Hey guys. This is a guest post of a recent case study from a blogger who just started 4 months ago and how he ranked 1st after 3 months doing a simple but well known strategy. The strategy is similar to the one posted 2 months ago. Writing good content, quality and post length seem to be important and I can prove that. Especially if you write constantly on your blog. Anyways, I’ll let Dipendra (Guest Blogger) in charge from now and on:
Search Engine Optimization and its trend has changed and Google has been able to improve its result gradually with time. With Penguin, Panda, Humming Bird and many other algorithm changes Google has been implementing every now and then, the practices has changed and gradually spams and black hats techniques have no places in the search engine rankings.
I started a blog at the end of December, 2014 and fortunately with all the genuine practices, I was able to rank for forth position in one of the long tail keyword just at the end of January. The result gradually improved and now I rank first for same keyword with just three months since I started a new blog.
The main keyword I rank for is ‘easy backlinks in 2015’. I get some good organic visitors for my blog.
The above graph represents organic visitors from January 1 – March 31 2015. Within this time I was only able to generate 1700 visitors to my blog, but it was a good result for a blog that was only three months old. It also generated 33 email subscribers, got me an SEO client and sold an eBook worth $200, which was a great achievement.
What you will learn in this post?
- On Page Optimization
- The value of content in SEO
- My back-linking strategy that worked
On Page Optimization
I am a regular reader of top blogs like quicksprout.com where Neil Patel shares the experience that helped him grow his and his client’s traffic. The first thing he does when ever he handles a client is the on-page optimization. Considering all the knowledge that I got from top bloggers, I made sure that my newly blog followed all practices for on page optimization.
These are the few things I did before I added content.
- Sitemap Generation: I installed a WordPress sitemap plugin; Google XML Sitemaps. This would add all of my recent posts and pages into a new sitemap. I decided not to index any tags, search results or author pages in order to avoid any duplicate content.
- All in One SEO pack: I installed this plugin because it tells me if the on-page SEO quality is good or not. Additionally I wanted to create unique meta descriptions for every post and page to avoid duplicate meta description (which can be seen under HTML improvements in Google webmaster tools).
- The Permalinks structure: I removed folders from my permalink structure and used the %postname% structure only.
- Preferred domain and 301 Redirection: Usually Google considers “www “and “www” version of your website differently. So I added both versions in my webmaster tool account and then choose a main domain (www in my case). Additionally I made a permanent 301 redirection from all my “non www” to “www”. This will pass any link juice back to my main domain in case anyone links to my non “www” version.
The Role of Content
I have read this almost everywhere. Search engine values quality content and with its implementation in my new blog I got results. The keyword I’m ranking 1st on Google (easy backlinks 2015) is found on my largest post and it brings 40% of my organic traffic overall.
The content not only was lengthy but I also did some interlinking, keywords management and got good results. Google’s head of web-spam team, Matt Cutts, has explained that even with little or no SEO, sites with good content could get organic visitors. This is why my new blog got some decent organic visitors.
The backlinking Strategy that Worked
Do it the right way and you will benefit. Do it the wrong and you will go through a nightmare.
Backlinking is still number one factor for ranking. To prove it, perform a google search for ‘click here’. You will find adobe’s website in second place in search ranking and that page has nothing in its content relating click here. This is probably because of the number of links adobe gets with the anchor text ‘click here’. What we could assume is backlinks still carries high value in search results, however not as huge as it used to be.
If you are able to generate links in a natural way, you will benefit from them. However, generate backlinks in a way that looks suspicious to google and you will suffer a penalty.
What are the backlink strategies that I used in this blog?
The strategies are all the same and nothing new. I wrote about 10 guests posts to get backlinks, commented in authority blogs, participated in forums and got some links. I also submitted my blog in some directories, collected some web2.0 backlinks, Youtube backlinks, etc. However, most importantly, I made sure they looked all natural to Google.
How did I made links look natural?
- Diversified anchor texts: One of the main things I considered while backlinking was that I did not used a single targeted keyword in all my anchor texts, I limited them to 10% or even less. This means if I collected 100 backlinks in these three months, only 10 were my primary keywords and I might have used more than 30 anchor texts for my 100 links.
- Diversified incoming links: I did not limit backlinks to homepages only. This means along with homepage links I also generated links to different internal pages in my blog. Suppose I had 100 links, 30 were to my homepage and remaining were linked to different top performing pages in my links.
- Brand mentions: These are something Google takes into consideration when ranking. Links to domains with the brand name in the anchor texts are important and I mentioned them in almost 30% of my incoming links.
