A Newbies Journal - Help/Advice Welcome!
- Thread starter Finner
- Start date
StackCash - Thanks a ton, awesome advice in there, didn't even know about that forum, some great information.
I have written a well done ezine article and a squidoo page, however have not pointed any links to them to improve the juice they pass on.
As an update in the last few days:
After experimenting with different adsense plugins i eventually did away with all of them and inserted adsense code directly into the pages. The adsense plugins were terrible at inserting into text and wrecked a lot of the formatting on various pages. I researched the best location and sizes for adsense bars and placed the highest recommended bars into the highest recommended spots on my page.
I also amended the style, created a new header image while shrinking it down a little, and changed the margins in order to make the site look more professional while fitting the large banner size from adsense.
I also added metatags and a description to the site, which will hopefully improve the clickthrough ratio from the google search results to my site.
I purchased the SBB from river recommended above on the 22nd of November in the evening. As of yet i have not heard from him regarding the reports though from recent posts it looks like he completed the request but the report has not yet been mailed.
I also pinged about half the links from the fiverr purchase i did last week and will be pinging the rest.
I saw a major jump in rankings late in the evening on the 22nd. I would assume it was from the fiverr 150 SBB purchase.
On the morning of the 23rd I as sitting in SERP for keywords at:
#1 - 12
#2 - 3
#3 - 13
#4 - 14
Since then i have fallen off a few spots, (From 3-7 from 12-15, etc.) I imagine that once the SBB links get indexed i will jump again, ideally to a top 3 spots.
Interestingly i had no meaningful traffic despite ranking 3rd for that short period of time (720 exact searches per month on #2 keyword), although being around christmas, it doesn't mean a lot.
Some additional data.
Unique Visitors (to date) - 40
Number of Impressions (to date from search on webmaster tools) - 1600 (about 150-300 per day right now)
Number of clicks (to date) - less than 10
Queries (to date- assuming number of keywords i've had an impression on) - 62
From what i can see in Analytics i've only had about 6 visitors from google. Hopefully this improves. I have earned 0$ on adsense so far, despite 177 impressions.
New questions:
Since i adjusted the theme i tested the page in different browsers with no problems, but on my mobile phone it renders the sidebar underneath the posts instead of beside....any reason for this?
The adsense ads are not very relevent to my content...can i "specialize" it more? ALso i only specified text ads, as i understand they have a higher CTR, is that correct?
Looking forward:
I'm going to likely sit and wait to see the effects of the SBB and potentially add another article in the next day or so. I'm going to continue to see how i can tweak the page for onsite SEO. I'm also going to google how i can correct how the page is rendering on mobiles.
Likely next week i will add other links in an effort to push myself upwords. Right now i feel like the site is there, it has good content, but i need to get visitors. A waiting game i suppose until i can rise in the rankings.
I have written a well done ezine article and a squidoo page, however have not pointed any links to them to improve the juice they pass on.
As an update in the last few days:
After experimenting with different adsense plugins i eventually did away with all of them and inserted adsense code directly into the pages. The adsense plugins were terrible at inserting into text and wrecked a lot of the formatting on various pages. I researched the best location and sizes for adsense bars and placed the highest recommended bars into the highest recommended spots on my page.
I also amended the style, created a new header image while shrinking it down a little, and changed the margins in order to make the site look more professional while fitting the large banner size from adsense.
I also added metatags and a description to the site, which will hopefully improve the clickthrough ratio from the google search results to my site.
I purchased the SBB from river recommended above on the 22nd of November in the evening. As of yet i have not heard from him regarding the reports though from recent posts it looks like he completed the request but the report has not yet been mailed.
I also pinged about half the links from the fiverr purchase i did last week and will be pinging the rest.
I saw a major jump in rankings late in the evening on the 22nd. I would assume it was from the fiverr 150 SBB purchase.
On the morning of the 23rd I as sitting in SERP for keywords at:
#1 - 12
#2 - 3
#3 - 13
#4 - 14
Since then i have fallen off a few spots, (From 3-7 from 12-15, etc.) I imagine that once the SBB links get indexed i will jump again, ideally to a top 3 spots.
Interestingly i had no meaningful traffic despite ranking 3rd for that short period of time (720 exact searches per month on #2 keyword), although being around christmas, it doesn't mean a lot.
Some additional data.
