[Journey] Start and Grow a Content Site From $0 to $$,$$$ in 12 Months or Less

[Graybeard]

Backlinks are still valuable, but their value has diminished somewhat over the years. In the early days of the internet, backlinks were incredibly valuable. They were seen as a vote of confidence from one website to another, and they were an important factor in helping a website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). These days, Google and other search engines place less emphasis on backlinks when determining how to rank websites. That's not to say that backlinks are completely worthless - they're still a valuable part of SEO - but they're not as important as they once were.

Welcome to 2005
Post any proof you have that this is current (this year)

 

[Graybeard]

here are some samples of 'linkbuilding'

It gets worse looking at a sample of 400 domains in the same ranking range

Maybe, the are all guest posts or forum posts
QUALITY MATTERS!
Data from last month Majestic (scrapper bot) MJ12

Majestic Million

majestic.com

This data is subjective when looking at a single domain (may not be accurate) but in aggregate it is relational and a cloase average of the entire database <--caveat

 

[kayode10]

Backlinks are still valuable, but their value has diminished somewhat over the years. In the early days of the internet, backlinks were incredibly valuable. They were seen as a vote of confidence from one website to another, and they were an important factor in helping a website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). These days, Google and other search engines place less emphasis on backlinks when determining how to rank websites. That's not to say that backlinks are completely worthless - they're still a valuable part of SEO - but they're not as important as they once were.

Welcome to 2005
Post any proof you have that this is current (this year)

My website would have had nothing less than 100k pageviews by now with over 400 published comtents on it. You can show us your own website which ranks higher on Google search engine for keywords without Backlinks. If you can do that I will agree with everything you said in your comment.

 

[iamb]

You don't have to back down on this project, I believe you have what it takes to turn this situation around.

Not backing down. Still working on the site. Just slowing down on articles publishing and increasing backlink building. My next update is next month as the site will turn 1 year at the end of september

 

[kayode10]

Not backing down. Still working on the site. Just slowing down on articles publishing and increasing backlink building. My next update is next month as the site will turn 1 year at the end of september

Can't wait to see the progress on the website.

 

[iamb]

Months 11 and 12 Update: I started this content site based on other successful stories about low competition keywords. More importantly rank on page 1 of google without any form of backlinking.


My Goals for Months 11 to 12 (July, August, September 2022) were:

• Optimize articles for better rankings.
• Build more internal links.
• Start external link building campaigns
• Slow down on article publishing with 5-10 articles per month

My Results for July, August, September 2022:

• I published 24 articles, in line with what I had planned e.g 5-10 articles per months. My total articles count is now 182 with 184, 852 wordcount.

My Stats

For the month of september 2022 my total number of impressions and clicks increased but my number of unique visitors dropped.

Rankings

My keywords are climbing to the top positions as the articles age. I have now 130 keywords on top 10 positions as opposed to 66 the last reporting period.

Some Fun facts from the past couple of months

1) I had applied to Amazon associates and activated it on the site. Got excited when I got $25 earnings from qualified leads but the joy was short lived as Amazon banned my account. Obviously they withheld the money

Why was I banned? 3-4 years ago, i had a previous account that was banned due to a stupid plugin i had on my site. I made a mistake of creating a new account this year using the same email account thinking that was in the past. How dumb is that

2) I applied to adsense but big brother G says my content is thin and I need to fix that before re-applying. Honestly rewriting 182 articles is not appealing at all! I have also noticed that some of the writers I hired used AI content so lots of touch up to be done here.


Where to from here?

1) I will rewrite the top 10-20 articles/pages in long form then re-apply to adsense
2) Keep publishing on the site at a slow pace of 5-10 articles per month
3) Keep building backlinks to the site to increase its authority


Any comment, ideas, insight welcome

 

[Graybeard]

I find that the seed phrase will influence the AI work product a lot. I "hired" my own AI guy, he's literally a machine.

I gave him the seed phrase "I want to be a millionaire". He then proceeded to generate a work product that was mostly a list of ways to make money. Some of the ideas were creative and showed an understanding of my desires, while others were more mundane and focused on things like earning more money through investment opportunities or developing new skills that could lead to a higher paying job.

Overall, I was impressed with the work product my AI guy generated. While it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, it showed that he was able to understand my desires and come up with some creative ideas for achieving them. If I had been more specific with my seed phrase, I'm sure he would have been able to generate an even better work product.

As it is, I'm still considering some of his ideas and I'm confident that with a little more refinement, I can use my AI guy to help me achieve my goal of becoming a millionaire.

AI with a twisted sense of humor

the seed phrase:

I "hired" my own AI guy, he's literally a machine. However I find that the seed phrase will influence the AI work product a lot.

'He' could ask Googlebot for a date --is Googlebot a she?

Work on content quality with a conversion goal --go to play around with that.
Seems the deleted pages were worth little as the CTR from search got better without them.
When the 800 referrals a month result in 10 or 20 sales

 

[Proxy-Sale]

Semms like really nice results

 

[iamb]

Final Update: I started this content site based on other successful stories about low competition keywords. More importantly rank on page 1 of google without any form of backlinking.

Final Results
I am writing a formal closure update given that things did not turn out the way I wanted but I did learn a lot along the way.
Needless to say the site did not live to its potential.

The charts below tell the story. After a strong start in the early months, brother G came along with a liedge hammer around months 11 or so.
Impression and traffic went to almost nil.

I tried for few months to revive the site to no avail.

Comment, suggestions are welcome.

Search Console:

Analytics

Ahrefs

 

[Graybeard]

Unfortunately, trying to SEO a site seldom works out in the long run.

When traffic drops that radically --something is very wrong.

Site or brand loyalty is very difficult to attain. If and when attained, then SEO can build better traffic.

but I did learn a lot along the way.

That may end up mattering the most to you in the long run

 

[Strickland]

Did you get an email from Google about any penalties ect

 

[iamb]

Did you get an email from Google about any penalties ect

They never send you an email. No manual action in the google search console either