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Moniker posted:Here's a video about Facebook ads and why you shouldn't buy them. This video is great because it scared people off FB PPC and the CPC there remains a complete steal. The truth is the guy's methodology was nonsense and there's a ton of money to be made on FB ads if you know how to target.
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Sep 10, 2014 15:53
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mcsuede posted:This video is great because it scared people off FB PPC and the CPC there remains a complete steal. The truth is the guy's methodology was nonsense and there's a ton of money to be made on FB ads if you know how to target. Are you promoting your blog through FB ads or do you have a service/product you are advertising through CPC?
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Sep 10, 2014 23:00
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laxbro posted:Is it permanent? Could I just submit it as a text submission with the link in there to get around it? I wasn't necessarily spamming my site, I just never post on reddit so I must have triggered their spambot since 4 of my last 7 posts in 2-3 weeks were links from the same site. Just create an alt.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:18
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mcsuede posted:This video is great because it scared people off FB PPC and the CPC there remains a complete steal. The truth is the guy's methodology was nonsense and there's a ton of money to be made on FB ads if you know how to target. Do you have any particular targeting suggestions? Does anyone know if there's a SEO benefit to regularly updating your blog posts?
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Sep 19, 2014 04:13
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Ron Don Volante posted:Do you have any particular targeting suggestions? I find benefits to updating my posts; I've gotten better rankings after adding updated content to older posts. I also go back and do internal linking when I write another piece that's relevant. This article is from July of last year but it has a pretty decent checklist of things that can be beneficial to update: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/guide-to-updating-republishing-blogging-content-ht Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 17:49
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So I bought a blog off Flippa, for 33x current monthly revenue. Obviously I overpaid... let this be a lesson that auction sites should only be browsed while 100% sober. But, the reason I bid so high in the first place is the revenue had a major uptick for the last ~20 days before the auction. I put in a bid of 10x monthly revenue based on that short term average. I probably could have gotten the site for a couple hundred less, but that's in the past now. Since I've updated to my analytics/adsense, it's averaging 3 clicks and $3/ per day. Incredible small sample size, but that lines up with what the previous owner was showing. The site has over 400 articles, all of which are obviously written by someone with English as their 2nd language. It's the kind of site that I imagine will do worse with every Google search update, but I'm planning to ride the wave for at least 3 months and consider flipping it then. Part of the allure is that by just putting in a modicum of effort, or even paying for super cheap content, will be a huge boost to the quality of the site. Between that, social media promotion, and some design tweaks, I'm hoping to polish it up quite a bit. If anyone is interested, I'll keep you updated on how it goes.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:40
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Very interested, this thread really slowed down. Would be great if we could get some discussion going again! I check out flippa from time to time but I can't justify putting such a large amount into an existing website considering I'm still deep in the red with my previous random blog associated purchases. I bought an expired domain for $155 off godaddy 4-5 months ago. Ignored it for 2 months and recently have been putting a lot of work into it. Averaging $20 a month by submitting articles to relevant subreddits. My CTR is about 1% but my CPC is averaging .25C. I have some good content up so now I am focusing on SEO so that I can increase my CPC and get some juicy organic traffic. Also started a mailing list last week and already have 9 signups without offering any incentive!
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Sep 24, 2014 23:32
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Yeah I feel ya about being in the red. I actually bought two other sites off Flippa a couple years ago for about $100 each and never made a dollar from either of them. Part of the my problem is that I spend too much time worrying about design and quality of content. Which is good if you're trying to make a strong authority site and actually connect with people. But if you're just trying to get ad clicks, it's mostly wasted effort. I'm hoping the $1,000 hanging over my head will keep me focused. Sounds like you have a good thing going at $20/month. Reddit is a great source of promotion, you just have to keep at it.
