Follow Along Journey to 250 USD Daily Profit with CPA & SEO "passive"

[Serpheus]

Haha, people are following and reading, whether they're saying so or not (I am for sure)

 

[dood]

What do you use to track SERP positions?

 

[Serpheus]

What do you use to track SERP positions?

www.serprobot.com
They make 25 daily checks for free and for 5 bucks you'll get additional 300 daily checks (10 for 600 etc.). That means you can have more than 50 keywords having them check every other day... or 175 getting each checked once a week with the free plan... They are perfect if you try to run on a low budget.

 

[dood]

I'll try them now. Thanks.

 

[Serpheus]

Update 6: Tuesday, 18th December 2018

Recap of the last 2 Weeks:
Build a few hundred backlinks for the YT video to use it as a stronger backlink

Current Rankings:

Traffic:

Current CPA Income:
203 Organic visitors
35 Clicks (17.24% CTR)
0 Conversion
0 Income

Current Verdict:
Two main problems persist. The low organic traffic (all tough it starts to pick up, there is a clear upwards trend) and the CTR is not in a 25% range. So, pure on page and some minor link building didn't work. The authority of the domain seems not to be strong enough for that keyword (the keyword is to difficult for the domain) So, it's time to get serious about link building. I'm still not going to use any black- or grey hat technique like private blog networks (PBNs). I already created a link outreach spreadsheet with potential backlinks prospects. I will start emailing them in the first week of January.

Up Next:
Start blog outreach and backlinks building

 

[Cuong]

Following your project. I also have a blog about review digital product marketing and I have a good income from SEO but when Google updates their algorithm. My site down very fast and I stuck in this field until now. I don't know how to get it back again but your project makes me engager. I intend to give up with my site but I see you have a good knowledge about SEO so if you don't mind you can provide me some advice to improve again my site?. You can check my site here: reviewproductbonus.com

 

[Serpheus]

Following your project. I also have a blog about review digital product marketing and I have a good income from SEO but when Google updates their algorithm. My site down very fast and I stuck in this field until now. I don't know how to get it back again but your project makes me engager. I intend to give up with my site but I see you have a good knowledge about SEO so if you don't mind you can provide me some advice to improve again my site?. You can check my site here: reviewproductbonus.com

When have you been hit? This August? Do you have any message in your search console under "manual actions"?

What I saw in your backlink profile is, that you have a ton of lower quality links and hardly any high-quality ones. That might be an issue.

Also with the "Medic" update, Google placed more emphasis on the trustworthiness of a website. the more you're trying to sell without providing "value" the less trustworthy you are in the eyes of Google.

Besides that, I didn't notice a clear keyword strategy. Even your best pages aren't really optimized for any keywords.


I would do the following regarding quality improvements:
1. Improve the grammar and English of your articles. Get rid of all the grammar issues you have there.
2. Crate a Keyword strategy for your "main pages" and improve the content towards those keywords

I would do the following regarding the update:
1. Identify the exact time your side got hit
2. Identify the update with which Google hit you
3. Read up what that update is about
4. Based on that prepare a side audit for those areas
5. (Update Independent) Create a backlink detox (get rid of bad backlinks)
6. Disavow bad backlinks
7. Wait for about 4 weeks after the disavow without executing anything from your audit and see if serp/traffic moves
8. After those 4 weeks, take your site audit and prioritize the items on it. Take your 3 top priority items and fix those
9. Wait 4 weeks for the serp impact - if positive go to 10. If negative go back to 8 and review those 3 items. You need to see why your changes had a negative impact
10. Fix your next 3 top items
etc..

 

[chervenkov]

I would do the following regarding the update:
1. Identify the exact time your side got hit
2. Identify the update with which Google hit you
3. Read up what that update is about
4. Based on that prepare a side audit for those areas
5. (Update Independent) Create a backlink detox (get rid of bad backlinks)
6. Disavow bad backlinks
7. Wait for about 4 weeks after the disavow without executing anything from your audit and see if serp/traffic moves
8. After those 4 weeks, take your site audit and prioritize the items on it. Take your 3 top priority items and fix those
9. Wait 4 weeks for the serp impact - if positive go to 10. If negative go back to 8 and review those 3 items. You need to see why your changes had a negative impact
10. Fix your next 3 top items
etc..

Wow. This sounds like a fight with 100-head hydra

 

[Cuong]

When have you been hit? This August? Do you have any message in your search console under "manual actions"?

