Is it Possible to Build a Profitable Site Without Link Building 002

Well, I can’t believe I’m already making my first update.  I was kind of hoping that I would be writing this post the day after Christmas proclaiming my no link building strategy to be a complete success…but that may not be the case.

Everyday when I get off from work, after playing with the dogs for a few minutes and saying hi to my wife (as she cooks dinner), I sit down on the couch and pull up my Adsense and Amazon accounts to see how they’re doing.  Even though my Amazon sites are still pretty new (particularly the one from this case study) I had been making an increasing amount of sales for about 4 weeks now.  Unfortunately that wasn’t the case when I checked yesterday.

New Content Bonus Gone or Google Dance?

I got a little sinking feeling in my stomach as I quickly logged into my site and pulled up WP Site Stats.  My traffic wasn’t gone, but my page views had gone from 400-500 a day to around 150.  This wasn’t good news.  I pulled up the SEOBOOK Rank Checker and sure enough I’d dropped in the SERPS.

Before

Primary Keyword 1: (G) = 6; (B) = 2

Primary Keyword 2: (G) = 5; (B) = 3

Primary Keyword 3: (G) = 10; (B) = 5

Primary Keyword 4: (G) = 27; (B) = 11

After

Primary Keyword 1: (G) = 45; (B) = 3

Primary Keyword 2: (G) = 84; (B) = 11

Primary Keyword 3: (G) = 113; (B) = 63

Primary Keyword 4: (G) = 55; (B) = 20

*(G) = Google; (B) = Bing

I’m still hanging around in Bing, but I’ve pretty much dropped off the radar as far as Big G goes.  The other ironic part of this, is Digitally Distinctive contacted me yesterday to inquire about advertising on the site, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

The big question is, is this the Google Dance (basically Google trying to figure out if I in fact do belong on Page 1 or Page 4) or did my “new content bonus” wear off?  It’s still too early to tell, but it’s also quite odd that this change in SERPS just so happens to coincide with Day 60 of the site being live.

Where do I go from here?

Well every bone in my body wants to start link building frantically to get back to Page 1 in time for Christmas (I hear December 6 is the biggest day).  But that would defeat the whole purpose of this case study even though it’s likely to cost me a few hundred, if not a thousand or more dollars.  So, instead, here’s the plan…

On-Page SEO

I’m going to let things settle out until early next week, then I’m going to spend 1 night going through every single page and post on the site.  What will I be looking for?  Here’s a brief list of things I’ll be checking for:

• keywords in h1 and h2 or h3 tags
• keywords in bold, italics, or underline
• (1) anchor text linking back to home page
• (1) anchor text linking to another relevant post (if possible)
• keywords meta description and meta tags (I know Google doesn’t weight these, but I believe Bing still does)
• keywords in alt image tag
• keyword prominence (i.e. are keywords in first and last paragraph)
• poor outbound links (am I linking to any crappy sites by accident?)

Those are just the basics and checking all of that shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.  I just need to make sure I don’t over optimize; everything needs to meet the checklist above, but it also needs to look natural.

Continue Posting New Content

I have about 5 more posts planned prior to December 6, then I hadn’t planned on touching the site until after Christmas.  That of course, was before my site dropped.  Now I’ll be making at least 15 posts between now and Christmas to try and piggy back some new content bonus, if that’s even possible, we’ll see.

Target Even More Long Tails

I haven’t put a lot of emphasis on what long tails people are using to get to my site.  That needs to change.  I’m going to spend about 30 minutes and look through some of my stats over the last month to see if I can find any common long tails that I’m not targeting.  I’m hoping to make a list of about 10 posts that I can make that will instantly rank for those long tails.  This should help build some authority and add a little traffic.

And that’s about it.  There’s only so much I can do on-site, but since the Panda update on-site optimization has become increasingly important and I’m hopeful I can find some fixes that at least boost me up near Page 1 or 2, though that’s unlikely.

I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know how it goes.  Wish me luck!