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Sep 25, 2014 01:38
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You should be able to dig yourself out of the hole within a year at max with the income you're making from your new site. Really interested to see how quickly you can boost the earnings. Also, 400 articles is a lot even if they are lovely. Don't those usually go for $5 a pop on fiverr? So you got $2,000 worth of content that is already earning a small profit. Improving the quality of the articles will increase the value of the site by a lot for Google and when it comes time to flip it. Yea reddit is a good foundation to build on and I'm lucky that my blog fits into two large subreddits that don't mind the occasional blog link or self promotion. The downside is that the bounce rate is ridiculously high (85-90%) and I'd like more consistent traffic. Right now I'm focusing on building twitter/facebook/pinterest traffic as well as improving my SEO. There was a good link posted earlier in this thread about focusing 80% of your time on intelligent promotion and only 20% on content building. My end goal is to self publish a novel on Amazon and use my blog and mailing list to promote it.
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Sep 25, 2014 11:40
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Most niche-site creation guides recommend choosing a keyword with a CPC of around $1 and around 1000-5000 monthly searches. But could there also be a benefit to choosing a keyword with a lower CPC and a higher number of monthly searches? Assuming the same level of competition, wouldn't the higher traffic balance out the lower CPC?
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Sep 26, 2014 06:56
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Ron Don Volante posted:Most niche-site creation guides recommend choosing a keyword with a CPC of around $1 and around 1000-5000 monthly searches. But could there also be a benefit to choosing a keyword with a lower CPC and a higher number of monthly searches? Assuming the same level of competition, wouldn't the higher traffic balance out the lower CPC? You need double searches for the same revenue for $0.50 cpc. Ranking for something with 10,000 searches is a bitch compared to 5000 which in turn is usually a bitch compared to 1,000. Then again high cpc is harder to rank for than lower. It's all about finding that sweet spot.
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Sep 26, 2014 07:46
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At what point should I start sending emails/content to my email list? I only have 10 subscribers so I'm not sure it's worth the effort yet. Should I wait until it gets a little bigger?
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Sep 29, 2014 12:33
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Now. The power of an email list is that you are communicating with people through one of their most intimate channels: their personal email. So you want to continue to build trust and comfort. Set a regular schedule, let people know how often you will be sending emails, and stick to it. You don't want those first leads to go cold, forget about you, and unsubscribe in a month when they get an email out of nowhere. Whatever you send now can be sent to all new subscribers with a drip campaign.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:27
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How do you handle guest bloggers? One of my friends said he was interested in writing from time to time and was curious about how I could pay him based on traffic he generates. My blog only makes about 20$ average per month so it wouldn't be a huge amount. I use Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliate.
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Sep 30, 2014 00:54
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KetTarma posted:How do you handle guest bloggers? One of my friends said he was interested in writing from time to time and was curious about how I could pay him based on traffic he generates. You probably won't make significant money directly off of that one post in one month. In my experience working for large content providers, I made about $12 a post, so I'm using that as my benchmark. Looking at it narrowly, you could only "afford" one post a month. So, you should look at it instead in terms of an investment. That post will have ongoing value and hopefully grow your monthly baseline traffic, which would increase your revenue beyond $20 on average. What would it be worth to you to raise the average to $25? To $50? What would it take to get there? Are you willing to pay your friend what he needs to get you there? And don't forget that investments come with risk. For that amount that you're willing to pay, are you willing to "lose" it should your average remain at $20?
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Sep 30, 2014 18:04
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I'm sure it's not easy to get into and have any success but I must say I'm jealous of bloggers who blog about blogging. I do so much research on blogging tips (and I'm sure many other do as well regardless of niche) and it almost feels like I'm looking at blogging blogs more than blogs in my own niche. I've bookmarked so many drat blogging sites its ridiculous. I'm sure the grass is always greener; I couldn't imagine trying to stand out in that niche.
Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 09:06
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Anyone had any success with native/linked content widgets, or widgets to help monetisation? I'm using Engageya at the moment, and I have to say - apart from the auto-thumbnails of busty girls for posts that are completely irrelevant ("Innovative Cancer Screening Technology" giving a thumbnail of some high-heel) it's pretty useful. I'd so moreso for US goons, since you'd not have to convert your earnings into £ pounds and take a loss. Others I've heard of are nRelate, LinkWithin, Trendemon, Taboola. Some seem to want X amount of pageviews though (Taboola), probably to increase quality. Outside of this, Notelr for ads, and some Link-Shorteners seem to focus mainly on monetisation.
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Oct 4, 2014 16:18
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I use linkwithin, its fine except it displays a lot of ad trackers in Ghostery and pulls just the first image in the post for a thumbnail. I used to use a related post plugin, but that began using lots of resources which was an issue when i was on shared hosting. I personally have taboola/outbrain/similar ones adblocked on my browser because i hate them and the dumb stories they promote. I believe Discus also has a related posts feature that can be internal or external if you use it for comments. linkwithin is pretty successful for increasing page views, so it is worth it for me.
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Oct 4, 2014 17:46
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Same here, I like using nRelate for increasing page views on-site for related articles but I don't think they're worth the trouble for monetizing. Anyone have any experience with Google Webmaster tools? I have a site that I lost the domain and hosting to but have re-created it from a backup on a new domain and host. I tried to submit a change of URL with Google but they require that they can still verify the old site but it's down. Both URLs are verified in my webmaster tools but without the old site functioning it won't process the change. It's a PR4 domain so I'd rather not throw away all that work built up over the last 4 years.
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Oct 4, 2014 17:53
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So, I've been using twentyfourteen for my personal website, and I'm beginning to see its limitations. I think I'm ready to upgrade to a wordpress theme, but I'm spoiled with options. My website is for my students and their parents. I would like to use the website to post assignments, activities to do at home, and school news. I would like to eventually have the website serve as a tool where anyone can learn basic science. Does anyone have any recommendations of wordpress themes that they think could meet my needs? My current website is https://www.mrleggio.com but I don't like how dark it looks and the way the sticky links can't be redirected to categories. I'm leaning towards a magazine, or educational type theme. Any recommendations?
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Oct 5, 2014 15:57
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I remember there being a thread on SA years ago about adult website affiliate sites, i.e. porn blogs. Is that still a viable thing, or has tumblr and streaming sites killed it dead? It seems like there should still be some sort of money going into the industry, but what do I know?
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Oct 7, 2014 12:27
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I think the consensus then was that while easy to set up, you basically either need to spend an outrageous amount on promotion or choose a really loving weird fetish niche to gain any traction. I imagine that now its even worse, both on the competition side and fetish side.
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Oct 7, 2014 15:16
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counterfeitsaint posted:I remember there being a thread on SA years ago about adult website affiliate sites, i.e. porn blogs. Is that still a viable thing, or has tumblr and streaming sites killed it dead? It seems like there should still be some sort of money going into the industry, but what do I know? On page 31 there was a similar question and someone stated it's a hard niche to get into because of Brazzers. http://nymag.com/news/features/70985/index1.html
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Oct 8, 2014 18:11
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If anyone is interested in buying a "turnkey" website, I've listed my Fiat 500 Abarth blog on Flippa. Reserve is $216, buy it now for $500.
