Tag: niche sites

Categories
Written Interviews

Interview with Christopher Hale of PostandRank.com

Today I am presenting another written interview with Christopher Hale of PostandRank.comAttachment

1. What got you interested in building niche sites and focusing on SEO? Share your story.

Growing up I always had the entrepreneur bug. It has always been a passion of mine to own my own business. I felt the online space was an opportunity for my dreams to come true. About 2 years ago, I went to my local bookstore and began reading up on how to blog. I finally took the plunge and started a blog on WordPress about my favorite sport teams. It was a flop to say the least. I found myself writing blog posts weekly but no one was reading them. So after a few months I stopped writing for the blog and let it die very discouraged. But I still had the desire inside to create something great. Something that would help people, something of value.

I had one or two more failed websites until a light bulb went off in my head. Having worked in the medical field as a medical supply purchaser, I had a lot of knowledge of different products and their brands. What if I was able to take the knowledge I had acquired from my full-time job and was able to share that knowledge with the public? I knew I had something that would help people. But how would I get my website in front of those who needed my assistance?

Before I bought a domain and planning out posts, I got my ducks in a row. I researched, read other blogs on online marketing and come across the process and importance of keyword research. The only way my site was going to be seen was to ensure that my website wouldn’t be sandboxed deep within the search engine rankings.

One day I was in some online marketing forums and came across a few names that were having great success with keyword research: Pat Flynn and Spencer Hawes! I was a sponge to everything they were doing. Once I felt that I learned the ropes on keyword research, I started a medical product review site January of this year. It was a niche I was familiar with and felt I could write value enriched content. Almost six months later, due to niche focused keyword research and many hours reading my influencer’s blogs, my review site is on the first page of Google for over 20 keywords! I am receiving over 5000 unique visitors monthly and growing by 25% each month. Since January, I have started another niche site and am having the same success. Both are profitable and growing exponentially due to my perseverance and many hours of research. It is only the beginning of my dreams coming true!

2. Tell us about your new project PostandRank.com, what does it entail?

PostandRank.com is my way of giving back. I have been very blessed to learn to so much from the people that have influenced me. My new online adventure, launching this September, will discuss my own strategies that has led to my success. It will show in detail, what is working for my websites in terms of keyword research and SEO. More importantly, I dive into my failures and discuss what I learned from them.

I definitely realize that sites like this already exist. However, I have developed my own spin on keyword research that I feel that has been a huge part of my success. Sharing my strategies with other website or blog owners is something I felt I needed to do to give back.

Currently, I am running a “Launch Notification Email” signup on the homepage. So if you go to the site now, you can sign up to be notified when the site goes live.


3. What are some SEO strategies you believe are working today? What’s working for you?

My SEO strategy starting out has been pretty simple: publish great content! However, I think for everyone who has started a website and tried to climb the search engine rankings, it can be a very slow ride to the top. Sure, great content will get you there eventually but you have to incorporate other strategies. In the case of my two sites that launched this year, both are currently on the first and second page for a good amount of keywords. Of course, I have done the usual tactics: same niche blog comments, posting in relevant forums, guest posts etc. However, I believe there are two strategies that have been contributed the most to my quick SEO success: focused keyword research and links from Private Blog Networks (PBN).

Keyword research, along with the other usual tactics, helped allow my websites to get Google’s attention within 60-90 days. However, I was only knocking only the door of the first page for those selected keywords. PBN’s, specifically from LightningRank.com, gave me very strong backlinks from relevant and clean websites through articles I had posted. After only a few posts in those networks, my keywords were pushed not only to the first page of Google searches but to the top of them. I would have gotten there eventually, but with backlinks from strong PBN’s and a much focused approach to keyword research, my sites are reaping the benefits earlier than expected.

4. What are some challenges you typically face in the online marketing world as you have grown your sites?

I have been very successful in ranking high with Google, which leads to great organic traffic. However, my biggest challenge is engagement. My calls-to-action seem to go unnoticed or maybe just ignored from my readers. The same challenge exists across my social media channels as well. I continue to educate myself on what is working for others in our industry. Research and patience will help me to get to where I want to be on this topic. I learned very quickly that to be successful in the online world, you have to willing to educate yourself and continuously test. Don’t be afraid to fail because that can be your best teacher.

5. What are your future plans for 2014 and beyond?

The first half of 2014 started off very well as the two niche sites I launched this year are both making profits and growing each month. The rest of 2014 will be used to increase monetization conversion rates on my existing sites along with developing additional revenue streams within them in order to maximize their full potential. Hopefully, the second half of 2014 will be just as good as I launch PostandRank.com in September.

As far as my goals for the years to come, I already have two more niche sites in development. I am currently in the planning and organization phases of those opportunities, so my intentions are to continue to put into place the things I have learned from my failures and my successes. I will continue to stay on top of what’s new in SEO and to learn from my influencers as I grow my website portfolio. My main goal is to become an influencer for someone else about to tackle the online space.

I want to thank you John for the opportunity to be interviewed. I find great value in your website and feel inspired by your content and your projects. Keep up the great work and I can’t wait for future posts.

Categories
Interviews

How To Build A Successful Niche Site With Perrin Carrel – Ep. 68

I’m happy to share this very informative interview with all of you today. I interviewed Perrin Carrel who is the owner of an Amazon niche site called A Penny Shaved

Perrin also works closely with Spencer Haws over at the Niche Pursuits blog.