- Non linked links: Get prepared to hear something new that you might have never in search Engine Optimization. Along with some backlinks, I got some textual mentions to my blog without getting links and that counts. It was something I accidentally discovered when I was checking my 404 error pages in Google webmaster tools. I saw one 404 error, and when I checked the webmaster tool that displayed where the links came from, it was a page where I mentioned something without even linking, for example if you just write example.com without links but not example.com, Google still takes that as a plus point for your website.
As shown in the image above, only 10% of my anchor text was for my main keyword.
The Two Tier Linking method I used
I did not just collected links to my blog, however I made backlinks to my backlinks. This means I got some backlinks to the pages that had my backlinks and this helped. However to make it natural, I made sure I never got links to my blog and my backlinks from a single domain. This means, If I had a backlink from a website to my blog (tier 1), I never used the same website to create a link to my other Tier 1 backlinks.
As shown in the image above, only 10% of my anchor text was for my main keyword.
To understand the 2 tier link building, think of a pyramid similar to the one shown in the image above. The roof of a pyramid is supported by bases below. Similar to that, the tier 1 in the picture above are the links that were directly linking to my blog and tier 2 were those that were linking to my backlinks.
As shown in the figure, the tier 1 links never linked back to tier 2 and tier 2 never directly linked to my main blog.
The most important lesson I learned was to be patient. Although I was gifted with organic visitors quicker than I expected, it takes a lot of genuine effort and patience to get some decent visitors to the website. You must work hard and search engines will certainly reward it.
Author’s Bio – I am Dipendra Pokharel from Nepal. I am an IT graduate from UCLAN, Java and PHP programmer. I am Google certified and have been into internet marketing for six years. Currently I am a co-founder of an Internet Marketing and IT company in Nepal.
i really liked the information that you provided. i guess it really does take some time before you can truly rank well on google.
I’ve been writing some super long posts on my website and it’s been 3 months and my rankings haven’t really budged too much. It’s a brand new domain and I would love some insight as to what I can do to improve my rankings. I really haven’t done any backlink building besides commenting on blog posts. I would really appreciate a critique.
https://buildsitego.com/
3 months is a bit early to rank a website. Most sites take 6 months to get some traction unless they get some powerful links.
It seems like already have a ton of content so you should start focusing in getting some links as well and keep writing for a few months like that. You should see results as long as you’re doing proper keyword research.
Thank you for the input Servando, I definitely was under the impression that I didn’t have enough content on my site and thought I needed at least 50-100 articles to really start seeing results. Thanks for input, I will start working on building out links.
Cheers
Not really.
If you have 10 articles and some good links you should be able to start seeing some results quickly, but the more content you have as long as it’s good quality, the better, for sure.
Hi Dipendra, I’ve just re-read your article. And for a good reason. The tier I and tier II backlinks thing somehow worries me. I’ve a few web 2.0s and have got 4 links from them. But I remember something I probably shouldn’t have done. I recently build a link (it’s only 1 link) to my blog and my web 2.0 blog at the same and from the same source. From your detailed explanation here, it looks like I shouldn’t have done that. I’m thinking of going back and removing the link to my web 2.0 while leaving the link to my blog intact. What are your thoughts on this? I’d really love for you to answer that question.
You can check out my 4 month-old website here: https://dustfreerooms.com/
I like this post, i also doing a seo strategy to rank my client new business site 1st in local search result, already got good result with no keyword strategy yet.
Thank you a ton for this article. I read it with focused interest because I’m I’m the process of building an affiliate website.
Here is the site: https://dustfreerooms.com
It’s four months old. I’ve published 15 articles there but don’t have many links. Maybe two or three dofollow links. I have built quite a few no follow links, though. As for traffic, it is very little for now. But I’ll try your advice out and see where it leads me. Again, thank.you.
I am following what you have said. I’m doing the same for my website https://www.konnectme.video which is 1 month old by following the white hat techniques. Thanks for the article!
Cool, does your site already have some authority?
Awesome blog post. It helps me a lot. Thanks for sharing your great idea with us.
I’m doing the same for my website. I’ve seen many startups ranking on 1-2 pages of Google with extremely less back links. All they do is proper internal linking along with good quality content (not to forget, keywords play a major role). I’m doing the same for my website https://www.rankvidya.com/ which is 1 month old by following the white hat techniques. Sharing on social sites helps as the quality backlinks as well. I would be really happy to follow your guide as well, worth considering!
I like this post, i also doing a seo strategy to rank my client new business site 1st in local search result, already got good result with no keyword strategy yet.
Here, I Found the Complete Step by Step Guide especially your Two Tier Backlink Strategy. This Could Help to Every New Blogger Just Started Their Journey like Me. I Just Recently Bought New Domain and Start Working. When I was Finding like How to Get Rank my Website, Found this Post. After reading full post. I learned some of things not all. Because I am not connected with SEO / Digital Marketing at All. But Still Trying to be in. BTW Thank You Sir. I am Sure It will Help Me.
