A few weeks ago Jacob, the owner of SE Slingshot, offered me a deal I couldn’t pass up. A package of 100 blog posts to boost my rankings for a micro niche site that had dropped off page 1 of Google SERPs nearly a year ago. I had tried to my best to recover it on my own but it just wasn’t happening. I changed the site design, added new pages of content, and added a few measly back links here and there. Still there was no change, it was stuck at #29 in the SERPs.
Before using SE Slingshot
Here are the stats of my site from 9/27/2011 which was before using SE Slingshot:
- Main keyword has a broad search of 5.4k, exact search is 2.4k
- Ranking #29 for its main key word
- Has a Page Rank of 1
- Less than 10 pages of content
After Using SE Slingshot
On October 3, 2011, Jacob started using SE Slingshot on my site and now just 8 days later there has been some major shifting in an upwards movement.
- Site is currently ranking #14
The coolest thing is seeing the consistency in visitors since SE Slingshot started it’s campaign on the 3rd. As you can see before, the visits were very sporadic and now they are becoming more predictable and steady.
As of now, it’s not earning anything with Adsense and I really dont expect it to until it hits the top 10 in the SERPs.
Jacob’s service so far is outstanding. The blog post order was fulfilled in a timely manner and I saw my site moving just two days after my order was started. I’ll definitely be ordering more blog posts to help boost other sites I have since backlinking is so darn tedious and my least favorite thing to do. It would be nice to free myself of that burden so I can stick to just writing.
I will be sure to update where my site is ranking in a few more weeks after it stops doing some Google dancing. In the meantime, check out what other people are saying about Jacob’s SE Slingshot service on the Backlinks Forum.
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Hi Sara,
Hope all is going well?
Do you use the Clickbump system/templates on your sites?
Thank you,
Trace
Hi Trace. The site mentioned in this post was not using Clickbump’s theme. It’s using Thesis Theme.
Hi Sara,
Been a while since I posted here but thought I’d add my 2 pence.
I’ve had many sites that were affected by Mayday and really struggled to get them ranked anywhere even in the top 100.
However, with the advent of Panda, the latest version being the third update, I have found that just by optimising content, you can single handedly improve your rankings.
As an example, one of my best performing sites back in 2009 was ranking in the top 5 and making between £4-10 per day. Once Mayday hit, it went down to 250+ and even with backlinking nothing seemed to work….until now!
The site was a WordPress installation with over 20+ pages of unique 500+ words of content and no matter what I did I could NOT seem to rank it.
What I did was quite simple, I basically just tweaked the content so it was over 1,500+ words and written for the reader. I added in catchy Headers including H1s, H2s & H3s and made the content flow with an added helping of SEOPressor. Actually, when I say ‘tweaked’, more of a rewrite of the articles using highlt themed words and phrases.
Keyword density was down to about 0.5% – 0.75% (don’t forget that other links on the page also increase the KW density value). Anyway, Prior to this 3 weeks previously I ordered one of these backlinks packages from the Warrior Forum where you pay $99 and they guarantee to submit hundreds of links per day until the keyword hits page 1 of Google.
So anyway, the post which was a ‘sticky’ on the homepage was made private and taken offline until it was tweaked and finished….this alone took me a few days to do. The original baseline ranking was upwards of 250+ but within 3 or so HOURS of publishing the new content, I was absolutely amazed when I checked and the page was sitting on page 3 at position 23….and then page 2…position 13 after a few days. Most people would say that this is a coincednce and that the backlinks were kicking in or that my cache wasn’t cleared. I’ve been around for a while in SEO so know these tips I wanted to try this with another site and I found very similar results.
I checked the results on other machines of family, my mobile phone using the phone provider and all were showing similar results.
Those that say LSI is a myth really need to test this. I am in the process of getting all my content tweaked even further. It occured to me one weekend that I may have just been ht by an over-optimisation penalty even though I’m quite careful. It seems this was possbly the case and I cannot stress enough how important on-page SEO really is now.
Morale of the story, don’t give up, work smarter and not just harder.
Hope everyone here is well.
Zaheer
Glad to hear it, Sara! Will give this a peek. Never heard of the service, though.
Sounds like BMR?
Z –
I’m in agreement (wrote a book about my thoughts, Duct Tape SEO, and found a lot of that to be true). LSI terms, thicker sites with more content, written for the reader – that’s def the way to go.
I haven’t started backlinking my new content yet but it’s all sitting in the top 10 or at worst top 20 – but a lot of this is site architecture, leveraging current assets on the website (like internal links, PageRank flow, overall web-silo structure).
I’m surprised at how well it works, to be honest – only I’m using Clickbump SEO now since it gives you SEOPressor + LSI terms (and it can nofollow links if you want, but I use SEO Ultimate for my cloaking).
Whew. Mouthful.
Now to check out this new service Sara’s talking about.
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There is still something to be said for building backlinks because my site that Jacob boosted with SE Slingshot would not have moved so quickly without the help.
Interesting findings, Zaheer! I will have to test this out with some of my sites that recently have slipped to see if this helps. It’s very possible to be penalized for over-optimization.
