It's scary but hang in there...

13 replies
  • SEO
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Here's a little story for you that might sound familiar.

I'm working on a site right now to rank for a single word and a two word phrase. The single word is incredibly competitive and well known.

Slowly but surely we have moved from position 91 to position 17 for the single and from position 119 to position 9 for the two word phrase.

The site has no more than 10 pages, one of the pages is very content rich, maybe 25,000 words in total.

Over the last two months we have added around 1,800 back links.

These have been from a large variety of sources which include:

2.0
Our own blogs (about 50 or so) - we use these for guaranteed never removed links.
Normal WH RSS stratagies.
Profile BL's
Lots of content based from selective article databases, unique content.
Blog posts
Manual forum posts.

Anyway to the meat of this..

5 days ago we wanted to increase the relevance of the site because we felt we were simply at the limit of how much further we could go.

So we built an additional silo structure into the site, and linked from the home page to the catagories we had built.

Each catagory then had about 5 keyword rich unique articles placed in it that were specific to the two word keyphrase .

Two days later I open up Market Sam to see if we had inched forward another few positions..

ARGHHHHH--- its' red everywhere, positions 500+

Ultra panic, go and double check everything, fidget for half a day, go and check some a-hole competitor hasn't played nasty on us, nothing, everything looks good.

So the temptation was to go and fiddle, but having been there before, we sat tight.

This morning - voila...

Back up and better than ever.

The two word phrase that we added the relevence content for in the silo structure is now position 9 - first time we hit front page for it.

The single word is slightly worse off at position at 21, but I'm confident that will pop back.

I'm currently putting together content for that single word which will also go into a silo structured catagory linked from the home page of the site to increase the relevence.

Don't know what the morale of this story is other than this.

If we had gone and removed content or changed xyz , and the results had popped back we would have had an entirely screwed viewpoint of why the issue occurred.

In short, hang in there and give the SERPS a chance to settle, the dance isn't a myth.

Changing numerous paramaters in panic, only serves to muddy the water, let things lie for at least a week before you consider your options.

Waffle over...
#hang #scary
  • Profile picture of the author Craig McPherson
    Simon,

    Congrats on showing so much stickability at getting the one word phrase ranked.
    That is a monumental task and your efforts have been fantastic.

    I will be keeping an eye on this thread to hear of your future success.

    Well done mate

    Craig
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    • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
      Originally Posted by Craig McPherson View Post

      Simon,

      That is a monumental task and your efforts have been fantastic.

      Craig
      Thanks Craig, although I can't take the credit really for the tedious elements of the back linking, we outsource a lot of it, although we do keep a very tight eye on the type , number and consistency of the links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Way to go Simon!

    Smart work always pays-off

    Let us know how the single word goes from here.

    Fernando
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    People make good money selling to the rich. But the rich got rich selling to the masses.
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    • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      Way to go Simon!

      Smart work always pays-off

      Let us know how the single word goes from here.

      Fernando
      I'll keep it up to date when I can, no problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author JackPowers
    So how much is the first page ranking making you?
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    • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
      Originally Posted by JackPowers View Post

      So how much is the first page ranking making you?
      At this point Jack we haven't even tried to determine that.

      Remember we are currently sat in position 9 for the 2 word keyphrase.

      Position 9, might as well be position 99 for this 2 word phrase as what's above us is relevant.

      Position 1 is almost unbeatable, we may be able to beat position 2, (wiki) we have done it before , but our aim is position 3. With solid TITLE and compelling meta description we will get a good share of the search volume.

      Our one word phrase isn't on page 1 yet, It's incredibly competitive and has huge huge search volume, I would estimate the no1 position for our 1 word term is making millions a year from it as they have it monetized in a large variety of methods and a daily audience in excess of 500,000 views , albeit from numerous sources, not just this number phrase. They are indexed and appear for hundreds of phrases.

      If we can get our site into a top 3-4 position for this phrase because it offers something unique in the title/description we will do nicely.