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Oct 10, 2014 00:39
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Just read through this thread and made a black friday deals site. Looking to hopefully make some money/learn about wordpress blogging and online marketing in general. Thinking of content to put up for a deals site in the first half of October so I've just been browsing the web seeing whats out there right now. If anyone has any tips fire away. It's https://findblackfridaydeals.com
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Oct 10, 2014 03:46
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sim posted:If anyone is interested in buying a "turnkey" website, I've listed my Fiat 500 Abarth blog on Flippa. Reserve is $216, buy it now for $500. Looks like your reserve was met, with 15 days left to go. Nice job!! teeris posted:Just read through this thread and made a black friday deals site. Looking to hopefully make some money/learn about wordpress blogging and online marketing in general. Thinking of content to put up for a deals site in the first half of October so I've just been browsing the web seeing whats out there right now. If anyone has any tips fire away. It's https://findblackfridaydeals.com I think the theme is actually pretty good, but you need to have some consistency with your posts featured on front page. They should all have properly sized images as well as titles. Right now it looks pretty disorganized. Some posts have small images which causes the text to wrap weirdly. Other posts have no images, other posts of no images or titles. Looks pretty sloppy. You really only want your best posts with nice glossy photos and catchy titles to show up on your front page. Also, the airline tickets deal seems a little out of place on a black friday deals site. I'm sure most people are looking for consumer tech type stuff. Finally, those two white bars above Recent Posts, does something go there? Looks a little out of place. Good start!
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Oct 13, 2014 11:55
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teeris posted:Just read through this thread and made a black friday deals site. Looking to hopefully make some money/learn about wordpress blogging and online marketing in general. Thinking of content to put up for a deals site in the first half of October so I've just been browsing the web seeing whats out there right now. If anyone has any tips fire away. It's https://findblackfridaydeals.com I also like the theme - it's off to a great start. It's nice, clean, and easy to navigate. It looks like you're using amazon affiliates I'm assuming? Are you using shareasale or any other affiliate programs? Are you getting any commissions from listing any coupons? I see a bunch of google ads but you might want to consider changing one of them to something you find on an affiliate site. I like http://www.shareasale.com/ because they have a ton of merchants to choose from and you get to pick what ads you display. You can also search affiliates by ones that are currently offering coupons or deals with codes which will be appealing to potential buyers. I also know people speak highly of Brandcaster, Link Share, & Commission Junction but I don't have any personal experience with them. I've heard that hackers tend to target sites that use "admin" as their username, though I have no actual data to back that up. I've also read that customers like it better when they feel some sort of connection to the person writing the blog so you might want to consider changing admin to something more friendly. Changing your links to open in a new window will keep people on your site rather than automatically taking them off your page with every deal they click. Your post "Skip the lines" is having a problem loading the ad. Do you want people to be able to share your deals? You might want to consider adding some social share buttons. I don't know how easily google will index your posts if they don't contain 300 words. I don't know the exact rules on that but I've heard many times that blog posts should generally contain 300 words and some quality content in order to show up with decent rankings in search engines. I'd consider setting up some social accounts - I found twitter to be the easiest to gain a following when I was starting out. I signed up and started following other people that shared my niche and many of them followed right back. I have a few go to guides for general blogging advice: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies Great in depth article on link building tactics http://www.blogtyrant.com/how-to-start-a-blog/ How to start a blog (many great details) http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/ How to build a niche site I don't know of any specific advice for maintaining a successful seasonal blog, so it might vary from the traditional advice somewhat.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:20
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laxbro posted:Finally, those two white bars above Recent Posts, does something go there? Looks a little out of place. I had to turn off ad block because I was wondering the same thing. They're google ads.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:21
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teeris posted:Just read through this thread and made a black friday deals site. Looking to hopefully make some money/learn about wordpress blogging and online marketing in general. Thinking of content to put up for a deals site in the first half of October so I've just been browsing the web seeing whats out there right now. If anyone has any tips fire away. It's https://findblackfridaydeals.com You need to build a newsletter badly. That should be a huge focus of the site. There are a million deal sites out there, a few Black Friday sites that are run very well because Black Friday is a very lucrative niche. You have a ton of visitors who are in a LITERAL FRENZY to buy something, give them a reason to choose your site. Have a newsletter set up so that if a visitor comes to the site, looks around and decides that there's nothing they want to buy now they will sign up for the newsletter the instant an ad or a deal that they were looking for comes. You want to tell them when it's time to buy something instead of them seeking you out again. It's going to be a very touch site to rank for. Look at BFAds.net, that's another goon who runs that site and it's very well run. The layout is clean, it has a ton of info and the first thing you see is the newsletter box. I also run a Black Friday site but I focus on a specific store so my niche is for people who are only looking for a specific store ad. The site does pretty well in this niche and I'm looking to expand to more sites but the most important thing for driving repeat traffic is a newsletter.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:52
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Recently, one of my articles on my blog got a pretty good bit of comments (100+). It became a nightmare to try to navigate the comments section. Since the subject of my blog is science and engineering, I was thinking of adding a full featured forum for people to a) comment on articles and b) ask for help on their own engineering projects/homework/whatever. A handful of readers have suggested something similar so I know it'd see at least a little use. Right now Im using Jetpack comments. Is there any type of Wordpress-integrated forum software that will create a new thread for each article I publish, let people comment on that thread via the comments section of the article, and also have a full featured forum where people can also post? I don't mind spending a little bit of money if necessary, especially if it means I can use my own ads. I was looking at Vanilla Forums but wanted to get some goon feedback. For reference, the article on my blog where the comments became unreadable is this one.
