Am I going in the right direction?

Jan,

I would like to say only one thing. Write article for people not for google. This advice I get from famous blogger John Chow. And you will have more comments and more likes on your page. This will help you to get even more rankings in google.

HI Uros,

Thanks for your tip, I have written all articles really for the user (not or search engines). I also based the layout on what would be good for the user. But maybe I am also in a very competitive market.

Thx.

I haven't thought about SEO in writing, I thought it would be better to write for the user and that it would more easily result in natural links... but natural links don't seem to happen that often.

Just keep writing quality articles, and your website will gain authority in the long term. If you want to speed up the process, you can use seo services - there are many of them in the WSO and the Warriors for hire section, but the best services are quite pricey ($50-$100 per month).

Of course, you can always get free traffic (from forum signature links, utilizing Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest - I think the latter one would be the best for your site).

It's funny how a good question like this does not get a lot of attention. yeah, sounds like your doing OK. The key is consistency. Did you do your research on your market and niche first to see what the demand is?

Just use the google keyword planner and that should give you an idea. Sounds like you have a lot of content on your site which is good. Now say post 500 unique articles to different high page rank article sites all linking back to different pages or post to within your website.

Make sure the titles and content of your article are keyword optimized and that should get you going pretty good.... Then its up to how you are monetizing the traffic.

Yes I did do some research actually, I've seen that most top results don't give enough information including a map with activities (clickable to learn more). I currently have a travel guide on 48 cities in the Netherlands so I'm quite sure that the search potential would be enormous, but it will be difficult to rank I guess.

I was under the impression that article submitting / guest posting isn't liked by Google as much anymore (or is going to be less liked this year). So currently I have only focussed on getting links on travel blogs and relevant sites to the Netherlands.

Good tip of the titles, I should change all the ones for my city guides.

Monetizing is not really an issue yet, I'm first going to focus on content and visitors.

Have you considered advertising?

If I had a choice between investing in advertising or SEO, my money would go to advertising, every time.

Why invest in something Google can wipe out in a second?

Well at the moment I don't have any income from the website, I do have one booking.com affiliate search box, however it did not really convert into money yet. So I guess advertising won't be my best option then or not? Or would it help create exposure and links you mean?

With 150 hits a day why not put adsense on it and see what happens?

It's refreshing to see a thread where the majority believe in quality content over SEO. Keep doing exactly what you're doing right now. In the long term you'll be way ahead. You haven't mentioned what your plans are for this site. If you're not already doing it you should consider putting together a Netherlands Tourist guide and offering it on your site in exchange for a visitor's contact information.

Again, it's hard to comment without knowing your plan but I would stay away from Adsense. What would be the point of busting your hiney to get visitors only to have them click away for pocket change?

If you've written 450 unique articles since September I think you need a medal - I'm impressed. I manage about two a week!
Jan, are you running a business Facebook page alongside your blog?
Boosting posts on Facebook to your target audience is a good way to generate new traffic.

First of all, congratulations on taking action, consistently, every single day! Just from that, I'll conclude that you've got what it takes to make it in this business... many of the people who get in this business don't stick with it.

So my opinion is, yes, you can make an income from your niche... you're getting daily visitors and now the key is to continue doing what you're doing, but applying social media to it as well... a fb fan page and posting your article links on your fan page.

Also, are you collecting leads on your website? If not, do that now.

You need leads to market to through an auto responder... or even a phone number from your visitors... I prefer email marketing.

Aside from that, SEO takes a long time... don't put your main focus on that, but continue doing it since you're getting visitors from it.

I'm not maintaining a list at the moment, I have some ideas to offer a downloadable pdf guide that requires an email for example. But I provide tourist infomation so once someone has visited the country they won't be interested in any deals I could offer for some time I guess.

Mainly, what I am getting from this thread is that I best keep posting content and that I'll slowly get more and more authority and visitors. So that's what I as planning on doing anyway.

One thing that I might look into is writing some sort of linkbait articles, so articles that would get a lot of shares and links because they are very usefull and entertaining... or a free city map or something.

You are doing good Jan. Just read the whole thread and most of the things have been covered. All I can say is, kudos to you for consistent action and for asking some good questions. I am sure many newbies benefited from this discussion.

