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How I Managed to rank on first page within weeks...

by Nabaleka
13 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have received some positive feedback on conversion from members of this forum. So I decided to share how I managed to rank on first page withing weeks.. Please excuse my English.

I have been having this blog in the Internet Niche and decided to turn it into a web design service website. I was ranking before for completely different keywords and I needed to rank to web design related keywords in order to get clients.

So this is how I managed to rank for the new keywords within a week.

  1. I used Keyword Planner to get low competition keywords, I found none since this is a Web design Niche.
  2. I checked the leading pages on the first page and used the free version of Ahrefs and Semrush to check for keywords and links (Note: I did not build Links) - This is what I discovered, most of these website had footer links (What web designers do -Leave a design by bla bla link on every website they create).
  3. R-optimized the homepage with the target keywords. I had to use all of them. Mostly placing the H2, H3, H4 with keywords and made sure all the images on the homepage had ALT descriptions with the target keywords.
  4. Created Internal links to other pages using the keywords. I bought some articles on iWriter for these pages. Optimized these pages and made sure they were having the Htags and linked them back to the homepage... (SILO Structure)
  5. Created two to three links from the homepage to an external site.. Wikipedia.
  6. At this level I started seeing some dance on Google, I was now on page 5 for the specified keywords.
  7. Next I checked Google Pagespeed and started optimizing the site for speed. I was on WordPress and this was easy.. Used W3 Total Cache and Autoptimize. The two did magic. -Trick is to let w3 total do everything apart from Minification which I leave to Autoptimize.
  8. Speed only did the magic and the keywords were now on page 3 and 2 of the same week.
  9. Now the magic happened when I added an SSL certificate and switched to HTTPS. After switching, I redirected the non https to https and added the HTTPS version to Google Webmaster tools. Then used the fetch option.
  10. The rest as they say is history... Next day the keywords were on page one.. Although they keep on dancing going up and down.
  11. I am now considering backlinks to have them permanent on page one.
That is me.


Attachment 24155
#https #managed #page #page speed #rank #rank boost #seo #weeks
  • Profile picture of the author abid1407
    Very helpful. But I am curious about the footer links. Could you elaborate. I have a website Home Page - fashionaaina and am trying to get to the first page in Google but seems uphill right now
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    • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
      Originally Posted by abid1407 View Post

      Very helpful. But I am curious about the footer links. Could you elaborate. I have a website Home Page - fashionaaina and am trying to get to the first page in Google but seems uphill right now
      I used the term footer links to compare what others are doing, having a link on the footer will lead to the "Quantity of links" but of poor "Quality" (Same anchor text over possible thousands of links.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    I'm guessing you are seeing personalized results. You are not going to rank for any worthwhile web design related keywords without links.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      I'm guessing you are seeing personalized results. You are not going to rank for any worthwhile web design related keywords without links.
      I track keywords using Ahrefs, If I have to check the positions manually I make sure I am not logged to any Google products and use VPN + Mozilla browser.

      Plus personalized results do not bring traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by Nabaleka View Post

        I track keywords using Ahrefs, If I have to check the positions manually I make sure I am not logged to any Google products and use VPN + Mozilla browser.

        Plus personalized results do not bring traffic.

        Sorry my man but the only thing I could find you ranking for was "Web designer in Kenya" (about 10 which matches with the first result in your link). Since your rank tracker is set to the US I can completely get why you rank.

        No one much here is searching for a web designers specifically in kenya so no one is trying to rank for that.
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        • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Sorry my man but the only thing I could find you ranking for was "Web designer in Kenya" (about 10 which matches with the first result in your link). Since your rank tracker is set to the US I can completely get why you rank.

          No one much here is searching for a web designers specifically in Kenya so no one is trying to rank for that.
          I see your point, the reason why I placed US (google.com) as the tracker location is because everyone I target is using google.com even for the local searches and that is why I become as specific as I can.

          I have another tracker placed for the local area and the results are the same.

          If I could go for universal keywords then the possibility of me converting will be reduced since these days localized searches are on the rise.

          However, I am pressing on for the Universal keywords.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by Nabaleka View Post

            I see your point, the reason why I placed US (google.com) as the tracker location is because everyone I target is using google.com even for the local searches and that is why I become as specific as I can.
            Understood but in case you don't know even using google.com Google will take into account your location in kenya by adjusting results to your IP.

            Look for long tail universal keywords because as a web designer you can get work from all over the world and people are not searching for specific areas unless they are local to them.
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            • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
              Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

              Understood but in case you don't know even using google.com Google will take into account your location in kenya by adjusting results to your IP.

              Look for long tail universal keywords because as a web designer you can get work from all over the world and people are not searching for specific areas unless they are local to them.
              Thank you Mike, I am exploring and testing more ways to bring this up. Time will tell.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
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    Originally Posted by Nabaleka View Post

    [*]Now the magic happened when I added an SSL certificate and switched to HTTPS. After switching, I redirected the non https to https and added the HTTPS version to Google Webmaster tools. Then used the fetch option
    Https didn't rank a page.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
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    No offense but the OP list has a lot of unnecessary fluff: page speed, https, outbound links to wikipedia. None of that stuff matters for ranking pages on Google SERPs.

    As far as page speed all that matters is the page loads decent in your own browser (no cache). If it takes all day to load a page, yeah, that's a problem but it's a bounce rate problem so no need to waste your time trying to rank a slow loading page.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      No offense but the OP list has a lot of unnecessary fluff: page speed, https, outbound links to wikipedia. None of that stuff matters for ranking pages on Google SERPs.

      As far as page speed all that matters is the page loads decent in your own browser (no cache). If it takes all day to load a page, yeah, that's a problem but it's a bounce rate problem so no need to waste your time trying to rank a slow loading page.
      You have mentioned the above to be unnecessary but you have also contradicted yourself with your last statement. Site speed is important and HTTPS will give your efforts a boost. It gave me and it worked.
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  • Profile picture of the author terinah14
    Awesome! And that's without backlinks. I have a question though. I had a static front page but I decided it doesn't fit my niche, so I set my front page to show the latest blogs. Do you think having an SEO optimized front page affects the speed of ranking your website?
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    • Profile picture of the author Nabaleka
      Originally Posted by terinah14 View Post

      Awesome! And that's without backlinks. I have a question though. I had a static front page but I decided it doesn't fit my niche, so I set my front page to show the latest blogs. Do you think having an SEO optimized front page affects the speed of ranking your website?
      I had links already, I was ranking before for something different. For static, honestly I am not sure but what I can tell you is for speed ranking the important thing is to make sure your site loads faster than competitors.

      Ofcourse its a minor factor but if your articles and links are good and their is an equal competitors speed will help you there.
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