What I saw in your backlink profile is, that you have a ton of lower quality links and hardly any high-quality ones. That might be an issue.

Also with the "Medic" update, Google placed more emphasis on the trustworthiness of a website. the more you're trying to sell without providing "value" the less trustworthy you are in the eyes of Google.

Besides that, I didn't notice a clear keyword strategy. Even your best pages aren't really optimized for any keywords.


I would do the following regarding quality improvements:
1. Improve the grammar and English of your articles. Get rid of all the grammar issues you have there.
2. Crate a Keyword strategy for your "main pages" and improve the content towards those keywords

I would do the following regarding the update:
1. Identify the exact time your side got hit
2. Identify the update with which Google hit you
3. Read up what that update is about
4. Based on that prepare a side audit for those areas
5. (Update Independent) Create a backlink detox (get rid of bad backlinks)
6. Disavow bad backlinks
7. Wait for about 4 weeks after the disavow without executing anything from your audit and see if serp/traffic moves
8. After those 4 weeks, take your site audit and prioritize the items on it. Take your 3 top priority items and fix those
9. Wait 4 weeks for the serp impact - if positive go to 10. If negative go back to 8 and review those 3 items. You need to see why your changes had a negative impact
10. Fix your next 3 top items
etc..

Thank for your recommendation. I see many tasks need to work to get it back again. Actually, I am very confused about these issues. Do you know any guys that have good these skills can do it? Maybe, I hire him to do for me or I will give up with this site.

 

[Serpheus]

Wow. This sounds like a fight with 100-head hydra

And that hydra is called "Google"...

Thank for your recommendation. I see many tasks need to work to get it back again. Actually, I am very confused about these issues. Do you know any guys that have good these skills can do it? Maybe, I hire him to do for me or I will give up with this site.

You can outsource part or all of it. All will come down to cost. If you hire someone with past experience (proven experience) the audit and action plan itself (just the plan, not the execution...) will be within the lower 4-digit range. You could try to find someone on upwork.

If you want to hear my personal opinion on it: do both! Give it up and keep it...
let me explain;

Scenario1: You want to play in the SEO game in the future.
Keep that website and use it as a testing ground (the domain has very decent stats, it's still worth to keep it for testing and learning). Move to another project and implement what you learned on this domain and make it better.

Scenario2: You don't want to be in the SEO game.
Just try to sell the domain... The domain has decent enough stats to make you a few bucks. Use your time for something else...

 

[Cuong]

And that hydra is called "Google"...



You can outsource part or all of it. All will come down to cost. If you hire someone with past experience (proven experience) the audit and action plan itself (just the plan, not the execution...) will be within the lower 4-digit range. You could try to find someone on upwork.

If you want to hear my personal opinion on it: do both! Give it up and keep it...
let me explain;

Scenario1: You want to play in the SEO game in the future.
Keep that website and use it as a testing ground (the domain has very decent stats, it's still worth to keep it for testing and learning). Move to another project and implement what you learned on this domain and make it better.

Scenario2: You don't want to be in the SEO game.
Just try to sell the domain... The domain has decent enough stats to make you a few bucks. Use your time for something else...

Thank your reply. I will consider.

 

[jairene]

Following your progress. I've never heard of serprobot before, I'll definitely try it now.
I look forward to your next update.

 

[Omar]

this guy is professional and he knows what he's doing
following, and Best of luck

 

[Serpheus]

Following your progress. I've never heard of serprobot before, I'll definitely try it now.
I look forward to your next update.

@jairene I will update coming Monday! As usual, life came in between

this guy is professional and he knows what he's doing
following, and Best of luck

@Omar Thank you!!!

 

[DuavBa]

Waiting for update.

 

[Serpheus]

Update 7: Tuesday, 5th February 2019


Recap of the last 7 Weeks:
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" (John Lennon - Beautiful Boy, 11 April 1981).

One offer (the main one) I had in that project went down for good and I had to replace it. Which sounds like a tiny issue but only if you account for that in the beginning. I had to rewrite a serious part of the article as it was a "problem solving" style blog post with an embedded product review/promotion part. Think of "the main ingredient in this super product is asparagus and it's so great because with asparagus you can fly and get to be superhuman, and that's was what you asked, isn't it..." - now the replacement product simply doesn't have asparagus in it... that's when the crap hits the fan.

So instead of going forward with all of it, I basically was thrown back completely. I, therefore, introduce a new section in this update. "Learnings"

So, a serious part of the article is rewritten. The Youtube Video had to be replaced (as the previous one was product oriented to). All the links for the YT video are sunk costs and I had to rebuild them.

