Site Progress End of Week One - My Case Study

byautumn56

2.8K followers

8 years ago

Hi everyone,

For anyone who wanted to follow along here is the link to the last update I made about the site https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/autumn56/blog/new-...

So as a recap here was my plan for this past week for the new site.

My plan for the next few days:

• Set up all in one SEO (changed to Yoast but completed)
• Set up google analytics and webmaster tools -both bing and google completed
• Create a header because it is within a creative niche - completed
• Create the about me page - completed
• Send a sitemap over to the webmaster tools - completed
• Create a facebook page and pinterest account - not done
• And get at least four posts up - got two up

As some may know I work nights and I have health issues. Two of the days this week I spent all day at the doctor and then two days I worked 2 17 hour shifts and did a whole lot of sleeping. Not to mention I have a missing cat and spend a few hours a day outside looking for him. The reason why I mention this is because I know people have a whole lot going on and as nathaniell said in one of his recent posts https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/nathaniell/blog/10...

all you need to do is get in 10 minutes of work a day if possible and you can still make progress - so even when I just had a few minutes I tried to do something that would eventually benefit my site.

My progress

From my planned list above I was able to most of it. At least it makes me happy considering how my week went. What I wanted to say about the posts is that because I am working on more than one thing - I have a few online things going on (though if you are just starting I always recommend focusing on one thing! I have shiny object oo look its a butterfly syndrome). I found a freelancer to write six articles for me 5 - 500 word ones and 2 - 1000 word ones. I thought this would help me get the site filled faster which in theory it would have if I had actually published them all.

People who outsource articles do things differently with them. I take the articles and add on two them. So the two published articles I had someone write 500 words each and then I went it and made them almost 1k words each (I actually think one goes to about 1100). Some people just publish as is - I don't because I have control issues and like to add my own voice to things.

For the header image I used canva because it is free and fun to play with. Just a fun resource for anyone who feels like making their own if they can't afford to pay someone to do it for them. I am not a graphic designer by any means but I think it still looks better than just the plain header.

Extra things I did

• added a contact form
• did some facebook networking and found some groups related to my niche (already have someone lined up who is willing to donate some of her work for review and promotion)
• bugged some people on WA in private messages for their thoughts on some things (I did have their permission - please don't go spamming people)

Ranking

So the site was created on 5/8 and it has approximately 2 posts and three pages (about me, contact form, and privacy policy)

Bing currently hates my site - which actually isn't surprising. in the past ive seen it take quite a while for Bing to start giving me any love but once they do they tend to rank things higher than google...i have no idea why.

My first post is ranking on page 2 of google for the long tail keyword.

The second post seems to be doing a little bit rougher and is on page 12 for the long tail keyword BUT in quotes is on page one so that gives me hope that it will move up faster since there isn't a lot of direct competition for that phrase.

The google dance is real though so I won't start posting pictures of analytics and such for probably about a month, clicks are coming in but I am going to guess its already spam because they are from some very interesting countries. but for those interested

No affiliate links yet so nothing to talk about in regards to Amazon - New ppls, dont rush to get those links up, no traffic = no sales even if you have the prettiest site with the prettiest sales funnels with affiliate links. Ive had three people from WA look at the site total so those numbers don't mean much to me. And bounce rate will be high until there is actual content to click through to LOL. Actually, I really have no idea what that crazy spike is from at the end.

This Weeks Tasks

• Set up the social media - Facebook and Pinterest
• Publish at least six posts by next monday
• Get the site organization under control with some main menu categories
• Work in the first affiliate links (one of those six posts will be a review post)
• Create a list of at least 20 twenty keywords for future blog posts
• Continue to network
• Create custom amazon affiliate id for this site
• Make my posts pretty - thats right they have no pictures yet
• ADD SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS

So in the fashion of the certification courses at the moment I am focusing on just getting pages up. The next few posts I will try to just publish and then by the end of the week go through, add pictures, and create custom images to be used for pinterest and facebook. This is especially important since I found a person who is all gunhoe about providing me samples of her stuff to use on the site - great thing about this is she will also be sharing the posts and such to help gain traction for her own promotions. Oh snap, should probably add social media buttons then LOL.

So I realize this turned into a really long post and doesn't really say anything but if anyone has any questions please feel free to holler.

Thanks for reading,

Jean