Vision Quest: Ranking A Site Without Prior SEO Knowledge and $0 Budget
- SEO |
A Vision Quest is a rite of passage - a learning and apprenticeship of a child under the guidance of elders to contact a spirit or force. I am a child of SEO and my quest is to contact the spirit of ranking #1 for my keyword.
It started about in January of 2011. The plan for the website hatched inside of an independent coffee roasting cafe. A friend and I decided to start a website with the intention of debunking myths, setting facts straight, as well as become a reputable resource for anyone seeking information in this niche.
After doing some research on the main keyword of the site, we figured it received about 20,000 exact match searches a month. SEMRush ranked the competition at 1.00. We checked out the competition on the first 5 pages - these were powerhouses with huge marketing budgets. These companies spent more on marketing in a day than we made in a year combined.
Only someone as dumb or as crazy us the two of us together had any chance of hell freezing over.
We bought the domain, setup WordPress, and begin writing content immediately. In less than a week, the site had the general look we were going for at the time. 2 columns, menu on the right and menu at the top.
Our first 4 articles for the site focused on setting the facts straight. We were taking names and blasting media organizations blatantly using erroneous facts. We praised those who did not cause such grievances through truth in reporting.
Our articles were between 1200 and 3000 words long. We did research on specific phrases to use to encourage the search engines to give us love. We had images with alt tags, headings, bolded, underlined, and italicized words. Google wouldn't give us the time of day.
After a few months of receiving absolutely no traffic, I did a ton of reading on the Warrior Forums. I setup a SEO and sitemap plugin and began googling blogs on similar subjects and writing insightful 150+ word comments with links back to our site. I was forcing myself to write these comments several times a day for about 3 weeks before I burned out on commenting.
Also, we submitted the site to a bunch of social bookmarking sites. We began to see 1 or 2 hits a day trickle in from StumbleUpon, but no where else. We still couldn't find ourselves on any search terms.
Something positive finally happened. We were getting 5-8 hits a day from a variety of long tail searches. We began taking news articles and well-written blogs and linking to them from the site. We'd write a few paragraphs about the importance of the link to give search engines a little food and encourage more long tail searches.
We became pretty disheartened during this time period and didn't have a single update to the site. We were both considering just closing the site down. Despite our thoroughly researched articles, it appeared no one cared or could find us amongst all the other competition out there.
Sometime during the second week of January, a flurry of news articles started appearing about this niche. We were ranting to each other over the phone and mutually decided to continue working on our project. I decided with the new year I'd use a totally new theme and start fresh on looks. We also added Adsense to at least try to pay the site costs. My friend cranked out a couple new articles on the trending news.
It was the last week of January when I decided to check the various keyword rankings on different search terms. Our main, super competitive keyword, had us on page 16.
You may think being near the bottom of page 16 for a search result would be nothing to celebrate over, but we were exuberant. This ranking filled us both with an absolute ton of motivation to work on overdrive.
It also turned out first theme we used for WordPress was a free version of the premium theme. The free version blocked SEO plugins from functioning properly. Once we had a different theme in place, the SEO plugin which allowed tailoring the meta-descriptions and meta-titles kicked back in, which most likely made a huge difference. For your reference, the theme which we will never ever touch again with a 10' pole is Swift Themes.
We both spent 3 to 4 hours a day commenting on blogs/news sites and e-mailing the authors. We put together a huge article over 6,000 words on the subject and managed to squeeze a press release out of it. We sent off the PR to a couple free sites.
Several days after the PR was picked up by Google, our site jumped from page 16 to page 5. My guess is the blog commenting didn't have nearly the amount of backlink power necessary, compared to a press release. The PR wasn't picked up by anyone and resulted in about 20 hits over the next couple weeks. We were now getting about 15 hits a day from different searches.
An executive from a very large company e-mailed us and asked for a phone conference. I spoke to him on the phone for about 15 minutes. He mainly wanted to know about our backgrounds, where we got our information and research, and what our intentions were for the site. It wasn't said, but he was trying to determine if we were a threat or not. I ended the conversation by requesting he send over any information he'd like us to include on the site.
Another flurry of media attention gave us more ammo to write about. We sent out a press release for a contest we decided to run as well as gather data via surveying of our site visitors. 2 people have completed the survey over a span of 2 weeks, which has been disheartening.
We are currently ranked on the top of page 4. We have watched the site claw its way up one result at a time, dropping back down a result on occasion. We would really like some larger media organizations to mention us or reference the site in their research, but it seems no one is interested.
