Content Posting
Not much new going on. I’ve been focusing on posting content this month to my existing sites, especially my health and fitness site, which I feel has potential.
That feeling has been mitigated somewhat. At the beginning of the month, I finally put Adsense on it and the end result is underwhelming to say the least. I’ve had the domain name since 1998(!) and the site has been through various permutations. It’s finally settled into a WP blog that I’ve been (I must admit) irregualr about updating. With 50+ visitors a day and 100+ page views, I figured I should be getting some clicks, right? I need to revisit the theme I suppose.
In the meantime, content, content, content. Recognizing my own weakness, I outsourced articles and have 11 in the queue, with (hopefully) a few more in the various throes of creation.
I started with TextBroker, but I had to request 2 revisions to get it even close, and even then spent a good 20 minutes rewriting. And it was $8 for 500 words – to rich for what I’m looking for. I went back to a tried-and-true, a guy I first hired from WarriorForum – he does a fantastic job, but he’s even more expensive than text broker. I feel irresponsible spending 2 cents a word for articles when the site has yet to turn revenue.
There’s another guy in the wings, from DP, who I can only assume is prepping some articles now. He did a sample one, I sent back with some guidance, and he delivered successfully, and at only 1 cent a word. So I tossed him a list of terms along with a jaunty “have at it”! But no word since….
I haven’t been doing much keyword research, because it takes so long. Listen, I like Micro Niche Finder, it’s damn handy, but it takes a good 3-5 minutes to bring back results. FirstWorldProblem, I know, but there you go. Kick off a search, read Reddit for 5 minutes, check search results…. LAME.
Perhaps I’m being too particular. In my mind, the easiest way to perform a first check on competetiveness is to assay the available domains, with my contention being that any exact phrase that still has a .com available has yet to be targeted by marketers. Finding terms with sufficient volume and adequate CPC pricing with the .com still available has proven to be challenging. Yet my assumptino is that if the .com is gone, someone, somewhere, has decided to target it. I’ll make another post about his later detailing some caveats….
I also did some link building, with good results, but bittersweet. I’m ranked #2 now on Google for a single world keyword related to coffee, and it’s driving me 150+ visitors a day. Unfortuantely, the coffee offer I ran for so long expired months ago, to be replaced with a crappy 20% coupon. I think I already whined about this before. I can only hope they bring back the offer, since I’m doing about 3% revenue-wise of what I used to do, even with the increased traffic.
The second focus of my link building has yet to bear fruit. A home cleaning product, it’s been a steady performer for 3+ years, but I can’t seem to get ranked any higher then the top of the second page for the main key terms. If I could get that one into #2, I’d be much pleased.
And the third, a newish blog on an aged domain, seems to be resisting all efforts. Traffic is trickling, but it’s a bare trickle. I don’t seem to be ranking on my key terms, and the ones I do rank on don’t bring much traffic. I might be barking up the wrong tree here, but nothing to do but wait. I’ve spent quite a bit on content here too, with no return.
No new projects in teh mix right now – need to get my keyword research ramped!
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