Unique Visitors (to date) - 40
Number of Impressions (to date from search on webmaster tools) - 1600 (about 150-300 per day right now)
Number of clicks (to date) - less than 10
Queries (to date- assuming number of keywords i've had an impression on) - 62
From what i can see in Analytics i've only had about 6 visitors from google. Hopefully this improves. I have earned 0$ on adsense so far, despite 177 impressions.
New questions:
Since i adjusted the theme i tested the page in different browsers with no problems, but on my mobile phone it renders the sidebar underneath the posts instead of beside....any reason for this?
The adsense ads are not very relevent to my content...can i "specialize" it more? ALso i only specified text ads, as i understand they have a higher CTR, is that correct?
Looking forward:
I'm going to likely sit and wait to see the effects of the SBB and potentially add another article in the next day or so. I'm going to continue to see how i can tweak the page for onsite SEO. I'm also going to google how i can correct how the page is rendering on mobiles.
Likely next week i will add other links in an effort to push myself upwords. Right now i feel like the site is there, it has good content, but i need to get visitors. A waiting game i suppose until i can rise in the rankings.
FYI, I've bookmarked your thread and I'm enjoying the read. I am right at the exact point you are at. Built my site, have about 8 1000 word articles hand written by me. Just considering spending the money on the social bookmarking bomb. This is also my first site and my major concern of course is failure. Do I spend the $40 and move up the serps in google and rank well, get traffic but still make no money? I kind of fear that is what is going to happen. Then I've wasted the money that could be spent on other things. I'm a tight wad with money and any little bit that gets wasted just burns my hide. I've researched my main competitor and his content is complete crap, spinned content that makes no sense. He barely has any content at all. But I assume he also is making no money.
Don't quit this journal, I gotta know how the social bomb turns out and if it turns into monies. MONIES MONIES MONIES!!
Don't quit this journal, I gotta know how the social bomb turns out and if it turns into monies. MONIES MONIES MONIES!!
Updates!!!
proplayer44- Thanks for reading. I was kind of in the same spot as you, didn't want to spend the money, but figured i had to, at the least as a learning experience.
Got the SBB report on December 27th. As of yet have seen no noticeable change in rankings, so i'm unsure if the big leap on the 23rd could have been because of the SBB. I think it must of been because of the fiverr purchase, as from what i can tell on the report, most of the SBB links were put in on the 25th and the 26th, but who knows.
I'm sitting in SERPS between 9 and 15 on my 4 main keywords on Google.
I'm still receiving very little traffic although my impressions have gone substantially up, about 320 per day. I have 45 unique visitors (total from start of website a month ago), up from 40 from the evening of the 27th, so still little traffic.
The visitors who do visit seem to be reading the articles though, and my bounce rate has dropped to 38% (although i'm unsure if that is a good or bad number).
I posted a new article yesterday (About 500 words).
I also signed up for Backlinkgenie (BLG - basic 9.99 a month). Had seen the service recommended on WF, and figured that as pretty much every backlink was pointing at my main domain that i'd do about a week at some of the pages on my domain, and then in early January i'll switch to juicing some of the links that the SBB hit, and the ezine/squidoo lenses i'd already set up.
It seems like a big waiting game right now. I am rising in impressions but no traffic, and i likely need to sit at top 3 to get some meaningful hits.
I did have 1 person click on my affiliate link, however they did not buy. Adsense income is still 0.
I signed up for SERPIQ(free) and MicrositeMasters(free). The main keyword i have is a SERPIQ of 40 (unsure how difficult that is considered).
To be quite honest, i'm unsure what to do now. Content is there, but no traffic.
Should i build another site? Another keyword? Part of me thinks this would be a good idea, as essentially i feel i have tapped out the "work" portion on this site until traffic begins to flow, and based on the month long period to get here, it might be a good idea to start keyword research for a new domain (which should be a learning process in itself).
proplayer44- Thanks for reading. I was kind of in the same spot as you, didn't want to spend the money, but figured i had to, at the least as a learning experience.
Got the SBB report on December 27th. As of yet have seen no noticeable change in rankings, so i'm unsure if the big leap on the 23rd could have been because of the SBB. I think it must of been because of the fiverr purchase, as from what i can tell on the report, most of the SBB links were put in on the 25th and the 26th, but who knows.
I'm sitting in SERPS between 9 and 15 on my 4 main keywords on Google.