We are brainstorming for new and unique ways to further increase the site ranking. Who knows what April will have in store for us!
It started about in January of 2011. The plan for the website hatched inside of an independent coffee roasting cafe. A friend and I decided to start a website with the intention of debunking myths, setting facts straight, as well as become a reputable resource for anyone seeking information in this niche.
After doing some research on the main keyword of the site, we figured it received about 20,000 exact match searches a month. SEMRush ranked the competition at 1.00. We checked out the competition on the first 5 pages - these were powerhouses with huge marketing budgets. These companies spent more on marketing in a day than we made in a year combined.
Only someone as dumb or as crazy us the two of us together had any chance of hell freezing over.
January, 2011.
We bought the domain, setup WordPress, and begin writing content immediately. In less than a week, the site had the general look we were going for at the time. 2 columns, menu on the right and menu at the top.
Our first 4 articles for the site focused on setting the facts straight. We were taking names and blasting media organizations blatantly using erroneous facts. We praised those who did not cause such grievances through truth in reporting.
Our articles were between 1200 and 3000 words long. We did research on specific phrases to use to encourage the search engines to give us love. We had images with alt tags, headings, bolded, underlined, and italicized words. Google wouldn't give us the time of day.
March 2011.
After a few months of receiving absolutely no traffic, I did a ton of reading on the Warrior Forums. I setup a SEO and sitemap plugin and began googling blogs on similar subjects and writing insightful 150+ word comments with links back to our site. I was forcing myself to write these comments several times a day for about 3 weeks before I burned out on commenting.
Also, we submitted the site to a bunch of social bookmarking sites. We began to see 1 or 2 hits a day trickle in from StumbleUpon, but no where else. We still couldn't find ourselves on any search terms.
April 2011.
Something positive finally happened. We were getting 5-8 hits a day from a variety of long tail searches. We began taking news articles and well-written blogs and linking to them from the site. We'd write a few paragraphs about the importance of the link to give search engines a little food and encourage more long tail searches.
May 2011-December 2011.
We became pretty disheartened during this time period and didn't have a single update to the site. We were both considering just closing the site down. Despite our thoroughly researched articles, it appeared no one cared or could find us amongst all the other competition out there.
January 2012.
Sometime during the second week of January, a flurry of news articles started appearing about this niche. We were ranting to each other over the phone and mutually decided to continue working on our project. I decided with the new year I'd use a totally new theme and start fresh on looks. We also added Adsense to at least try to pay the site costs. My friend cranked out a couple new articles on the trending news.
It was the last week of January when I decided to check the various keyword rankings on different search terms. Our main, super competitive keyword, had us on page 16.
You may think being near the bottom of page 16 for a search result would be nothing to celebrate over, but we were exuberant. This ranking filled us both with an absolute ton of motivation to work on overdrive.
It also turned out first theme we used for WordPress was a free version of the premium theme. The free version blocked SEO plugins from functioning properly. Once we had a different theme in place, the SEO plugin which allowed tailoring the meta-descriptions and meta-titles kicked back in, which most likely made a huge difference. For your reference, the theme which we will never ever touch again with a 10' pole is Swift Themes.
February 2012.
We both spent 3 to 4 hours a day commenting on blogs/news sites and e-mailing the authors. We put together a huge article over 6,000 words on the subject and managed to squeeze a press release out of it. We sent off the PR to a couple free sites.
Several days after the PR was picked up by Google, our site jumped from page 16 to page 5. My guess is the blog commenting didn't have nearly the amount of backlink power necessary, compared to a press release. The PR wasn't picked up by anyone and resulted in about 20 hits over the next couple weeks. We were now getting about 15 hits a day from different searches.
An executive from a very large company e-mailed us and asked for a phone conference. I spoke to him on the phone for about 15 minutes. He mainly wanted to know about our backgrounds, where we got our information and research, and what our intentions were for the site. It wasn't said, but he was trying to determine if we were a threat or not. I ended the conversation by requesting he send over any information he'd like us to include on the site.
March 2012.
Another flurry of media attention gave us more ammo to write about. We sent out a press release for a contest we decided to run as well as gather data via surveying of our site visitors. 2 people have completed the survey over a span of 2 weeks, which has been disheartening.
We are currently ranked on the top of page 4. We have watched the site claw its way up one result at a time, dropping back down a result on occasion. We would really like some larger media organizations to mention us or reference the site in their research, but it seems no one is interested.
We are brainstorming for new and unique ways to further increase the site ranking. Who knows what April will have in store for us!