Niche Site Case Study Update 3 27th January 2017
Figured its due time I updated this case study
For those looking for my other updates you can find them here:
- https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/beauandnik/blog/ne...
- https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/beauandnik/blog/ni...
- https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/beauandnik/blog/ni...
Here are the results so far:
The above graph shows that 68.75% of my main target keywords are page 1 with 37.5% being in the top 3.
Pretty happy with that but still room to improve.
Bounce rate is still low and there are a good amount of pages per sessions and people are staying on page for a decent duration. Can be improved.
This image shows what my average CTR and POSITION across my site. As you can see my main preforming pages are higher. Site ranking for over 350 queries.
My goal conversion rate is good. I have set Google analytics to track the amount of people who click through to Amazon.com from my site. You can see a major dip in this image. That was because I broke my site tweaking too much LOL. It's back on track now :)
This MISTAKE pretty much cost me my January earnings hahaha. Lesson learned. It has bounced back stronger now and has actually improved all round so not all is lost.
560% ROI
Key Successes:
- Changes made to the URL structure of my posts has my ranking for more competitive terms
- 1 Article per week
- Captured some featured snippets allowing me to dominate more of the page
- Used heatmaps to improve conversion rate
- Fixed what I broke and sales are coming in strong!
Key Failures
- Broke my site changing the URL structure of my posts LOL
- Failed to write my Ebook
- Earnings for Jan have been pathetic due to me breaking my site :P
Future Tasks
- Keep up posting schedule
- Write my ebook (delegate)
- Start building a list
- Add some top 10 posts
- Add some vs posts
- Optimize my ranking posts for more terms
- Optimize my money pages to earn more $$$$$
Recent Comments
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Hey mate, do you think you could ever do some training on what you do for SEO as it works whatever you are doing?
A lot of people I talk to here and I have a high bounce rate; I was never too concerned with that as most the pages my traffic goes to I don't want them to leave.
However, recent posts are more info posts to lead to the money posts so would love to get bounce rate down on there!
It's in process my friend. Currently building out a full course on how I do each step from niche selection right through to conversion rate optimization.. :)
Can't wait for that, there is too much "training" that's useless at WA people have cottoned on you get money now
Thanks for your update Beau, always love hearing about your little project. On your main money pages, are they the best products you recommend or something? Would love an insight into your money pages.
Hey Grace :)
Yes my money pages are where all my affiliate links are. Since this is an amazon based site they would be my "Best Blenders 2017" for example.
Any search term with buyers intent and good traffic. My money pages are generally the keywords with the highest search volume.
To be honest Grace, I had given up on affiliate marketing because of my many fails, but this study has sparked a new interest and actually molded my 2017 Goals
Thanks for your tips Beau. I have recently read an article about those kinds of pages. It really works. Did you do any link building with this site?
I'm so tempted to start mine based on what I've read and your site but I'm still trying to get my bootcamp site earning more first. I think next year for sure I will start it.
And thanks for your goals, I'll check them out. :)
No link building other than internally linked pages.
To be honest Grace I think waiting a year to see if something works is a mistake.
The amount of time taken for me to build this site from scratch was 1 month. That included niche research, keyword research, finding amazon products, writing 5 main money pages of 2000+ words each, 5 supporting posts around 500 words each. Site design and a syndication network.
Realistically it could have been completed within weeks (by myself) but i had other projects on the go.
After that it was just a matter of keeping up a 1 post a week schedule which is approx 500 words and only takes 40 minutes to complete.
So for 2017 I looked at giving myself at the most a month to complete a site which is why I'm doing 1 a month for this year.
I think I can get the process down to 3 weeks using writers. It really should be a lot faster because i'm not doing everything like I did for this study.
Okay, you've convinced me since I don't have to link build either. I will start it earlier. I've been trying to write 3 posts a week for my bootcamp site and it's been hard to keep that up. That site starting to gain a lot more traffic so I'm excited to see it grow.
I'm just scared to slow down that growth if my attention is on another site. What I will do is tone it back down to 2 posts a week again and then any time I can find, I'll start building that new site. Or just preschedule a bunch of posts for my bootcamp site, so I have a block of time to the new site.
It's going to be on a very old domain that I have, which has been inactive for a long time. Do you think because it's been aged (though inactive), I'll be able to rank faster than a brand new domain?
Hard to say... depends on the domains background.. I ranked my site with a fresh domain :)
I'm amazed at not only your knowledge, but what you do to implement what you know. Utterly amazed B-Giddy!
Thank you my wonderful friend! We can have all the knowledge in the world but if we fail to implement it, it's worthless!
I'ma fake it till ya make it lad too so if I don't know something then I hustle till I find the answer...... or break something LOL..
Thanks for stopping by :)
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Love the detail in the post, thanks for sharing!
I enjoy using heat maps to study user interface; although I admit that sometimes the playbacks can be strangely entertaining. What specific aspect of your heat maps did you study to improve your conversion rate?
No problem :) Love to share
To be honest I didnt play with heatmaps nearly enough. I used it to look see what kinds of content (buttons, images, ctas etc) visitors were drawn to.
I then added more of what was working in other areas to see if it made a difference. Split tested using other colors and stuff..
It did make a difference though... I just need to dedicate more time to CRO
Which heatmap service were you using? Some offer better breakdowns for CRO analysis than others.
As for colours and buttons and stuff, it sometimes surprises me how much of a conversion improvement is offered by what seem like the smallest, most insignificant changes. I recall one case study where sales went through the roof after a certain shade of yellow was used in the buy button. It was nuts!
I used Clicky as it tracked a whole bunch of things. And yeah, small changes sometimes make the largest impact!