Very important article related to link building.. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing the valuable seo tips. Extremely useful for newly created blogs.
Thanks for your valuable information… I’m looking forward to make my website in 1st page…
Nice post. It will help various SEOs to make proper strategy for their project. The link building technique your used is quite impressive.
Thanks for this awesome post. I need to change my blog permalink structure.
This is a great article, I would love to know how can I optimise a fintech website http://www.bankllist.us and how important is ssl.
SSL is quite important nowadays. Make sure you implement it before Google updates their chrome browser as they will mark every website without SSL as not secure in some months.
Thanks for this information very helpful for new blogger
Have you taken a look at the semrush study of ranking factors for high volume keywords https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/? Looks like there are a ton of ranking factors which influence the ability to rank on page one. Bounce rate, time on site, pages per session and existing traffic seem to have the biggest impact on ranking, i.e. establishes sites have a leg up over everyone else, but once you’re up and running ranking keywords should become easier.
Thanks for sharing your own experience with SEO. I would like to know what was your plan to choose particular long tail keywords? What are the search volumes and number of results on google for each keyword? Also what is the keyword density used within content?
Thanks.
SEO green light should be necessary in ranking. I have installed yoast but most of my post has ok SEO score . So it’s a problem ??
If it’s in English then work and fix the issues it tells you. if it’s in another language i don’t care about it much.
Bro very good content and help full SEO planning you shared thanks a lot. But still I have some problem .
Nice article. Recently I created a deal and coupon website. Your suggestions really help me.
It will take upto 3to4 months to rank a website even though we create high quality backlinks.
And thank for the awesome tips
Hi and thanks for this case study.
I think that on-page SEO, togheter with quality content and a strong backlinks campaign should bring your site in the first page on Google.
First of all, thank you so much for the concept of Non linked links.
Secondly, the concept of 2 tier backlinking is awesome! I’m gonna start working on the same today itself.
Hy Servando. Let me thank you first for the great content and effort you put in your project to inform us and help us. I have a question regarding changing the niche for a website, it is on an old domain and it had activity on it since 2006, it’s niche was of that of status for your internet messaging app, so you can find nice quotes about some areas of your life and post it on all your apps. Now I want to move the site in the niche of personal development, and to create content around 9 areas of your life and how you can shape it your own way, find your ikigai. My question is, what will happen with the internal links if i will move the site to wordpress, now it runs on smarty another cms and the links are created dynamic. Is there a way I can save them ? Or should I just move the site to the new content and change the about page and explain, or should I link to the old version of the website ? What is your best advicve on this. Thank You.
Hello. glad you’re liking the content.
Well, to be honest if it’s a new niche with a new focus why not grab a new domain and use it instead of the old one which was text messages oriented for 10 years?
If you move to WordPress you need to verify all the link structure of your site remains the same, otherwise the links will be reported as broken and won’t pass juice to your site. There are plugins to redirect all the broken links to your homepage, so that could work although none come to my mind that are up to date for WordPress (you’ll need to do some research).
well
I am working for a website magsstore.com from past 4 months and and I am also from the field of online marketing. I have done almost all on page activities on it and get over then 200+ baclinks which also have more then 100+ high pr and da pa domains. Still my website is not ranking with most of keywords even traffic is to less. Please take a overview and tell me what can we do to get organic traffic and whats the flaws we have in this website. one of our competitor have good rank from some keywords even the website have only 38 backlinks with it and those link dont have high DA PA. competitors website: subscribe-renew my website magsstore.com. I checked it with similerweb its showing website have 9k traffic in a month.
Sorry but I don’t give private consultations or coaching man.
First thing I suspect is maybe you choose the wrong keywords but having so many links could be good or bad depending on the time and niche you choose.
How long we can wait to see results after increase backlinks ? I’m waiting 16 days after I was change my link profile and still nothing ..
Usually it takes a few months.
When I change profile links or put few links should I do not touch website for a few months and wait to results ? average time to wait it 1, 2 or 3 months ?
I’d say on average it’s 2-6 months.
I have noticed you are not consistent in writing blog posts but you still rank higher in search engine results. I think you will be a great SEO teacher.
I think it not easy as what you said !!! please give more strategy to boost to get 1 ranking!!!
What do you mean by “brand name” in this context? The domain name? Would a link with anchor text of “bestgraphicdesign.com” that points to the url bestgraphicdesign.com be an example of this, hypothetically?
Hey Steve,
By “Brand name”, what Dipendra means is linking to your site with your company name.
To put your example to use, let’s say the name of the company for the “Best Graphic Design” keywords was “The Best Graphic Designers”.
“The Best Graphic Designers” would be your brand/company name.