In this episode Perrin talks a lot about how he was able to build out his site, what he has learned through out the past year and what’s working today for link building. A lot of insight on the build of his public niche site can be found on the niche pursuits blog.

Perrin mentions that he hires specific Freelance writers to give his niche sites one unique personality so the articles flow well on each site. He also has used sources such as Grad Savers for his article writing.

In terms of link building Perrin talks a lot about the power of using Private Blog Networks and how this has really helped him rank his niche sites among the top 10 results on Google for a lot of high traffic keywords. From there creating in-depth content allows him to start picking up traffic on secondary long tail traffic.

I’m personally a co-founder of the Lightning Rank Private Blog Network and I’ve already seen some amazing results for our clients so I know that these link building methods work.

Check out the interview:

 

Categories
Blog

How To Dominate SEO With A Niche Website

This is a guest article by Chris Weber

Utilizing free traffic from search engines has been one of the leading strategies to make money online for a while now. People everywhere are using search engines to find answers to their questions or service needs. If you have a website or a Webpage in the search results, you will get free traffic from search engines.

I’ve created a recipe for success when it comes to building niche websites aimed at free search engine traffic. Today is your lucky day because I’m giving out this recipe right now for free. I know there is an abundance of content regarding this topic online, but I want to aim at the black and white aspects. Let’s keep this simple and to the point.

1. Create a Brand ‘On Topic’

It’s important to create a brand for your small website. I always like to use something that is easy to understand and easy to remember. You also want it very on topic of what your niche is. Have your brand name around your topic. A lot of people screw this up quite easily. For instance, if my traffic search quarries are aimed at “dog training,” then I need to name the brand with that phrase (if possible). How does “Billy’s Dog Training” sound? It’s cheesy but super easy to understand. Keep it simple so everyone understands it crystal clear.

2. Don’t Stress the Tech Side

I see way too many people stress about how their Webpage looks and the color of that and the fonts and so forth. Worry about your quality content! Your content needs to be better than the rest of the sites that Google is ranking right now that you have to beat. The color of the fonts and what layout you have won’t win over a visitor.. but very high quality information will.

3. Make Good Videos

Utilize making good videos about your niche and what your displaying to you videos. YouTube is the second largest social network in the world. People use it for videos and love the visual media side of things. Good videos can drive tons of traffic to your site. I have literally made good enough videos to drive enough traffic to a site where I no longer needed google traffic because of the videos traffic. It can bring great things to your site. Link from your videos to your site.

4. Drive Traffic from Forums

This is an old school method that still works great today. Just join forum communities that are related to your niche sites topic and post links to your site when they are relevant or just use your signature link. Signature links can really still drive tons of traffic. If you add value to these forums, people will click through to your links. Don’t be spammy or you will get kicked out fast. SEO is a tough art when it comes to building backlinks. Think about just obtaining traffic before worrying about SEO.

5. Content. And Then More

Your site can’t have enough content. You always see people asking the question “how much content do I need for Google to rank my page?” It really is the magic question. Your going to have to start testing waters with how much content is needed on a site for your particular niche. Fifty articles isn’t even considered a lot in most niches so you will need a good jump on it. Continue adding content to your site and make your visitors happy to where they can answer all their questions and needs from your site.

6. Build Some Links

The topic of link building is a touchy subject. If you build the wrong links it could penalize your site in the search rankings for months. My advice is to be hesitant about every link you build. The happy medium between link building is still posting links but in a slow steady pace. Most importantly though, keep your backlinks in pages that are related to your niche site. Let’s take a deeper look into what links we want. Let’s say our niche is ‘dog training’ related. I have personally become so paranoid that I only build links with niche keyword related words in the core domain. Here is an example to define what in trying to express here.

Good Site: www.pets-animals.net/anything

Bad Site: www.parenting101.net/dogs

You notice that even though the ‘bad site’ has a sub page that is related to my niche of “dog training” but because the core domain of the site and core theme sort of say isn’t related to my niche… I’m staying clear of that.

The next factors I look at when determining if I want a link on the page are ‘domain authority’ and ‘moztrust’. These are both metrics from the Moz platform and a tremendous tool for SEO. Keep your links on pages above a level 20 for ‘domain authority’ and you want only links from sites that have above a level 5 for MozTrust. Both these metrics are actually coming from the core domain itself. A lot of people worry about page authority for a separate page but all pages being created on the domain will eventually gain page authority with time. So even if the page is new it will eventually gain page authority.

The heart of your link building campaign needs to be focused on pages that are RELATED to your niche. This is the single most important factor. Secondly will e the trust and authority.

*Common Mistake: Building links only to your homepage of website. Link to your inner pages even if they aren’t meant to rank!

Wrapping Up

There are some other important aspects to ranking niche websites but these are the core concepts. A common mistake for beginners is to dwell on these aspects too much of the tech side of the website and fail to put out good content. An awesome video or amazing content is going to rule over an ‘exact keyword’ title tag. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors on your website and ask yourself.. Is this website helpful to me as a searcher to these search queries?

To read more about dominating niche websites with search engine traffic, you can visit me at the website geeks community. Thanks for the interest and let me know what you think.

–Chris Weber