Newbie again Trial and Error Log + To Do list

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nicmakaveli

New member
Apr 17, 2012
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I hope I qualify for the newbie Section.
I want to keep this log here to get some insight and evaluation since I'm essentially new in the game.
Because I've been out of this for so long.
I have some really old sites which help me get indexed a little quicker.

I have seen how wickedfire's enlightened members help out here and I'll be grateful for any kind of insights i'll get.

I also want to keep this thread to have some kind of log and action plan for myself, since I find it hard to concentrate on just one thing.
Also because of this my posts will probably be brief (except this first one), since I tend to digress (what i'm doing now) in longer spells of writing.
To cut to the chase:
I have two projects I want to focus on now.

  • 1st is two sites in the telecom niche, I know quite a bit about it, and I think I can add value for visitors with my knowledge.
    I seperated the two sites because there is so much to write on these sub niches.
    I chose this 1st niche because I have had one fairly successful site with good earnings on amazon on a similar topic(blogging about new android phones).
    I will focus on content and navigation.
  • I have so far written about 40 articles, about 300 to 500 words each (know this is short but I want to make things clearer here and easier for people to read).
  • I read ccarters speed post and optimized accordingly today, I don't know what it was before but I have now a score of 84/100 and 86/100 respectively.
  • I got both sites indexed, and joes news link package for 247$
    even though it's for a different language, I had difficulty finding german links fast that would provide the same value so I gave it a go
    I have a solid income to try out a few things and thought why not if it won't work I go back to manual link building.
  • I am creating a directory with pages, so far I've done 3
    main directories
    linking to about 200 sub directories
    linking to about 120 sub pages with short descriptions which I will embellish later (when finished this should comprise about close to a 1000 mini pages within the 2nd site and 50 on the other)
  • 2nd is an older image sharing site that I have a good flow of visits (about 400k local per month) from, large member list (about 3000)
    but meager adsense earnings and got rejected for all affiliate programs I thought could bump these earnings up.
    So I'm looking into mobile apps for an alternative earnings flow or way out at least.
things to do
won't focus on income yet, but on content so no ads on the new sites until finished.



telecom sites


  1. make logos for each site
  2. write a post a day to each site
  3. interlink them directories until finished, at least 10 mini pages a day (want the sites to be easily navigated, so I opted for pages with list and manually built some anchor links freaking wordpress don't support this in the editor)
    It's going to be more work for the 2nd site because I will create TV show listings with descriptions and reviews, linking to which channel and linking to which provider you can get this channel with.
  4. migrate the older site from a US to a european server
    this has been taking all day (still downloading...) but ccarters thread really got under my skin so since I don't find much wrong with the site itself I'm figuring it's server location.
    I got high scores 84/100 and good eval at the websiteoptimisation test 3 http request and done all that
    But I myself find the site incredibly slow still (maybe it's also my net connection since the wordpress/buddypress admin sections are going at snail speed too)
  5. make the image sharing site linked with facebook bought a plugin for that 30$ a month but had some trouble implementing it probably pay somebody to do it.
    then mobilize it.
    Hope this will lead eventually to me getting users to use an app for mobile ads monetization
 


to my promise of brief posts
i done
1. and 2. before posting this
4 is running in the background and 5. I can't start before this is finished
so I'm on 3. directory duty for now.
 
finished one directory page with 200+ items
linked some to the mini pages and wrote a couple of more descriptive minipages
other site is still downloading files leave on over night

for tomorrow
1. Posts on each site
2. more minipages link to directories
3. Arrange directories to be more easily readable maybe change to drop down instead of anchors
4. make g+ author profile pic nicer
and post some g+ stuff etc, be social make some friends
5. go on relevant niche forums i registered new persona already and be more social
link forum personas to g+ author profile
 
OK so I did 1, and 2 this morning(scheduled some as posts to appear throughout the week).
3 Still not satisfied with the navigation will have to look at it again later.
4. did that, found some poor guys pic and changed his hair color, put glasses on him, and placed him on a beach taking a selfie, looks social, friendly and cool, even gave him a nice beach girl reflection in the glasses (maybe overkill but fairly realistic)
5. Participated in forums was pleasantly surprised to have people add me as friends

today I got to an article where I could interlink the two sites because topics crossed.
Didn't want to link them until later but did now anyway, have some traffic from google coming in already so I might as well be as helpful as I can.

Things to do for today on this:
Nothing more, got to tend and nurture the projects that earn me a living.

List for tomorrow
Posting on each site
Adding Pages, to link to directories
and Embellish G+ Profile more
 
done:
1.
added more posts, simple but helpful, and useful stuff people come to see.
I tried to make some older posts clearer with formatting.

2.
noticed search traffic in site 2 to the directory page.
this is bad, i didn't link the site or any of it yet, and was hoping the traffic hold off until I'm finished making the directory look good.
So I was up all night and got it to an acceptable looking keyword page with links to what the people are searching for.
Got to still do more, may as well become the most search traffic page.

3.
digging this social gig, got some more friends on g+ and relevant forums
signed him up for technorati (nobody do this anymore?)
tried to friend him with some other bloggers to talk guest posting, no reply or acceptance yet from them though
got to make him more desirable (as if this awesome picture of him on a beach in the maledives sipping martini wasn't enough)

for 2day
1. add some pages
2. link more mini directory pages
3. install smart links
 
done:
added more pages that I can link to the directories.
installed analytics and did some keyword research for ideas for new relevant articles.

for 2morrow
add more pages, schedule posts on each site at 12 hour intervals.
Continue to clean up the site and add helpful links.
Bought a product compare plugin for wordpress to help make things clearer for visitors.
do some more socializing, add facebook profile and later page.
 