Does an exact match keyword domain still increase the search engine ranking potential of your site, or has Google eliminated that with recent updates? Should I still be looking for exact match keyword domains to purchase cheaply, when relevant?
I have created a new website and I’ll try to follow you.
Hey Silva…
Can we use social bookmarking for tire 2 back link ?
And does forum link is considered as a back link ?
And what about gsa and scrap box for tire 2 ?
Yes, you can use Social Bookmarks for tier2-3 backlinks.
Yes, a forum link is still a link, although many forums have no follow backlinks but it still counts as a link.
GSA works great for tier2-3 backlinks.
If it’s a no follow link, does that mean you get traffic potential but no page rank “juice” ?
What else do you, or don’t you, get ?
That’s correct. That’s the only difference.
can we rank our blog first in ranking without domain on the basis of good content?
What do you mean by “without domain”?
You can rank it even if the keyword is not found in the domain, but not sure what you mean.
So if you don’t have a domain where do you plan to host your content? in a free blogging service?
No, they will not ignore it but if you don’t own your own domain, then it’s not your blog.
It’s just a blog hosted somewhere else and anything can happen and you can lose everything.
awesome tips! keep going!
Hi,
Im verry interested in your article, and do something follow your guidance.
But visitor did not come as expect, could you teach me why?
I just start my life4travels.com for a while bundle with adsense.
Thanks for your great article.
that was really good article for the bigners but can you elobrate 2 tier link….
Hi. I’m not Dipendra, but are you sure your site isn’t indexed already? I can see 16 results of your site in Google by doing a simple search (site:www.glamourcity.com).
But not getting enough Traffic on my site…how i can increase traffic…this is main issue for me
hello Dipendra, great work on this article. i currently run a blog that discusses the latest trends in technology, i still am not seeing my pages in search results. palingram.com is the website i’ll really appreciate you check it out.
Cam you explain more on what you mean about the example.com part?
Can you show an example?
Awesome article! How did you 301 redirect the non-www version of your site to the www version? Also, when you were getting links from forums, were they do-follow?
Very nice post, I think that building backlinks at consistent pace is important and we must keep patience to see the results
Could you please explain in more detail what you used for tier one and tier two backlinks and how you got them??
Me esta gustando mucho tu sitio, sigue así, saludos
Useful content. Thanks.
Very useful piece of information.Keep it up !!
hello ,
I have a blogger site ( name.blogger.com ) I wonder if you can use the tiers techniques it … he will gain relevance to google ?
tksss.. sorry for my English
Thanks for detailed explanation
hi can you share your SEO Score
This is going strait into my bookmarks will be really helpful for my new blog.
Hi Dipendra!
I was going to ask you if you used GSA SER for Tier 2 backlinks, but you already answered that question earlier!
Did you create backlinks on niche relevant sites or were they just random websites?
Also, how much overall content did you have on your website? 10 thousand words, 20 thousand, more, or less?
I’ve noticed that the more content you have, the easier it is to rank for keywords even if the content isn’t related to the keywords at all.
Do you think doing GSA links as Tier 2 instead of completely manual backlinks would hurt the site or no?
Thanks for the informative post!
Hello, sorry to get back late. Actually I guess content was the reason that I started to get rankings. My top performing blog post in more than 3000 words and all on average my blog posts are 1000 words plus.
In my opinion, I guess GSA links could help for second tier backlinks, however I would suggest manual links. This may take time but ranks would last long I guess.
If Pier 2 sites are penalized for using the GSA , I run the risk of my site be penalized or frowned upon by google too? Why would I have multiple links from penalized websites pointing to my site … correct?
I always had this doubt ..
sorry my english … I’m Latin lol
Yes, in that case the best is to take off the links ASAP. That’s why you do it with tier 2 sites so you can control the links. Otherwise if you were direct linking to your money site, it would be a headache to remove thousands of backlinks (probably not possible).
nice post. this confirms what i’ve been seen in the last couple of months in some of my sites. thanks, hope you and your loved ones are ok.
Hi Hector, thank you for you concern. Fortunately we are safe here despite of earthquake.
This is a nice post. I like the 2nd part of link building through tier1 and tier 2.
Yes Dipendra, a totally quality and well explained article. SEO is getting very much complex day by day. But If we work smartly and follow the google guidelines I am sure it will work. We have to understand that, what search engines and visitors want. Bottom line is do only quality work.
Thanks once again my friend.
Hi
nice info.in your post you said that you decided not to index any tags. why is that?
Hi Andrei,
It is not mandatory but that is what I prefer to avoid on-page duplicate content issues. There are always different views while considering this, however I prefer not to index them.
Just wondering how did you build your tier 2 links since you did not mention it above. Do you use tools such as GSA?
No Aditya, Everything is manual. I added a lot of efforts.
The tier two links were blog comments, and other web 2.0 sites.