I assume that the keyword for the domain is not counted like if you got a domain "manualmachines.com" the keyword "manual machines" should not be counted?

btw google index like lightning speed.

im happy reading ur thread.

[jagy23]

Sorry for lack of updates recently. Just had a baby boy last Monday night and spent most of the week in the hospital with family. In any case, this illustrates the power of outsourcing. While I was busy in the hospital, my eLancers were working away generating anchor sites, articles, and backlinks. My eLancer, Traffic Jam (in India), created 8 web 2.0 anchor sites at squidoo.com, easyjournal.com, weebly.com, yola.com, tumblr.com, wetpaint.com, my.opera.com, and jimdo.com. 4 blogs at wordpress.com, blog.com, blogger.com, and livejournal.com. 4 article directory submissions at: ideamarketers.com, fourpxarticles.com, bukisa.com, 990m.com and 25 press release sites. Traffic Jam then created 200 backlinks to these anchor sites. They completed this in under 2 weeks, while this would've taken me 2-3 months to accomplish. I think this was worth $100, but time will tell. I have noticed that the articles are about the same quality as a "spun" article due to English being a second language for the writers.

Google is still not showing backlinks to the website, but it is indexing 66 pages now and growing daily, so that is positive.

eLance worked so well, I'm looking at doing some more with it in parallel with my efforts. So far, I've found I have too many other responsibilities that interrupt my time to spend on these efforts. I may hire an SEO firm on eLance to do a more comprehensive campaign. I did get a bid from one firm that would have me pay them only when the website reaches top 30, top 20, and top 10 on Google. This seems like the way to go as it would minimize my risk of spending money for little impact. I'll have to think about this some more.

-Jay

[wmboy]

Be careful with those offers. There's no way of knowing whether they'll be using black hat SEO methods to get there (meaning you won't be on page 1 for long...).

[jagy23]

Originally Posted by wmboy

Be careful with those offers. There's no way of knowing whether they'll be using black hat SEO methods to get there (meaning you won't be on page 1 for long...).

wmboy, thanks for the advice. I hadn't considered that.

-Jay

[jeff7117]

I am a newbie as well with this entire process. How would you rate your provider you used on eLance? I'm considering using them (or someone similar) for some outsourcing.

[jagy23]

Originally Posted by jeff7117

I am a newbie as well with this entire process. How would you rate your provider you used on eLance? I'm considering using them (or someone similar) for some outsourcing.

Jeff,

I am happy with Traffic Jam on eLance. They are one of the lowest cost providers that I've found, so it's a nice way to get a little SEO boost in parallel with your own efforts. There are full service SEO providers on eLance as well, but they cost $400-$1000 to get going.

Traffic Jam provided a spreadsheet with all of the backlinks, so that I could go and verify them all. The articles they write are not terribly high quality, but they are as good or better than a spun article and they fit the bill for backlinking.

Latest Update: Market Samurai is still showing 0 backlinks, but now shows 81 pages indexed, so that is a large improvement. Google is spending some time crawling through the pages on the site. Bing and Yahoo are still showing no data. They seem to be slower to crawl than Google. I'm not sure when Google is going to start showing some backlinks, but hopefully it is soon. There's really no way to reach page 1 until Google recognizes backlinks and includes them in the page ranking calculation.

I didn't do much for SEO today, but I did add two high quality articles to the vendingbusinesshq website. One article titled: "Find the Best Vending Machine Locations" and another titled "How to Get the Best Vending Machines Cheap!"

I've noticed that I'm already ranking high on some long tail keywords, so I am getting some traffic from them. I got a spike in traffic today to 15 hits. One long tail keyword phrase has already given me 2 hits: "advantages in vending business". I'm ranking 4th on Google's first page for this phrase. This may not seem significant, but when you consider that there may be 500-1000 long-tail keyword phrases, a couple hits here and there can add up quickly. A website can get as much as half of their search traffic through long tail keywords, which are really driven by having loads of quality content on the site. My goal is to add quality articles while I am pursuing the building quality backlinks and anchor sites Obviously, the other benefit of having quality content is that when people do reach your site, they will spend time there reading and learning. Just getting people to your site is of no use if they don't stick around for awhile.