I'm still receiving very little traffic although my impressions have gone substantially up, about 320 per day. I have 45 unique visitors (total from start of website a month ago), up from 40 from the evening of the 27th, so still little traffic.
The visitors who do visit seem to be reading the articles though, and my bounce rate has dropped to 38% (although i'm unsure if that is a good or bad number).
I posted a new article yesterday (About 500 words).
I also signed up for Backlinkgenie (BLG - basic 9.99 a month). Had seen the service recommended on WF, and figured that as pretty much every backlink was pointing at my main domain that i'd do about a week at some of the pages on my domain, and then in early January i'll switch to juicing some of the links that the SBB hit, and the ezine/squidoo lenses i'd already set up.
It seems like a big waiting game right now. I am rising in impressions but no traffic, and i likely need to sit at top 3 to get some meaningful hits.
I did have 1 person click on my affiliate link, however they did not buy. Adsense income is still 0.
I signed up for SERPIQ(free) and MicrositeMasters(free). The main keyword i have is a SERPIQ of 40 (unsure how difficult that is considered).
To be quite honest, i'm unsure what to do now. Content is there, but no traffic.
Should i build another site? Another keyword? Part of me thinks this would be a good idea, as essentially i feel i have tapped out the "work" portion on this site until traffic begins to flow, and based on the month long period to get here, it might be a good idea to start keyword research for a new domain (which should be a learning process in itself).
I would like to appreciate the management and the whole team of wickedfire.com who has set this forum for the newbie who are seeking for any advice or information. A Newbies Journal is one of the best services provided by wickedfire.com. The people who are looking for the information regarding Search Engine Optimization or about the ways to add more traffic to their website etc can enjoy the benefits of this Journal. Thanks a lot for starting this unique Journal. The experts come and provide assistance and enough knowledge to the newbie through this journal. It would help them out from any confusion in IT field.
As a quick update, not a lot of changes, however my homepage has disappeared from ALL google rankings for the last 2 days.
IT was my highest ranking page so I hope it returns soon.
I checked site
site URL) and it shows, so ideally no penalty.
I've been pinging 100 of the SBB links i ordered daily. Hopefully the disappearance is just the google dance. I have no messages on webmaster tools, and the only backlinks to the site are from 150 SB from fiverr and the river SBB, plus another 80 or so, some manual and some from backlink genie.
I've changed backlink genie to backlink the top 50 PR urls from the SBB from river to increase the juice they give.
I've been doing some research for keywords for my next site, but so far no cigar. Been doing some looking on the godaddy domain search for some older domains as ideally that will help me rank easier for my next try.
Based on my backlink profile, i doubt that i'm in the penalty box, but who knows. I"ll keep my fingers crossed that i'll pop up on the first page again.
My top ranking for any of my google keywords is now 85 as its all sub pages.
IT was my highest ranking page so I hope it returns soon.
I checked site
site URL) and it shows, so ideally no penalty.I've been pinging 100 of the SBB links i ordered daily. Hopefully the disappearance is just the google dance. I have no messages on webmaster tools, and the only backlinks to the site are from 150 SB from fiverr and the river SBB, plus another 80 or so, some manual and some from backlink genie.
I've changed backlink genie to backlink the top 50 PR urls from the SBB from river to increase the juice they give.
I've been doing some research for keywords for my next site, but so far no cigar. Been doing some looking on the godaddy domain search for some older domains as ideally that will help me rank easier for my next try.
Based on my backlink profile, i doubt that i'm in the penalty box, but who knows. I"ll keep my fingers crossed that i'll pop up on the first page again.
My top ranking for any of my google keywords is now 85 as its all sub pages.
Nope, my home page is still not ranking anywhere on google. It is being indexed on Yahoo and Bing and i'm ranking fairly well there for a few keywords (top 20) however in Google my home page has still not come back.
Unsure what to do at this point. Content is being updated weekly but my impressions and visitors are dropping as i'm not ranking.
I disabled my plugins, checked the robots.txt, but still nothing. The only thing i can think of is because my posts are "duplicate" content on the home page (ie. i write a post, it shows on homepage and on its own page) that google is discounting the home page.
Unsure what to do at this point. Content is being updated weekly but my impressions and visitors are dropping as i'm not ranking.