      People who are into the niche, know the no1 listing for this phrase very well so it's likely they have already been there and will be looking for something else.

      We keep good stats and know our conversions , when we hit page 1 in a decent position for either the 2 word or 1 word, I'll let you know then.
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  • Profile picture of the author greff
    Simon,

    Yes, you are right. People who have been doing this for many years will agree.

    I had a website that was sunk by Google a few years ago. I had a PR6 at one time, believe it or not. But it was much easier to get a high PR five years ago.

    So I rebuilt the site mostly by eliminating the junk which comprised about 90% of the site. One day it reappeared in the SERPs. I think that was two years later.

    Jack makes a great point above. First page in Google does not guarantee sales or even "open the floodgates" to traffic as some people would have us believe. Depending on your keyword it will usually make some difference but not always great difference.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lett
    Thanks a lot for this article.
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  • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
    Todays update, hit position 8 for the two word phrase- moved up 1.
    One word phrase, dropped nearly 30 positions overnight.

    Something else to add to the mix, a slight variation of our 1 word phrase has popped into position 21.

    To explain that a little more , our one word phrase can be spelled with 2 words.

    By that I mean some people split our one word phrase into 2 words when they type it in.

    That's popped up at 21.

    And so the battles goes on...
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  • Profile picture of the author Mrs S
    Simon thanks for sharing this. I need to do some work on my main niche site as I decided to change the domain and the site structure on the same day and my SERPS traffic has crashed. I'm sitting tight at the moment and then I'm going to try and tweak one thing at a time, and build some backlinks to try and nurse it back.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    Simon,

    Congrats on your achievement and thanks for that excellent bit of knowledge.

    Just a quick question regarding the backlinking from your own blogs. I also have many blogs that I'd like to interlink but I'm afraid that Google might consider this to be a link farm.

    What method(s) have you adopted to overcome this so you do not leave any footprints? For example, have you registered domains in different names etc? Would really appreciate an insight into this.

    Thanks
    Zaheer
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    Thanks
    Zaheer

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    • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
      Originally Posted by nettech View Post

      Simon,

      Congrats on your achievement and thanks for that excellent bit of knowledge.

      Just a quick question regarding the backlinking from your own blogs. I also have many blogs that I'd like to interlink but I'm afraid that Google might consider this to be a link farm.

      What method(s) have you adopted to overcome this so you do not leave any footprints? For example, have you registered domains in different names etc? Would really appreciate an insight into this.

      Thanks
      Zaheer
      Hi Zaheer,

      We have the blogs on entirely different C classes, we don't spend much doing this, simply using a service like SEO Hosting or similar.

      We do mix it up a bit on domain registrars, but we don't have every blog under a different registrar at all.

      So far no issues.

      All the best.
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  • Profile picture of the author Midas3 Consulting
    Todays update.

    We have decided to add another 1000 back links to this project this next month, that will give us close to 3000. On paper, looking at the competition, this should take us to page 1 for the majority of the 9 terms in total we are trying to rank for.

    Our back links include our two primary keywords, however we mix the anchor text up by including the primary keyword along with long tails (up to 3 words in total), we have 7 terms overall which all include the first primary keyword and 2 terms which include the second primary keyword we want to rank for.

    In terms of positions, first the bad news.

    Our 1 word phrase (spealt as one word) has dropped some 80 positions overnight , I'm not sweating it right now , these things are in serious flux at the moment.

    Our 2 word variation of the one word phrase has stayed at 21.

    We obviously want the 1 word variation back as it's a biggie but the two word variation seems to get more traffic according to the tools.

    We have 2 x3 word phrases which get good search volume now, (all containing the primary 1 word phrase) now at 18, these are consistently on the up , one moved up 11 positions yesterday.

    These are "primary keyword" + two more words terms.

    So overall, lots of dancing going on, some good news and some bad.

    The domain is aged, we believe it can stand another 1000 back links this quickly although we are going to vary the sources even further this time.

    Overall a lot of positives, our only concern now is the single keyword which has dropped like a bomb again, lets hope it tangoes back up.
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