So I scheduled posts for the week and added more relevant pages to both.
I now just have to do the directory for the 2nd site to finish.
I noticed some search engine traffic (about 10 visits a day each) even though the site is just 2 weeks old.
Since my main idea was to get people to comment, there is no use in hiding the site until I'm done with the directory (I underestimated the work).
So I built the facebook page for (one 2nd to come building on existing audience I will acquire with the first)

Though I want to just do it to get people to comment, I try not to cheat on my SEO endeavours.
I say cheat because I'm ok at facebook, not an expert but ok.
I implenented a Facebook Comment Box on both sites though.

I want to re learn SEO with these sites.
Trial and Error with techniques from wickedfires enlightened section.
No cheating for the first 6 months.
Thats also traffic to an unfinished site is just stupid I find.

So what I still have to do for the week:
Content is king, schedule posts 1 a day for a month and check up periodically to add one or two so google sees that.
Finish the Taxonomy.
And add the questions "what were your experiences" for comments on each page.
Try with different phrasing which words work best to get the most comments.

now I have a question if any one actually reads this.
Does, Google read Facebook Comments?
Or should I remove them? Because the reason I added them was for google to see people comment on these pages and it's easier getting people to comment logged in in FB
 
so:
Done;

  • scheduled a post for about every 2,3 days for both sites for all of january.
  • got yahoo answers level 2 and inserted some nice links on questions i found.
  • got my persona some relevant friends.
  • got him getting rank in two forums no links yet but now can be quiet for until I need it.
    posted some relevant links to his facebook page though which earned some fans
  • Facebook Page beautified with a nice call to action cover.
  • set up structured data in g+ so looks nice with author and review stars and shit
    Highlighted Data too

ERRORS:
hired a developer and paid upfront to make the image sharing site into a pligg site, found him on wickedfire had some great reviews but was generally terrible for this small job and I ended up doing all of this myself which took just 3 hours.
Was quite surprised when he got my mail and saw it was done.
But I'm guessing he's outsourcing too because he sent me a link to something which I had done saying his guys did it ;-p which pushed me over the edge.
Anyway couple of hundred to lesson learned.
Still looking to outsource the small stuff I'm no dev and I don't got the time, but fuck communicating with this guy was gonna take up more than finishing this crap myself.

So I'm out for the month I guess, the holidays are over and I got to start sending them orders from my webshop and full time job again.

Stats for the two sites after 3 weeks:
Visits (know I only installed analytics 1 week ago :-p)
Site 1:

  • Google Search
    12 Queries 200 impressions less than 10 klicks but all my keywords are there Rank 9 to 69
  • 51 pages indexed
  • 48 visits from search
  • 22 outside backlinks found (this probably joe from here)
  • 9 facebook fans :-p
Site 2:

  • Google Search
    17 Queries 170 impressions less than 10 klicks keywords Rank 1 to 650
  • 59 Pages Indexed (Note this one has like 100 mini pages with directory that aren't showing up in webmastertools yet though they on the sitemap gotta check this)
  • 30 Visits from Search
  • 1 Backlink (from site 1)
    0 facebook no page yet
I'll now start buying some backlinks for this over the course of the month and update jan 31 again
 
If you are just starting out I would say go after some low comp keywords and work your way up. And WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU DID!

Sorry for the caps lock, but that is one of my big time downfalls, You get so much stuff going you forget what you did, then when something works you cant even pinpoint what it was.

Good Luck Sir!
 
thanks for the input
yeah zmoney the point of this thread is sort of also me knowing what is left to do and having it written down.
I used to do it on paper but I lose them or online and I discontinue here I have some excuse, don't want people to think i gave up or am lazy.

I started to rank ok for now and good traffic
Update on the stats
Site 1:

  • Google Search
    78 Queries 588 impressions, 25 clicks
  • 87 pages indexed
  • 89 visits from search according to analytics
Site 2:

  • Google Search
    46 Queries 342 impressions 13 clicks
  • 133 Pages Indexed
  • 47 Visits from Search
  • 1 Backlink (from site 1)
    0 facebook no page yet
since posts are still scheduled I didn't do much there (or actually nothing) in the past 2 weeks.
I got into two different question and answer sites to build up the profile and then drop some links.

I rank surprisingly well for really short keywords here on both sites.
I was just targeting long tail.

for the next two weeks


  • make the structured data nicer,
  • add site lionks for sub pages
  • get the persona more involved in the Q&A communities
 
so I let the autoposts do this work
didn't add a lot but going in the direction that I wanted

From G Webmaster tools Site 2:
807 Impressions on 92 Queries with 30 clicks
I'm ranking top 10 for 4 keywords of about 30 I'm trying it's alright, for not having done any linkbuilding except 4 apparently from Site 1.
Still haven't done FB page for this one.
Links: 6 (2 from Yahoo, I'm guessing answers but must have forgotten I put them there)

Site 1.
3,898 Impressions on 585 Queries with 154 clicks
I've done linkbuilding here, but I don't rank so well on the ones I wanted,
terrible to be frank.
But TOP 10 for some keywords I got as more difficult from Termexplorer.
Which doesn't hurt.
Haven't touched the FB site much this month except make it cover and stuff. But will.
Links:324


  • need to create a 2nd persona to ask me questions, look into Yahoo Answers often but never got relevant NEW questions done all that leveling up for nothing so far(there is another site where people ask them questions but I haven't got enough authority there yet to post links)
  • post some FB stuff helps with ranking and shit
  • make a Newsletter Landing Page with enticing offer to sign up to build a list for mail offers.
  • should post more or atleast schedule for february. at least once every 3 days each site.
to be updated march 1st
 
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