I hope to spend some more time backlinking and beefing up the Web 2.0 sites this weekend. I may add another article or two to the site as well.

-Jay

[Tim Wallace]

Useful info I have never heard before, I will try these ways you provided. Thanks again.

[jae london]

Don't forget the power of RSS feeds, I managed to get indexed and listed #1 in google, yahoo, bing and front page of other search engines in under 2 weeks, with my keywords by mostly pinging my wordpress posts and with just a few article submissions.
kind of crazy though, because this method lacks (so far) getting backlinks and i havent been able to measure the traffic as yet, but as far as sales...nada!

JL

[jabs83]

Originally Posted by jae london

Don't forget the power of RSS feeds, I managed to get indexed and listed #1 in google, yahoo, bing and front page of other search engines in under 2 weeks, with my keywords by mostly pinging my wordpress posts and with just a few article submissions.
kind of crazy though, because this method lacks (so far) getting backlinks and i havent been able to measure the traffic as yet, but as far as sales...nada!

JL

Just curious, how are you monetizing your site? Also, are you targeting a "buying" keyword with at least 1000 exact monthly searches?

[jae london]

site is monetized with clickbank products/services, amazon and the keywords are targeted site promotion keywords...But you know what? Thanks, you just helped me to put on my keyword research hat again.

....i"ve been using pingomatic, feedshark, and pingoat - should be helpful.

[jabs83]

Originally Posted by jae london

site is monetized with clickbank products/services, amazon and the keywords are targeted site promotion keywords...But you know what? Thanks, you just helped me to put on my keyword research hat again.

....i"ve been using pingomatic, feedshark, and pingoat - should be helpful.

Which part are you going to rethink(1000 searches or buying term) - just curious... Im a noob too so i want to make sure i start off on the right leg

[jagy23]

Jae,

Thanks for the input on RSS feeds. I've never used them before, but I'll definitely look into it. Do you have a resource or article to reference that might give more info on this strategy?

Quick update: vendingbusinesshq dot com finally shows 1 backlink in Market Samurai! For some reason index count has gone back down to 87 from 120+, not sure what that's all about. I'm hoping that more backlinks are on their way.

-Jay

[Spradle]

I should have read the post before the poll. I would change it to yes. I didn't know you were hiring SEO's :P

[jagy23]

Spradle, thanks for the confidence boost. Given the time involved with creating backlinks and the low cost of providers in India, it's hard not to justify hiring at least some of the SEO effort out. I think I still need to be managing the overall strategy, but the detail work of actually creating backlinks and submitting articles can be farmed out.

-Jay

[Spradle]

If you've got money, you've got friends.

Anyone can rank high with any keyword if they have an endless supply of money. All I was saying is that any newbie trying to get on page one without spending anything is not very likely at all to get ranked well in only 60 days.

Given that you haven't spent a significant amount of money, I would still give you props for getting ranked well, I would still consider your goal an impressive inspiration. And I DO think you can do it. I applaud you for making the effort.

[jagy23]

I just made a great discovery. There is a rank tracker module in Market Samurai! I don't know how I missed this before. I was using the SEO competition module to see # of backlinks, pages indexed, etc.

Rank tracker gives more detail and allows me to see Yahoo and Bing ranking as well. So with that came some good news. I'm already top 30 on Bing and Yahoo for "Vending Machine Business". That is very surprising since I'm just getting started. They are only picking up 9 backlinks and have indexed 1 page.

Google is still not showing a ranking for this keyword phrase, but if Bing and Yahoo are any indication it should be coming up soon. Google now shows 89 indexed pages and 1 backlink. I don't really know how to find out what the ranking on Google is if Market Samurai doesn't show it. I think it's gotta be top 100 before it'll show up. I added an article and a video to the website today. That's about it for now.

-Jay

[jagy23]

One more thing. I just added an RSS feed from vendingmarketwatch.com, so there will be constant news streams updating the site. I'm not familiar with this strategy, but hopefully this helps with SEO.

-Jay

[Natlex]

Sounds like you have some good ideas to start with. I don't use web 2.0s that much nowadays personally but hopefully it works for you.