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Oct 18, 2014 00:29
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KetTarma posted:Recently, one of my articles on my blog got a pretty good bit of comments (100+). It became a nightmare to try to navigate the comments section. Since the subject of my blog is science and engineering, I was thinking of adding a full featured forum for people to a) comment on articles and b) ask for help on their own engineering projects/homework/whatever. A handful of readers have suggested something similar so I know it'd see at least a little use. Either Ann is nuts or the greatest troll ever. I love her.
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Oct 18, 2014 22:46
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Welp, I set up Vanilla Forums with integrated commenting/cross-posting enabled. It seems to work ok though I fear I may have ended any other discussions going on I would say it's no more difficult than setting up any other forums database on your own. You need to know how to upload and chmod files, create and set up a SQL database with a dedicated user, and how to futz around with github for updates.
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Oct 20, 2014 10:51
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What's a good amazon affiliate storefront to use? Google brought me associate o matic, prosociates, and woocommerce but I wanted to see if any goons had any personal recommendations.
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Oct 21, 2014 21:48
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Amazon has their own, the aStore.
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Oct 21, 2014 22:24
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laxbro posted:Amazon has their own, the aStore. aStore sucks and doesn't convert sales very well. Avoid it. Omits-Bagels fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 24, 2014 03:18
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I've found that the best thing for Amazon conversions is to write about something and gently hint that people should check out more reviews/specs at this link right here.
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Oct 24, 2014 04:49
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Saw a big spike in organic traffic this weekend. Did some sleuthing and I'm now ranked 15 on a keyword getting 18,000 searches a month. It will be near impossible to get into the 5 top spots which are held by 2 large subreddits and a couple other sites that do what I do but much bigger. But spots 6-14 are lovely top 10 type lists (4 of the spots are held by cracked.com articles). Hopefully I can make it onto the front page in another month or two. Pretty happy with my progress over the past 4 months.
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Oct 27, 2014 03:35
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I saw a big decline in traffic this weekend - took nearly a 40% drop in hits per day. I'm not sure if I was hit by some sort of Google algorithm update or what - I haven't done any blackhat SEO or really any linkbuilding in general, so it's a bit confusing.
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Oct 28, 2014 03:18
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http://searchengineland.com/google-targets-sites-using-private-blog-networks-manual-action-ranking-penalties-204000 Seems like some of the big dogs in SEO got dinged for using private blog networks with scammy content to boost up their important sites. Not sure if that would affect you or not. edit: a good, in depth article on the topic http://www.viperchill.com/private-link-network/ grenada fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 03:36
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It shouldn't, though I'll have to check my backlinks to make sure I'm not getting any crummy links. The only major change I've made to my site recently is inserting an AdSense ad into all my blogposts, though I wouldn't think that Google would penalize me for that.
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Oct 28, 2014 05:02
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