Site 3 Update 9-24-12
I'm not going to mention the name of the site right now because I don't want to influence traffic or earnings on the site.
I'm going to use these blog reports to track my steps so that I can rinse and repeat for future sites as well as share what worked and what did not work with others in WA.
I'm still relatively new to WA so there will be A LOT of stuff that some may disagree with. That's what this blog is for.
The Site
First of all, the site is something I have some knowledge about but not extensive, so I will be learning as I go.
I will reveal more about the niche and site as I progress.
Getting started
First thing I did was use the WA keyword tool to research keywords with less than 400 competing webpages (confirmed by searching for the term in quotes in google ex "keyword")
I also entered these keywords into my research tool (paid service) to see what the competition was looking like.
All signs indicate a go. purchased a domain through godaddy
(Note: should have used cheapdomain.com which was recommended by WA. I plan to transfer a few of my other domains from Godaddy in a few weeks. Godaddy is getting expensive)
Getting indexed.
This is something I will admit I was a little fuzzy on. I created the site in WA and waited and waited. But for some reason the site was not getting indexed.
I verified this by going to google and typing site:http://mysite.com (mysite = website name)
What I ended up doing was submitting the site to google webmaster tools and Bing webmaster tools.
To do this easily I had to do two things
1 - Install the Google XML sitemaps plugin - to allow google to better crawl my site
2 - Install the Header and Footer plugin - to allow me to verify my website by adding verification code to the header of the site. (otherwise I would have to do FTP uploads or DNS modifications, etc etc...yuck)
Once I did this I received confirmation that Bing and Google had verified my site.
I then submitted the url for the sitemap to Google and Bing. (usually http://mysite.com/sitemap.xml)
About an hour or so later several pages of my site are now showing up when I do the site:http://mysite.com test. I'm happy.
Note: I searched through WA and found this really cool training by WA member bigman which walks you through submitting your site to Google and Bing. If you get stuck check it out by clicking here
Adding content
The next step is going to be adding content to the site. I only have a few pages and posts so this is going to be a big focus.
This niche has a lot of possibilities so I'm not too concerned here.
I'm adding additional topics based on similar research that I used to pick the main keyword of the site.
Using WA keyword tool (at least 300 searches and competition of no more than 500 websites)
Verify that competition is manageable with my market research tool.
Additionally (based on what I've learned
1 - Make sure that my main keyword is in the title of ALL my pages and posts
2 -Add my keyword to H1 tags in all my posts and pages (vary the keyword slightly
3 - Link naturally between my pages.
Ranking
I'm not ranked yet, but the site is only a few days old. I'm not too worried about ranking right now because I don't even have enough content yet.
In the mean time I am installing SEO Rank Reporter plugin which will automatically track my keyword positions for me and let me know if a visitor got to my site via another keyword.
As it stands now I am not even in the top 100 for my main keyword.
I'm curious to see how well the site will do with just on page SEO. I will watch this for a while before I start to use one of the other tools that i have.
Earnings Strategy
For now I am going to go with Adsense and Infolinks as my earnings strategies.
I've already placed some ads on the site.
Adsense and Infolinks are easy to set up and so far both methods have earned some money.
Affiliate marketing, not at all. :'(
Once the traffic and content are where I want them to be, i will look into other methods to make money.
Recent Comments
17
Hi, thanks for answering so quickly. Yes, I do understand your explanation. So without submitting to Google or other search engines, your site is never indexed no matter how good your content and won't come up any where in a search, first, last or otherwise? I was planning on submitting my site, I just didn't know exactly why and now I do. Thanks.
Google crawls everyday to find new website and more infos that anyone haven't gone to yours. But to effectively find your website and get listed on google ranking. You have to manually tell google to crawl your website so that it can be seen to public regarding your website content.
Pretty much. I'm not sure if this will change in the future, but until then you should always add that to your to do list when starting off with a new site.
I think there are a few helpful tips in the site update blogs I created. Be sure to check them out as there might be some more useful things for you to apply.
Word of caution though, do not copy any of the link building things I mentioned because google is cracking down big time on sites for that. Good luck!
You would want to submit to Google. You will need the Webmaster tool and also Google analytics.
As far as indexing is concerned. Google and the others will index your site. However, if you add new content, it may take days until they crawl your site. That depends how often you add new pages/posts.
I do the google fetch every time I add new content. Same goes for Bing
John
Hi, I like your in depth description of the steps you have taken so far. I have but just one question. You said that you submitted your web to Google to be indexed. Is getting indexed the same as using keywords? Or have the same results? After you sent your web to Google, and were accepted, you said you had to now go do your content. So I am assuming that "your" content didn't help you rank better?? I'm a little confused. Please explain.
Getting indexed basically means that the search engines are now "seeing your site" or "crawling your site" and as you create new content, it will now show up in the search engines.
This is different from the process of improving your rankings. When you first submit your site to the search engines you might be indexed at rank 400 for a particular keyword. You can then do things to improve that rank, ideally to page one of google.
Without submitting your sites to the webmasters tools for Yahoo Bing and Google, those search engines will not list your site.
Hope this makes sense, if not feel free to ask away :)
Great detailed plan of what you are doing Kamali! Best of luck with your new project,
Veronica
See more comments
Appreciate this, helped out alot. Google had me indexed but bing didn't