That Uncomfortable Point: keeping traffic to existing website whilst transitioning to a new website
In working on building our new website, we've been working 12 - 16 hour days, 6-7 days per week. That's 2 of us. Full disclosure: I tend to take care of the content creation side and my partner in crime takes care of the tech/affiliate integration side. There is some overlap in what we do (of course) especially around promotion, but at this early stage of developing our affiliate website, we try and split responsibilities this way.
I thought I knew a lot about how websites work as I've written copy for lots of different companies' websites and conceptualised wireframes for websites and Apps. What I didn't realise is how lucky I had been to already be working on high profile brands (some of them with internationally recognised unique selling points) that already had such a high degree of visibility and decent rankings buttressed by consistently high numbers of direct web searches. I am also surprised that the type of advice I get through the WA community has never been offered to me by any web design firm I have ever contracted for a job.
Its almost like I have been walking around in some sort of parallel universe. Gone are the days when I can report 000's of Likes, Shares, Comments and other important metrics in my monthly reports to a client with the absolute confidence that I've hit target. Whilst I know that well-targeted advertising campaigns work having done many for different brands across different channels, I had a lot of content to work with! Also, big budgets!! I wish I had $210K to develop an App like the last company I worked for could dole out to an App developer after I developed the wireframe and issued the Request for Quote, let me tell you!What I did not realise is what sort of effort a totally new website-based business goes through in order to achieve visibility and ranking. Because building a totally new website presence with minimal content and minimal budget from scratch is harder work. Every single like and share feels like a victory. Finding affiliate links that work for our brand - and not getting too many affiliate partners on board at once so we're not run ragged trying to get sales up on all of them so that they don't toss us an affiliate partner - is hard work. We've settled on just working with one affiliate partner at a time until we reach budget goals.
Now, as we're fairly ambitious, the website architecture needed to be able to cope with the complexities we'd throw at it. We knew it had to be robust in order to cope with the scope of blogposts we'd be covering on our niche that we have planned to roll out over the next 2-3 years before we could contemplate another major website overhaul. To his absolute credit, no matter how complex the website specification in service of our objectives, my partner in crime has so far worked out how to make the new website work.Can I say that as a writer, I am NOT A FAN of the 'repeat a key phrase at least 8 times in a 1000 word post including within subheadings' admonition. It just seems like uninteresting writing to me. Nevertheless, I am applying these and a myriad other rules I find very tiresome (at this stage). But our traffic has improved! About 150 - 200 hits a day! Always good to listen to people with experience whose views disagree with your own - especially if their way gets results!
So all power to us who continue to persist and try and fail and win and take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back.
Recent Comments
8
Hey Mike - Thank you very much for the kind words. It is so nice to reminded you're decent at something when the hard stuff feels overwhelming and that you're just not getting there. Hope everything is going well with you? Cheers, Lisa
Wow Lisa, you most certainly have the knowledge and writing skills to go far in this business. It's been a pleasure to read such a well thought-out and comprehensive post. I wish you all the best of luck in your continued (long, hard) slog to progress - you sound like you really deserve it.
And as one writer to another, I never do the '8 times in 1,000 words' malarkey!
All the best moving forwards :)
Dear Jude
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. Of course, I find it very comfortable to stick to doing what I know (writing) and feel very much out on a limb with the other stuff. Luckily, I have Michael to lean on as he is so much better at trying new things and being unafraid to fail, get up, dust himself off, ask questions and try again.
Glad to hear someone else dislikes the 'mention the keyword phrase 8 times in a 1000 word blogpost' rule! I mean really, can some Google AI webcrawling algorithm not sort this stuff out (perhaps Alexander Evans has a view on this!) and translate it into binary code that raises rankings on INTERESTING writing that is discursive and expressive and pushes REPETITIVE writing down in the rankings? LOL. Talk about dumbed down!
Thanks also for the encouragement!
Kind Regards,
Lisa
It would be nice to think we could actually gain traction by Google giving credit for great content lol and yes I would be interested to see what Alexander had to say on the matter.
I wish I had someone who knew the techy side of things too, I'm just having to plod on at the moment but at least the writing is paying the bills!
All the best, Jude.
See more comments
Hi, Lisa, that is some project that you guys have on the go and I detect that you have a long-term strategy building around it. I am such a firm believer in looking at long term strategies. It is interesting but you do have to attack the process with that heavy time dedication. If we are focusing on outcomes then it is achievable. Looks like you are working to a schedule. Best wishes I love the intensity.
The knowledge base here at WA is really amazing, someone's either just solved the problem or someone is working on it.
In relation to the keyword, total, there is a movement emerging that looks at 10x the power of content, which is a fancy way of saying that your content needs to be ten times better than that of your competitors, quality content rules the roost. Everyone is becoming more aware and folks searching are becoming more comfortable relying on results on the first page, more importantly, the top three results. Google is improving all the time I think one of its end goals is the removal of spam and poorer quality content. I believe this is actually happening now it is a process that will continue to be rolled out. It is sort of like the small tree in our garden the one that seems to be small forever and then one morning there is this massive oak tree on the back lawn. So looking at the content , in general, we are moving to a position where we are looking at the creation of unique elements within that content as opposed to the placement of specific keywords. One of Google's cornerstones in this process is to use AI in the provision of search results. Currently, people are starting to experience this, you may put in a query but the results may not be that well defined in relation to your question, google is providing answers based on the perception they have of you based on the data profile that they have or are building on you. Try doing a search at home and then do the same search at a coffee shop that you do not usually frequent just make sure that you have your phone switched off and you use their computer. the results may be different.
Back to content how do we compete and beat AI, simple really we need to creating unique elements in our content as opposed to a sole reliance on keywords? We will not hit the ball out of the park on the first swing but with practice, we will get better and develop that sixth sense with regards to this. What would be the start point of unique elements per post, three? Each one targeting a subset of the target demographic that the post was created for. So, in essence, we are focusing not only providing solutions to people's problems but we are providing the answer to the question before it is asked. The human mind will still be ahead of AI. Wow, that is a bit off topic but just reflecting how I see things evolving.
I really enjoyed Your post, Lisa
Hi Alexander
This is EXCELLENT. I really think this response should be the basis of a blogpost (in case you haven't already done one on it!) I am gratified to read about the Google trends you reference. Any particular further articles you recommend on the 10x power of content line you've expounded upon? This use of AI and how we utilise/anticipate it to create unique, high quality content is absolutely the direction in which we should be heading. Thanks for the tip about trying out searches in a cafe computer - I'll try that one at the library next time seeing as internet cafes are few and far between in my neck of the woods. I certainly look forward to a time when content does indeed rule the roost. Starting to use Jaaxy and another keyword search system (the name of which I forget), I not only tried out my own keyword phrases but also random ones on popular brands (not ones I use). You should have seen the silly nonsense results I got when I typed in something to do with 'Bratz'! Just seemed like the more it was mentioned in the keyword phrase, headings, slug etc. the higher it ranked and the post quality was extremely poor. Never mind - just a short rant! Cheers and Thank you ever so much for your continued encouragement and high quality content you post including the thought tangents! Lisa
The trends are actually unfolding, the major platforms are in a process of cementing their position, they are after all businesses and they need to protect their positions. We just need to be keeping pace with them and if we can try and predict where they are going, I think the term is "futurist ". I am not in that league.
Content 10x is something that I have just started to think about and will start researching it will let you know. I haven't really started expounding on a lot of stuff some of it is a bit ott, so good to have the vehicles to achieve this at our disposal. Thank you for your kind words.