I have an established website that is bringing in close to 500 visitors per day. This number continues to grow as I target new keywords and build links to my existing keywords. Eventually, my plan is to have this level of traffic up around 2,000 visitors per day. If I can attain that level I believe it will provide me with all the income I need to sustain myself, as well as to build a platform from which I can launch other projects using my high traffic website as leverage for doing so. (For example, publishing and promoting a book).
So the question is how do I get there? How do I take this website from 500 daily visitors up to 2,000 per day? Is it even possible?
To answer that question you have to consider the niche you are in. This will vary from person to person and topic to topic.
Those like Griz say that if you chase the big money keywords that drive huge traffic and are harder to rank for that you will make big money.
In my particular niche, I don’t see this as being possible. The big keywords are dominated by huge .gov websites and About.com and wikipedia and so on. There are established, 10 year old sites that are page rank of 7 and higher. And this type of competition fills up the entire first page of Google results! Not an easy nut to crack for an individual with almost no marketing budget. You are not going to climb this mountain by using social bookmarking sites and creating Squidoo lenses.
So I am thinking about the long tail instead. Or the medium tail. The idea is this: if I can write one pillar article each week, and spend the whole week promoting it and building links to it, then it will become a regular income earner for the website. Now some keywords that I do this with will be more successful than others. The idea is to make a master keyword list and then go through and start creating posts and building links to target them all, one at a time.
Right now, I spend a great deal of time writing a quick daily post each day (about 30 minutes) that adds more content to the site but does not create a new income earning page. In fact 90 percent of my pages do not earn any income at all. The pages that earn money were ones where I sat down and said: “I am going to try and rank for keyword X. I will write a pillar article with lots of long tail keywords in it and I will throw links at the page.” These are the pages I have that make money. (I could possibly make even more money with them if I tried an adsense consultant).
Of course there are pages I have found by using my visitor logs and noticed keywords I was ranking for that I never intended. Those have become hidden gems and eventually I built them up into money earners.
So I am trying to wrap my head around a long term strategy here. It is so tough to work from a boring keyword list each day in writing new content.
I’ll keep you posted on this….. *sigh*
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“Right now, I spend a great deal of time writing a quick daily post each day (about 30 minutes) that adds more content to the site but does not create a new income earning page.”
Why? What is it you’re trying to gain from doing this? Is your opinion that bigger=better in Google’s eyes and having lots of pages on your site means that everything will rank better?
It seems to me (and I’m no expert, I’m genuinely curious as to your reasons for doing things this way) that you’d be much better off putting up one post a week, say, but making every post a keyword-targeted, backlinked post.
@ Craig – I have come a long ways since writing this post.
To see my current strategy, check this post here:
http://www.makemoneywithnowork.com/i-am-now-making-1000-per-month-in-passive-income/