[jagy23]

Natlex do you have a suggestion that works better than web 2.0 sites?

-Jay

[BobbyWalker]

Your web 2.0 sites are a good foundation and you need to tier your profile links, blog comments, etc.. to your web 2.0 sites

So after you directly link your site url and anchor text to all of your articles and your web 2.0 sites, then you can
link your profile links, forum links, blog comments, etc.. to your web 2.0 properties rather than straight to your site url with anchor text..

This lets all the juice roll downhill

Thx,
Bobby


...

Originally Posted by jagy23

After reading Pat Flynn's Nich Site Duel and Joseph Archibald's 40 day challenge, I'm inspired to see what Newbie with no internet marketing experience can accomplish. I've dabbled with blogs, etc. before, but nothing serious. I understand how much work and effort it will take to get on the first page of Google, so I'm planning to chronicle my activities on this forum, to hold myself accountable to my goal. I kicked off a new website this week, on March 1 at vendingbusinesshq dot com (I can't post links because I'm new) . My goal is to be ranking on page 1 of Google for "vending machine business" and "vending business" search phrases by May 1st. This isn't as extreme as Joe or Pat's challenge, but I'm also a N00b and need time to learn this stuff.

My goal for this thread is to hold myself accountable to my goal and also get any advice from all you with load more experience with internet marketing. I'm going to make tons of mistakes, but the key will be to identify them as early as possible, so hopefully you can call me out if I make a huge flub.

My strategy so far is to build a link wheel with web 2.0 blog sites and a handful of articles (10-20) all linking back to my site through the targeted keywords. This is what I've accomplished so far.

- Launched Wordpress-based website at vendingbusinesshq dot com(remember I'm new to this, so that was actually a learning experience)

- Published content to site and rearranging to make the site more functional

- Created XML sitemap and submitted to Google.

- Setup Google Analytics plug-in and account for monitoring traffic

- Hired an SEO firm on eLance for $100 (Traffic Jam in India) to jumpstart this and work in parallel with me. They are creating an article to post to 8 web 2.0 sites, 4 blogs and post the same article to 4 article directories. They do not spin the articles. They will bookmark each link (web 2, blog link and article link) with 15 bookmarking sites.

They will also post the article to 25 press release sites also. I'm not sure if this is a good price or not, but I can sacrifice $100 to see how it works.
I'm not willing to hire out all SEO work as I need to understand how this all works. I have a tough time hiring people unless I thoroughly understand what their doing, this allows me more power in negotiations and should help me keep tabs on their work.

- Wrote an original article and spun multiple versions of it using Best Spinner with 65% unique content

- Published Web 2.0 blogs at the following sites: wordpress: vendingbusinesshq
- Published articles to eZine, Goarticles, the freelibrary, Article Alley, many are waiting for approval. Here are the 2 that are out there already:
I can't post links, but 2 are published already. One at Free Library and One at Go Articles. Search phrase vending machine business or vending business
- When I have the anchor backlinks completed (20 articles, 10 web 2.0 sites) I will use Unique Article Wizard to publish mass articles linking back to the anchor sites. I think this will take the most amount of work, so I hope to be ready to get started on this by March 15th.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong?

I'm still waiting for my site to get ranked by Google, I'm not sure how long this usually takes, but I am very impatient about it. I want to see it ranked, so I can watch the progress I'm making. This would sure keep my motivation up!

-Jay

[jagy23]

Haven't update in awhile, because the new baby is taking all of my free time. Wanted to let you all know that the site is on page 1 on Google for "Vending Business", but not for "Vending Machine Business". I have spent no time on back links or content since March 20th. From Google Analytics, it appears that it went to first page of Google on May 8th, missing my goal by 8 days. That's pretty impressive, considering I spent no time working on it for over a month.

I am reenergized with these results and am going to start spending some more time adding content and backlinks. Google still only shows 8 backlinks, so I should benefit as it crawls the existing backlinks out in the interwebs.

-Jay

[jhony]

've come a long adsense but earning is still small. adsense here trying to seek knowledge.

[oh2534]

Your web 2.0 sites are a good foundation

[welland]

I am thinking of doing a 60 day challenge myself. This helped.