Hello all: I have been gaining knowledge and helpful information for a few weeks now, but with all the newly acquired knowledge comes a flood of questions. I am hoping I can get some directed advice on this thread. My site was created about 6 weeks ago. It is an affiliate site (don't know if that is ill received or not, but that is what it is) and weblog devoted to several outdoor sports categories. My intention is to make the site not only a source of revenue, but one rich in relevant information on these categories, and, with the Blog, a community of people who can help each other with whatever they are looking for. The product pages are all optimized for extremely competitive keywords: "outdoor gear," "fishing tackle," "hunting gear," "camping equipment," "climbing gear," "gps systems," "kayaking," "skiing" and "outdoor clothing." Each of these keywords has enough searches monthly to make it worthwhile, if and when one were able to do well in SERPs. I began the site with lesser keywords, e.g., "outdoor sports gear," but these lesser keywords are not searched very often, so I abandoned the idea to optimize for these lesser keywords and just decided I would compete for the long haul with competitive keywords. (E.g., "outdoor gear" is searched 444 times per day, and "outdoor sports gear" 126; "skiing" 2666, "ski gear," my original keyword, a mere 87 times per day). My blog is up and running and I am now listed with approximately 70 blog feed sites. I have written somewhere around 10 articles, and posted my link on several link directories listed here. Although I have been confused by some posts on this Forum who indicate they only "leave the sandbox" after they stopped getting backlinks, I have taken it as a basic premise that backlinks, especially from articles posted on the web, for example, are a good thing. I realize the articles, blog feeds and backlinks are few, but this is where the site is now. What I try to do now is create a new web page, an article, and a blog post per day as a matter of course. Here is what I have found: Google has no backlinks listed to my site. MSN has over 300. Yahoo has 16. I am not within the first 1000 on any of the keywords for my product pages. Other keywords are starting to show results, but these are more arcane: e.g., for "duck hunting gear" I am position 2 on page 1 MSN, nothing for this keyword anywhere else. "Hunting equip." position 4, page 1 Google. For any of the words where I'm ranking well, they are not searched very much. For example, "duck hunting gear" receives a mere 72 searches a day, and "hunting equip" gets virtually nothing. And these are the best results I'm getting. I am starting to see my site coming up on natural searches, maybe 3-4 times per day. The conversion rate for clickthroughs is small, and advertiser purchases are non-existent. My question is this: is this site doomed? Meaning, have I just chosen keywords too competitive to enter - or is this just a normal part of a 6-week old site's life? Also, if any have any opinions on the site itself - whether it fares well for appeal once getting to it via natural search, or a big turnoff, I would appreciate it. I have other sites in mind and my desire was to get this site up, running, and receiving decent traffic before beginning another one. With the sea of information out there, and given that I have been webmastering for all of, oh, 6 weeks confused, deciding where to go from here is a crossroads. I realize this Forum has gotten a lot of these requests. I am hopeful others will be in my same shoes, and the centralized recommendations will be of help to many. My thanks. Paul
6 weeks isnt nearly enough time, especially for a site youre creating original content for. It's cliche', but content is king. If you keep creating original, useful, entertaining content... traffic will take care of itself. Give yourself at least 6 months.
No, this site isn't doomed. But you did pick some "generic" keywords in hopes of ranking. Being an authority means you need to have every topic, from "Hunting gear for spring" to "Best Outdoor bird Calling equipment" type keywords. It's fine to start a site like that, but you have to be aware that you're only going to get the "low hanging fruit" or the "long-tail" of keywords within you niche. But build it up. 5 years is going to come whether you like it or not, why not continue to build it into an awesome resource and conquer it within 3 years.
Thank you both. Voasi - I guess this gets to the heart of my question. If I shoot for the "low hanging fruit" like "Hunting gear for spring," I expect I will rank well for searches where no one searches on. My question is, really, with such generic (and highly searched) keywords, is this a good fight to make, or, in people's experience, is this just not the game to play? Many thanks both. Paul
Something like 30-50% of search terms are 3 or 4 words, or more. Low hanging fruit really isn't. What it is is delivering extremely targetted traffic to your site. How do you think the conversion would be for visitors coming in on the term 'buy fly fishing tackle'? I'm thinking, pretty good. What about someone searching for a specific model of fishing rod, or piece of hunting gear? say there was a manufacturer called ryobi who makes scroll saws, with their popular model being SC425. Rank on 'ryobi SC425', and you're going to sell some scroll saws. Then compound that with all thier other models, etc. compare that with visitors coming in on the term 'fly fishing'. maybe they're looking for gear. Maybe they're looking for a how to site. maybe they're looking for places to fly fish. either way, most won't be wanting whichever of those you're offering on your site. In short, the deal *is* to target low hanging fruit, because that's where the business is. As a start if you're writing content, pick a couple niche terms. Write an article on the topic using those keywords in the title of the page and in the article. Then link to this article from within your site using the niche term (i.e., on your home page put a link that says 'Ryobi SC425' that links to your article. ) Make sure your article has a direct method - maybe another link - directly to whatever sales thing you do. That's one way to get started on these lesser search terms.
Wheel, thank you. I better "get it" as regards low hanging fruit and targetted searches (thank you again as well, Voasi). What I have been doing is blogging, creating new pages, submitting articles. The articles are linked back to my sales pages, with these generic (highly searched) keywords as anchor text, e.g., outdoor gear. I am also creating new web pages which all link to each other. Finally, knowing "fly fishing" is huge, I've created a page with fly fishing, with other pages, such as "how to fly fish" or "basics of choosing fly fishing gear" all linking not only to each other, but some text somewhere within the internal page linking back to a product page. If I am hearing you right, Wheel, create off-site articles on specific topics, anchor text with "lesser" or more specific keywords back to my sales/product pages, and on the site link to the articles themselves. I have also heard that if one uses only one anchor text, across many articles, for instance, you may not get much help from doing so. If I have heard right, vary the anchor text (and vary the page goes to). Sound right? Thanks.
I was suggesting on-site articles, but yes, what you've said is part of what you need to be doing. I was suggesting providing content directly to the SE's from your site by publishing articles directly. What you've suggested is getting other sites to publish a page that contains an article with links to your site. that's called a presell page and is a very good idea if done correctly. Certainly both methods are things you can be doing.
Make sure you try to get the keyword phrase as is at the front of your article / page title. This will really help, especially with Yahoo. The other thing is to check your traffic logs and see what keyword phrases people are actually using to find your site. You may find they are coming from a search for which you currently have no related information on your site. In that case, immediately make a page optimized for this phrase with the appropriate affiliate programs on it.
Stephen, hadn't thought of that (the search words they are using). So far, I haven't been getting a ton of natural search results, maybe 3-5 per day, and those searches are for articles pages which exist (i.e., cross country skiing technique). But great advice, and I will monitor and create pages accordingly. Thanks again, Wheel. Paul