I recently got an email from Stephen Crooks (Adsense Bootcamp creator) and he was saying how he is pretty much writing for his readers only now and no longer writing with the purpose of SEO. So he will not be conducting keyword research or building backlinks from high PR pages. It sounds like an interesting study he has going on. You can check it out here:
http://100buckschallenge.com/category/google-free-challenge
I’d have to agree with Stephen here to a point but with reagrds to KW research, I think one needs to still carry this out at to guage an idea of how popular your term is.
I have also started to write for the reader. This generally means adding value and not drivel for the sake of compelteing 500 words. Once you have catchy sub headings, all related (LSI) with juicy content, you can then start to scan through the article and potentially add in keywords (very carefully) where you feel neccessary.
I’ve also noticed that posts longer than 1,000 words tend to do well. The REAL POWER comes from ‘in text’ links (links within the content) which you can interlink to various parts of your site. My methodology is to space out my links on the page. So for example, if there is a 1,000 word article then try and create an anchor based link after every 150-175 words. This doesn’t look like stuffing BUT only use it where you feel it is relevant and not willy nilly.
How is your site doing now?
Zaheer
I’ve always been a big fan of Steve Crooks’ stuff, so it will be interesting to watch how his experiment progresses. Thanks for the link!
Michelle recently posted..September 2011 Update
Really good blog. I have some wuestions. I’m wondering how many micro niche sites do you own now? I plan to do the same which is create a lot of them. Would you advise against it and to do something else?
1. How many monthly local searches do you aim for when you pick your main keywords?
2. What kind of Off-site SEO do you do on a new micro niche site?
3. What do you think the average $ per day each micro site should make if you have good keyword research done, and backlink well enough to get ranked good?
Hi Paul,
I’ll try to answer your quests as best as I can.
I’m wondering how many micro niche sites do you own now?
- I have about 30 sites now
How many monthly local searches do you aim for when you pick your main keywords?
- The dynamics for keyword research and targeting lower competition is still a good place to start but also not necessary. I think the more that a website offers quality content and is geared to connect with its readers will prosper and rank well versus micro sites that are trying to land a quick and easy ranking. You may want to consider starting with a blog in a niche that interests you. Brand the blog, write for fun, write blog posts that has information useful to your visitor and try to connect via a social network (i.e. using facebook and twitter).
What kind of Off-site SEO do you do on a new micro niche site?
- I don’t focus on SEO much these days since I write for my visitors and let LSI words and keywords flow naturally.
What do you think the average $ per day each micro site should make if you have good keyword research done, and backlink well enough to get ranked good?
- If you have a site that can do anywhere from $5-10 a day. That’s a great effort! You can just repeat what you did for that site on another niche and potentially earn a full time income over a period of several months to a year. Depending how much time you invest in it.
The main thing is coming to the realization that no matter how good of keyword research you conduct or targeted high search and low competition keywords, those things will not determine success. Google’s algorithim changes all the time; at the drop of a dime. You can wake up one morning and discover a site that you had that was ranking well and easily with next to no effort, is now suddenly no where to be found in the SERPs and is now earning $0 a day. It happens all the time. The sites with staying power regardless of back links and keyword research, are the sites that have become authority sites and not necessarily micro niche sites.
You can test out a niche market by first building a micro niche site and seeing how it ranks after a month or two to see if it’s worth turning into an authority site but honestly bigger sites seem to be the way to go. Google has just gotten too smart to let the little micro sites dominant over authoritative sites.
I agree. I have a friend who has many micro niche sites and during the panda algorithm change, lost 40 pct of his earnings. He himself said that bigger sites or authority sites are the way to go.
Peter
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Earlier this year I re-did most of the content on my sites to make them longer and to include more LSI terms. In general, word count increased from 400-500 to 700-900. I also went to a super tight silo structure (one category per article, category pages re-directed to category “landing pages” that list that categories posts).
I also started using WebConentStudio (WCS) to help with LSI. It lists the most common words and phrases from the top ranked pages for a keyword. It rates your article compared to the top pages based on LSI words/phrased you choose. WCS not free but the creators of SpinnerChief have a free tool that does the same thing but with less bells and whistles (I have not tried this tool).
Right about this time the first Panda appeared and my sites soared and long tail traffic really increased. Soon these sites were all PR3 or 4 and new posts were PR 2 within a few weeks of publishing even with no backlinks. Life was good as was the $.
The Oct. 13th Panda was not kind to these sites and I think will beef up the posts even more to 1,000+ words to make them flow better and seem less “forced”.
Dr. Andy Williams (the creator of WCS) has some good, free reports on LSI, or themeing as he calls it, and how to create “fat” content.
Hi Sara,
It’s been sometime since I last dropped by here. Hope your micro niche sites are earning you lots of money. Coincidentally I asked for and was given a free review copy from Jacob a few weeks ago and that guy is a genius. My ranking for a difficult to rank keyword is now on page 1 from page 8 when he started. He uses high PR blogs to put contextual links and that is really a powerful technique.
Peter
Peter recently posted..The Greatest Scam In Warrior Forum Uncovered
My sites were also affected by the Oct. 13th Panda algorithim change. The sites have only dropped a few places so it was nothing like some of the stories I have heard but still, losing the ranking is effecting my earnings. I am back to earning half of what I have been over the past year so its time for me to get to work on trying to improve those that slipped.