Brand New Website, Page 1 Rankings
I started a new website in Dec 2019, with loooooooong term plans to grow it into an authority brand for its niche. I'm taking what I learned from this side project, and doubling down for this new one.
Everything is going to be outsourced, so it's a significant investment for me, but I'm confident it will work out! The first site was stressful because I didn't know if it could work, but it did, and now I'm ready to try again!
Anyway, what suprised me is that today I woke up to my first page 1 rankings with the new side project!
Today is March 2. The site was started on Dec 4. So it took exactly 3 months to reach a page 1 ranking which is pretty standard advice you hear around Wealthy Affiliate. If you keep publishing weekly, you'll start to see some traffic creep in around the 3-month mark.
Pushing Through the 3 Month Wall (webinar)
This is a PRODUCT-focused keyword (found on Amazon), and it's a "Best of" style list. Here's a training I did on exactly how to do that: Two Article Templates Guaranteed To Rank!
Including the word "best", this keyword was six words long. That's pretty long keyword, and I think it definitely contributed to the high rankings.
Here are the stats for other keywords I've targeted so far:
The text is pretty small, but the numbers are 26, 27, 45, 51, 66, 70, 72.
What's My Publishing Schedule & Article Length?
Because I have a budget to outsource, I'm able to publish at a pretty good clip, but the pace is still a very achievable goal even if you are doing all the writing yourself. Right now, I publish four articles per week.
I wasn't publishing this whole time since the site started on Dec 4th, so I only have 12 articles published so far, which means I've been publishing content for about a month (there are still some drafts that need to be edited).
If you were to publish 4 articles per week for three months, that would be 48 articles on your site! Even with just publishing 2x per week, that's still 24 articles published after three months, and I know you could see similar results. Remember, I only have 12 articles so far!
My articles are just doing basic SEO that we learn here here in Wealthy Affiliate. Word count is 1500-2000 words per blog post.
What Does That Mean For You?
I get Private Messages sometimes about people "not seeing results", and there are two main issues that pop up.
1. Articles too short. Articles need to be 1000-2000 words long.
2. Not enough articles. More articles means more chances to rank!
With my 10-years experience in affiliate marketing, I was able to find some good keywords and get good reults with just 12 articles (so far). However, it's not a #1 spot listing on page 1, and the website certainly isn't making money yet.
It's also just one article of 12. The others still need some time to rank!
There's still plenty of work to be done on this site in order to make it a profitable business, but these rankings are the first signs of life, and I have confidence that I can make some money off this thing in the next year or two.
Your first website doesn't have to be perfect. It's going to take a lot of practice to get good at this stuff. But the formula of how to do it is here right inside Wealthy Affiliate.
Hope you have a productive week everyone!
Recent Comments
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I always enjoy your updates, Nathaniel. You definitely know how to do it. I've been pretty happy with my first website here (I was making websites in the early 2000s). I really need to increase traffic, although it has picked up some.
I just changed themes and will see how that affects Google. It doesn't load as fast. :(
Congrats on your new project making it to page 1 already!
Best wishes,
Paula
Would you say it's a lot easier to make websites now Paula? I'd guess so!
Traffic will definitely come in time, as long as you keep publishing, and even go back to edit old stuff which may be outdated. It can be rough to get on the "content train" and never get off, so sometimes I like to take a break and improve some of my top posts to make them more evergreen.
That's great, Nathaniell! Congratulations!
I've been feeling discouraged lately. I've been posting 2x per week on set days. I always aim for 1,000-1,500 words, the latter being the average. I optimize my images and continually try to improve my older posts.
I'm continually looking for good keywords. However, writing a post can take a lot of time. For instance, my latest post took me about 8 hours to complete, including research, looking for images, optimizing them, customizing a map, and creating a table of contents. Lots of technical stuff.
So far, I've published 43 posts. I consistently share my content on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, but I feel like I'm getting nowhere. No organic traffic, no site rankings, nothing.
What do you recommend? I'm this close to quitting everything. 🙁
If you are getting absolutely ZERO organic traffic, other than the possibility you have somehow blocked Google from crawling your website, I think your main issue might be keyword choice.
Look at your post titles and keywords and make sure they are things that people search for online. I see a lot of people writing titles that match Jaaxy metrics, and may be good for search engines, but if they are not written for HUMANS doing real searches in Google, they won't get traffic.
For example, someone might do a post title:
"Red Wine: What You Should Know About It"
While that may get some searches according to Jaaxy, most people aren't going to type that into a search engine. Nobody's typing, "what should I know about red wine".
Instead, someone is going to type something they NEED to know like:
can a dog drink red wine?
how much wine can you drink when you're pregnant?
how to know if I'm allergic to red wine tannins?
is red wine gluten free?
how many calories are in red wine vs dark beer?
Do you see the difference there?
Wait... are you saying that the whole title and the keyword have to match exactly? I remember from the OEC course that we should add a dash after the keyword on the title and then add something else. Am I right?
I always aim for low-hanging keywords, preferably those with less than 100 QSR, 200 max.
Regarding traffic, I don't think I expressed myself correctly. I do get some organic traffic, but it's negligible. I checked the numbers from last month and only 7.6% came from organic traffic.
What I'm trying to get at is that none of my posts has made it to the first page on Google nor have I seen any conversions. :/
Good solid information, much appreciated.
I could do 4 a week even with working full time, 48 in 3 months.
Yeah, so very promising.
Just got to finish the training and learn about the website design and how to make it look how I want.
Big congratulations on the page 1 ranking.
I wish you continued success.
Have a fabulous week.
Thank you Louise! Something that's very hard for many folks to wrap their head around (including myself, when I got started), is that small habits add up to big results. Publishing just once per week seems useless until you see the result of 52 articles at the end of the year.
Writing an outline seems useless until you see that it helps you publish 2-4x per week, then you have 200 articles by the end of the year.
Keep up the good work with your publishing schedule. It going to get you some awesome rankings for your website!
Hi Nathaniel, thx for all this info. It helps a lot as a reference. My website has 2 months, 7 posts, no social engagement... and I at most 12 visits x month.... my SEO must be basic. 1000 words post... so, I need to keep publishing, and get to 2 posts x week. This would be a great achievement for me. thx again and have a great weeks
Yes, keep up publishing. Also, 1k words is a MINIMUM, so maybe look at how you can edit your current articles to make them more in-depth. Updating old content helps to make your website better for visitors, and keeps search engines crawling often and updating your rank against your competitors.
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Great post, Nathaniel, you are a star!! Your posts always provides practical tips and advice. This post gives me hope I will rank better when I reach the 3-months mark, too.
My new website is only 2 months old with 20 posts and hasn't been ranking well. I wonder if I'm the keywords are not bad or if it's because the website is so young and when I keep posting, it will change.
It is not easy not to see any results. I'm in for long term and don't expect any earnings now but it would be nice to see some improvements.
Lenka
I would look at what keywords you are aiming for. Make sure they are low competition, and they are targeting a specific IDEA.
"how to make guacamole at home" has a lot of words, but it's really a specific idea. You can make guacamole at home. Doesn't make a difference if it's at home at a restaurant or on vacation. Same stuff.
"make authentic Mexican chipotle guacamole" is much more specific. You've got many qualifiers in that phrase, including "mexican", "chipotle", and "authentic" which makes it lower competition.
Thank you Nathaniell! I'm just finishing a new article about beauty mini fridges. I wanted to name it "best skincare and makeup fridges" but now I think it's still not enough specific.
I sometimes spend more hours looking for the right keyword than writing. I guess it needs more practice.