6 Months In - Traffic is slowly coming in.
I hit the 6 month mark over the weekend and have started to see some distinct changes in my traffic. I've also started making a shift in my original strategy to see how things work out.
When I started my site I spent a lot of time writing 'how to' articles that I thought would rank and then I could use them to drive people to product reviews that would then lead to money. Unfortunately, even with very low hanging fruit keywords (think QSR less than 25) I've noticed very few of my articles rank anywhere near the top 10, even the top 30 in most cases. In fact using Search Console my average ranking is more like 65+.
I believe this is largely due to difficulty building links in my space. The only sites I've really found in my space are other affiliate sites as well as non profit sites like the ASPCA which will have no interest in linking off to an affiliate marketing site. I really do need to make an effort to conduct a guest post on another powerhouse cat blog.
Now that being said the last few months haven't been a total bust, I have had some great accomplishments:
- I topped 50 posts (my goal was 45 by 6 months)
- I topped 500 comments (thanks WA comment for comment)
- I am starting to see about 1 organic click a day come in
- I post every post to Facebook, Twitter and G+, I'm getting social traffic daily
- I started responding to questions in my niche on Quora and shamelessly plugging my site when I can find a relevant question. Quora has been a huge traffic bump. Freely admit it has a large bounce rate, but it is driving traffic.
I've started focusing more on product review related posts as opposed to simple 'how to' posts in hopes that instead of driving the traffic up front...I can instead get the reviews out there and then build the post that will point to all of the reviews.
All in all I'm very happy with my overall progress and plan to spin up my second site in the next couple of weeks. One thing is for certain, site age definitely impacts your rankings.
My biggest tip: Stop checking Google Analytics and Amazon Affiliates daily. It is hard not to, but as many people have indicated over and over this is a long play, not a short term win. It can be very frustrating early on to see little traffic and little success, but I have faith it will come given the slow climb I've seen!
Good luck with your sites everyone and keep the work going, it does make a difference!
Recent Comments
16
It sounds like you are making good progress Craig! I will have to go look at your site!
Jessica
Good evening Craig,
Perhaps you could contact Jessica and James, they each have nice cat websites.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Thanks for the tip! Could you clarify which Jessica and which James?
I'm assuming you mean Swangirl as Jessica, but not sure who James is :).
I mean JamesJB, that nice looking guy with a black shirt and ty, he lives in Malta. He has glasses on and a big smile.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
Loved this article..makes alot of sense..I do not check Google Analytics..I concentrated on writing 36 artcles within 3 months which I have done. My Challenge now is the next 6 months..Thank you for this encouraging Post.
Sounds like a good change in strategy. You’re doing very well overall, keep up the good work!
Thank you for this helpful advice. I've been here just over a month and it's great to see that others are making progress. I'll try to follow the advice about stop checking the figures! Have a good week. :)
Wow, impressive WA rank for 1 month! I hope your site is coming along nicely! If I can ever be of assistance let me know.
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Congrats on your progress! I'm at the 6-month mark as well so I'm in the same boat...