I improved the text and article structure to as it had to be redone anyway. This actually leads to a serious CTR improvement. And the good thing I can tell; there was a conversion between X-Mas and New Year. I would love to say this is because of the new article structure and product. But the product went down the beginning of January, so the conversion was within the "old" article/product.


Current Rankings:

Traffic:

Current CPA Income:
320 Organic Visitors
88 Clicks
27.5% CTR
1 Conversion
0.3125% CR
$44 Income



Current Verdict:
The rankings didn't suffer that much. But they moved neither. That is good and bad news.
The new article has a serious higher CTR but didn't produce any conversions yet. The conversion rate is currently 0.31%. So the article CTR is meanwhile fine (I estimate 20-30% initially, and with 27.5% I'm well within that range). The CR is WAY to low! I expected it to be within the 3-4% range. Now either my exception was wrong or the article isn't convincing enough yet. We will see.


Learnings:
1) Plan for an offer to be replaced. Don't have a "product" review in the way that it wouldn't fit for a similar offer. Expect that to happen, plan for it, have the replacement offer review written by your writer from day 1 to avoid having to rehire the same writer or to have 2 writing styles in the same article. Or write the damn thing yourself in the first place!

2) Don't - I repeat DON'T - use the product name as anchor text in your backlink strategy... it might look like a good idea to the some "branding" power but it's a horrible idea. The moment the offer goes down the anchor text is not only useless, but it will also hurt you as the product is no longer in the article itself!

3) Buy a cheap domain and 301 that to the YT video. Build all Backlinks towards that domain you own and control. With that, you lose a tiny bit of ranking power but when you need to delete the video you can 301 the domain to a new video and with that protect your link building investment (time and money).


Up Next:
I'm back to square one. I restarted the link building and had to plan the blog outreach again. The past weeks I didn't have too much time (year-end - the books have to be closed and audited for the past year for all companies). So I didn't invest to much time in planning yet. I might sound like a broken record as I type this again: next is link building, blog outreach and get a bunch of quality links...

I started with a quote. So I will end with one too.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" (Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953)

 

[Luke]

Learnings:
1) Plan for an offer to be replaced. Don't have a "product" review in the way that it wouldn't fit for a similar offer. Expect that to happen, plan for it, have the replacement offer review written by your writer from day 1 to avoid having to rehire the same writer or to have 2 writing styles in the same article. Or write the damn thing yourself in the first place!

This is a common issue I see with my SEO publishers at PeerFly.

2) Don't - I repeat DON'T - use the product name as anchor text in your backlink strategy... it might look like a good idea to the some "branding" power but it's a horrible idea. The moment the offer goes down the anchor text is not only useless, but it will also hurt you as the product is no longer in the article itself!

This makes a lot of sense. If it's a similar product, couldn't you mention the original product in your article?

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" (Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953)

Love it.

 

[Serpheus]

I did include the original product in a side note within the revised article. Never the less it's now having an anchor text towards an article which has the product mentioned once. So from a search engines point of few this is pretty much something like a non-existing relation...

 

[HAkorehdeh]

Any new update here?

 

[Serpheus]

Update 8: Monday, 6th May 2019

Recap of the last Weeks:
So what happened the past 3 months? In essence, the rankings came back and, who would have guessed it, two weeks ago the offer went down again. The type of article I've chosen was too obvious a "money maker" and therefore the link outreach campaign didn't really go well. So attracting links the white hat way has proven to be very difficult with a CPA product.

Verdict:
The way I did it is nowhere near "passive". I don't know if it is the type of offer I've chosen or if this a common phenomenon, but having an offer go down and have to replace it, is a pure hassle. Having not accounted for that issue in the first place left the project with some serious vulnerabilities


Learnings & what I would do differently:

• Don't focus an article on a product
• Try to collect email addresses on the specific page to send the product via email follow up
• Shift the trust building focus from the blog to the email series
• Go full grey hat for a CPA product from step1. Build some parasites and hammer them with links.
• If white hat, set up the article first, let it age, build links to it (without having any CPA product in it), place the CPA product into the article after the article attracted links and got decent rankings.

Up next:
I actually consider this experiment to be "failed". Failed in the sense of not achieving the set and possible goals. I did learn a lot from it. Being into SEO for about 6 years now I never tried a CPA product. Having seen how not to do it was a valuable lesson. I'm actually thinking about restarting a similar experiment but in a slightly different niche with an adjusted approach.