I disabled my plugins, checked the robots.txt, but still nothing. The only thing i can think of is because my posts are "duplicate" content on the home page (ie. i write a post, it shows on homepage and on its own page) that google is discounting the home page.
Make a post that you want to be the main content of your homepage and make it "sticky" in WP so that it stays on top always.
Then, create excerpts of each additional post. By doing this, you will have a brief description of each post on the homepage, instead of duplicate content of the inner pages.
I have a new website that am first in yahoo and bing and nowhere in google. It first showed up a little on google for like 2 days and then disappeared. I have done some link building and it is not penalized . Hopefully it will pop up again.
Stackcash - I'm following what you recommended.
theactiveactor - My main page no longer is ranking for ANY keywords at all. A few of the subpages are ranking far lower then the home page for those keywords but my main page is not in the top 1000 results for these keywords (some of which are extremely low competiton) Prior to disappearing, i was in the 10-25 spot.
theactiveactor - My main page no longer is ranking for ANY keywords at all. A few of the subpages are ranking far lower then the home page for those keywords but my main page is not in the top 1000 results for these keywords (some of which are extremely low competiton) Prior to disappearing, i was in the 10-25 spot.
I got on board with affiliate marketing in August, before that I had absolutely no experience.
My site went live near the end of September and I am still struggling with traffic. I was fearful of the sandbox, getting blacklisted, all of it. So I made my backlinks slowly, made them quite diversified, and still nothing. I was/am getting anywhere from 3-10 visitors a day. Quite depressing actually. All of my articles were written by me, same with the content. After devoting so much energy to it and still seeing nothing, I started using scrapebox to build my links each day rather than manually, quit submitting articles, and went with some paid links - fiverr, directories, etc.
Still nada. Don't know what I did or didn't do right or wrong. Quite frustrating to come up with what you feel is a quality site and get nothing. I feel like Google rewards you with 7 visitors. Then you go online, search "good traffic numbers" and read about 500 visitors, 1000. I don't think I am at 1000 total.
My site went live near the end of September and I am still struggling with traffic. I was fearful of the sandbox, getting blacklisted, all of it. So I made my backlinks slowly, made them quite diversified, and still nothing. I was/am getting anywhere from 3-10 visitors a day. Quite depressing actually. All of my articles were written by me, same with the content. After devoting so much energy to it and still seeing nothing, I started using scrapebox to build my links each day rather than manually, quit submitting articles, and went with some paid links - fiverr, directories, etc.
Still nada. Don't know what I did or didn't do right or wrong. Quite frustrating to come up with what you feel is a quality site and get nothing. I feel like Google rewards you with 7 visitors. Then you go online, search "good traffic numbers" and read about 500 visitors, 1000. I don't think I am at 1000 total.
I've added an RSS feed to the sidebar of my page, with the results from my main keyword on google news as the URL.
I've sticked my main "intro" post as it were, and moved it to the top.
One problem, the only way i can get it to stay at the top is to change its date to the newest post. The stick ensures it stays on the front page, but in the same order it was in before. Any idea how to ix this?
I've also added links to my homepage from my sub pages.
I am again ranking with my home page but MUCH lower. I'm on the 7th or 8th page for most my keywords in google and 20-30 on yahoo/bing. I'm down to about 90 impressions per day from 400.
I don't get how i'm ranking so low when i've done a SBB/ 150 links from fiverr. I also ordered some blog comments on higher PR blogs but order hasn't been completed yet.
A bit disheartening, in a month i've only had 56 unique visitors, and no money earned via adsense. I've had 2 clicks through to amazon affiliates but no buyers. Interestingly my content must be relativley good, almost every visitor is spending a significant amount of time and viewing multiple pages.
At this point i need to rise in rankings back to first page to start getting visitors. I guess i'll keep buying links.
Any other tips?
Should i be pinging the links from the SBB? Should i start directing the BLG links to my homepage instead of my subpages/ezine articles/sbb? If i've done the SBB, some BLG, and now some higher PR blog comments, what is a good next service to go with?
Also for the exerpts you mentioned, i've been doing it manually with a read more link. Should i be using the aside/gallery features in wordpress instead?
I'm going to re enable the SEO plugin as well, unsure if it was the cause at all but it can only help;.
I've sticked my main "intro" post as it were, and moved it to the top.
One problem, the only way i can get it to stay at the top is to change its date to the newest post. The stick ensures it stays on the front page, but in the same order it was in before. Any idea how to ix this?