Thanks, I've been getting a lot of useful tips. I'm going to keep adding content every day and check out my meta titles and descriptions. I will also go through every article to check if there are possibilities for links to my other articles, this will make navigating easier for users and I have so much more content now to link to, I'm sure lots of relevant innerlinks can be added.

Linkbuilding wise I already got some great links by reaching out to relevant websites and contacting some forum member. I also noticed some natural links (even a PR6 Dutch psychology blog). So I'm just gonna sit back and see what happens naturally, or maybe if I see something interesting on the forum I will check out some SEO advice and services.

Of course I'll keep posting to my facebook page and I'm also gonna check out what Pinterest can do for me. I should also read more about this getting a list, I'm new to that.

Goal for this month is reaching 500 articles.

An update for those that want to know how it's going and to tell that working hard and just keep going will reward you... it takes time but it works. Currently I have translated my content also into Dutch (first it was only in English) and I am now close to 1000 posts in my wordpress website.

I just keep writing and adding cool things to do in the Netherlands and add them in both languages at once. I've been contacting other websites to link to me and even some museums are now linking to me...(I've also noticed that even wikipedia put me on one of their pages) My website is really getting to be an authority, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Currently I am getting over 500 visitors each day.

It's still a struggle sometimes because it takes a lot of work and time to get to the top... I hope that in 2015 I will have thousands of visitors each day.

You could also try monetizing your blogs with Amazon ads. They seem to convert really well..

Yes I do use a lot of images and sometimes a video. In fact every post has at least one image in it on top of the post that depicts the attraction, city or sight that I am writing about. And a lot of my posts have an image gallery after the post.

Also each post about an attraction/sight/museum has a google map in it so you can see where it is and also see all the other activities on my website that are close to it, this way the user can easily navigate to relevant posts.

I also think, write for visitors, BUT ALSO WRITE SEO OPTIMIZED ARTICLES !

BIG MISTAKE: You are leaving traffic on the table by not writing related seo content articles, and as a result you have lost a certain percentage of traffic from not doing this .

Now, I am not suggesting at any moment , that you do not write for visitors, on the contrary, you do both, meaning write content that is not wrote with seo in mind, BUT DO NOT IGNORE feeding the visitors the SEO optimized content, information, they are looking for on Google.

Use this tool calle ....The google keyword planner ( spy tool) allows you to look deep into the minds and souls of your target market, they are telling you the exact information they are looking for and the content you should provide to them, so would you not want to do that and why you did not do that means you did not study SEO, as a result you missed an opportunity to drive more traffic with optimized seo content.

FEED THE HUNGRY BEAST GOOGLE:
If you go to a restaurant you look at their menu and select the food you want, so think of providing your audience and google food that your target audience is looking for and google will serve that meal (content) to your audience resulting in more traffic,

Before you invest in SEO, you need to study it, why would you give your money to a seo company if you do not understand the mechanics of SEO, it is not rocket science but if you do not understand you are at a disadvantage they can RIP you OFF if you end up with the wrong seo company and do bad seo that will get you penalized, so it is a must that you understand the basics of seo.

One more tip:

Come up with content called LINK BAIT, research it and find how to create it to drive even more traffic.

Hi there Jan,

It sounds like you are doing a fantastic job with the content! Creating articles is fantastic for Google, but I think you would ramp up your views (and products sold!) if you use social media and advertising to back up the work you are doing for Google.

If you have a Facebook page and a Twitter page and follow others in your niche and post great content linking to your site then you will start attracting more organic traffic.

Also, think about creating a freebie to give away, such as a free report or such, to get people on your email list. What we have found is that if we do Facebook ads for a squeeze page, we get very good results with people signing up to join our email list. They will then go routing through your website and share your content too!

Hope this helps, good luck with it!

Christian

Hey Jan!

You've already been given some great advice by others in this thread.

But I wanted to tell you how awesome of a job you're doing by sticking with the site. To be honest, 99% of other marketers would have probably thrown in the towel by now.

This by itself puts you leaps and bounds ahead of most.

So keep doing what you're doing, learning as you go, and your success will be inevitable.

Keep up the great work!

Thx for all the tips. I'm also gonna read into this linkbait kind of articles. Then for the next month I'm going to change all my metadescription for tags that I've got (tags like 'Things to do in Amsterdam'). I think that should help too.