I've also added links to my homepage from my sub pages.
I am again ranking with my home page but MUCH lower. I'm on the 7th or 8th page for most my keywords in google and 20-30 on yahoo/bing. I'm down to about 90 impressions per day from 400.
I don't get how i'm ranking so low when i've done a SBB/ 150 links from fiverr. I also ordered some blog comments on higher PR blogs but order hasn't been completed yet.
A bit disheartening, in a month i've only had 56 unique visitors, and no money earned via adsense. I've had 2 clicks through to amazon affiliates but no buyers. Interestingly my content must be relativley good, almost every visitor is spending a significant amount of time and viewing multiple pages.
At this point i need to rise in rankings back to first page to start getting visitors. I guess i'll keep buying links.
Any other tips?
Should i be pinging the links from the SBB? Should i start directing the BLG links to my homepage instead of my subpages/ezine articles/sbb? If i've done the SBB, some BLG, and now some higher PR blog comments, what is a good next service to go with?
Also for the exerpts you mentioned, i've been doing it manually with a read more link. Should i be using the aside/gallery features in wordpress instead?
I'm going to re enable the SEO plugin as well, unsure if it was the cause at all but it can only help;.
You can make your main "intro" post into a "page" instead of a post, then set that page as a static page in Settings >> Reading >> Front page displays
That's good - a solid internal linking structure is important. In fact, it's ideal to have every page on your site link to every other page on your site. I'm pretty sure this can be achieved simply by having a list of all your pages on your side bar - but contextually linking to them is cool, too.
Patience, padawan. In reality a SBB and 150 links isn't that much. Not to mention it takes a long time for all those links to get indexed. I'll answer your question below right here - yes you NEED to be pinging those links, otherwise I think it's possible that they would NEVER get indexed. The best way to get your backlinks indexed appears to be services like linkilicious and lindexed, but pinging is free, so it's what I'm using for now.
But your site isn't even ranking well right now, is it? You can't really expect to have good traffic without dem ranks...
As good as the services in BST are, I can hardly recommend that you keep sinking money into them considering you're new at this, like me. Outsourcing tasks is valuable when you're balling and have dozens of sites to manage, but when you have a few (or just one) it shouldn't be a problem to build backlinks yourself.
Invest in scrapebox, and something like BMD or Sick Submitter (never used BMD personally but I know a lot of people use it). You can use scrapebox for blog comments, and can also use it to scrape bookmarking sites/etc to use with SS/BMD.
You don't have an EMD, and with 4k ELMS I'm going to bet the term is at least somewhat competitive. If you really want to rank well, then yes you'll need to continue link building/etc, but patience is most important. I know how maddening it can be staring at your sites in the SERPs thinking "c'mon rank damn it!!!" As your backlinks slowly begin to get indexed, your site will magically begin to rank on its own - not to mention the added bonus you get from having a more aged domain.
It wouldn't hurt. Don't be afraid of pointing backlinks right at your homepage - I know that's something a lot of people seem afraid of and have gotten bitten by, but those people were doing over-the-top 100k forum profile xrumer style blasts. 100 or even 1000 links at your site isn't going to get you a penalty with the possible exception of if you were able to somehow get every single one of them indexed at the same time (kudos if you do this).
I'd suggest going with what I mentioned above - Scrapebox and SS/BMD. Or if you don't get both, at least get Scrapebox. You can get it here for only $57 instead of the usual $97 or whatever it is.
Kw ranked for like 2 days right on to 2 nd page
Then not ranking in google for kw but 1st place in yahoo
Well I purchased Scrapebox. Played around with it but haven't used it yet.
Site is ranking for 2 or 3 keywords between 16-20 on Bing/Yahoo. That is for my main home page.
Home page has pretty much disappeared from Google rankings again.
Still averaging 1 to 2 visitors per day, good bounce rate and visit time.
Webmaster tools says i have Total links : 3,198.
Have no idea how i have that many, but hopefully i haven't been sand boxed.
Site is ranking for 2 or 3 keywords between 16-20 on Bing/Yahoo. That is for my main home page.
Home page has pretty much disappeared from Google rankings again.
Still averaging 1 to 2 visitors per day, good bounce rate and visit time.
Webmaster tools says i have Total links : 3,198.
Have no idea how i have that many, but hopefully i haven't been sand boxed.