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For a couple of weeks, Perrin and I have been discussing how to build links to his niche site, aPennyShaved.com. One of the strategies that we discussed was using link bait.
Today, I'm happy to say that Perrin has taken some of the ideas that we talked about, including link bait, and has had some nice success getting guest post opportunities!
Unfortunately I was a bit busy, and so Perrin and I were not able to do our weekly call. However, Perrin decided to go out and create a presentation on his own. And I have to admit, his Prezi setup puts my Powerpoint to shame!
Has the student now become the teacher…?
A Note About Rankings…
I also just wanted to make a quick note about the rankings of aPennyShaved.com. Ever since getting some Rank Hero links and now some guest post links as discussed below, the site has been steadily climbing in Google for the term, best safety razor. Its exciting to see this online business start to grow!
As expected, the site does tend to bounce up and down a few spots each day. So sometimes its 15th, then its 11th, then 14th, then 12th… This is to be expected with a newer niche site, especially one that is actively having links built to it.
So, the site is SO close to being on the first page right now…and depending on when you check it may or may not be already.
With that, I'm going to leave the rest to Perrin! Enjoy his awesome video presentation below, then read exactly what is working for him. Great tips here!
Perrin's Video Review + How to Write a Killer Article in 45 Minutes or Less!
Perrin's Week 11 Write-Up
Eleven weeks down! This one was a fun one. I’m so close to the first page I can taste it! (More on that below). And that is super, super exciting for me. I’ve only had a site on the front page once a long time ago, and that was a total fluke.
So building a site from scratch and working it to the front page with a few hundred bucks and several dozen hours of sweat equity will be a major accomplishment for me!
So I’m pretty excited. Let’s talk shop.
Status Update
Ranking. For the past several weeks, the site has been steadily climbing. After fixing some on-page optimization issues, it jumped from 500+ to 96 in a single afternoon. Then, it went from 96 to the 40s over the next couple of days. After adding my PBN articles to the Rank Hero network, I noticed a pretty steady climb to the second page, and I’ve been floating around the high teens for the last week or so.
Today, however, I’m sitting at #11! Eleven, guys. I’m so stoked about that, and I’ll tell you more about what gave me that boost below.
Earnings. In our last call, Spencer and I showed you some of the sales we’d made so far. The exciting part was that we were finally starting to see some razor-related sales, which was awesome! However, since then, I haven’t seen any more, which makes me think those sales came from some blog commenting I was doing around the same time (and the resulting traffic). So right now, I’m sitting at $6.98 in earrings for this month.
Traffic. I’m finally starting to see just a tiny bit of organic search traffic for my target keyword, “best safety razor.” Google Webmaster Tools shows that I’ve gotten 500 impressions and 50 clicks for that term. Pretty sweet! I’m not ranking for too many long-tail phrases yet, however (that I can see, anyway), so I’m hoping those will start to trickle in as the site matures.
Overall, I’m really pleased with the progress of the site. I feel like it’s got a lot of potential energy now, like a bullet waiting to be fired. If current trends continue, the next couple of weeks should be pretty crazy 🙂
Link Bait!
We’ve been talking about it. You guys have been asking about it. And we finally did it! And the results were…
Awesome!
Our initial link-baiting strategy has worked very, very well. It’s landed me a handful of really great links, and I’ve seen a jump in the SERPs since those links have started getting indexed (from around the bottom of the second page to the top of the second page).
Here’s what we did…
Basically, we created a “Top Shaving Sites & Resources” page, which included the top 8-10 shaving blogs I found during my research. Here’s the important part: I chose sites I really liked!
I was planning on reaching out to these people to start a relationship, so I only chose sites I thought were really cool, valuable and interesting.
Then I reached out to those webmasters to say they made the list. The idea is to connect with people by being nice to them and doing something cool for them before you start asking for stuff. And I was very sincere about this. Remember, I chose blogs I actually thought were really cool in the first place!
So, I sent all of the webmasters some version of the following email:
“Hey [Name]!
Just wanted to let you know I gave you a shout-out on our “Top Shaving Sites & Resources” list. If you want to check out your blurb, here’s the link: [Link URL].
Anyway, it’s just our way of saying we appreciate your work. Thanks! :)”
And that’s it! The way I see it, this wasn’t a “link bait” strategy as it was a strategy just to make some friends in the niche.
The Results
The results were amazing! It turns out people really appreciate nice gestures.
Of the eight or so people I emailed, two offered to let me guest post (I followed up with one, and the other offered to return my nice favor). Several more emailed me just to say thanks.
The best link, though, came from one of the higher-authority blogs who just added me to his blogroll as a thank-you (without me asking). That gave me a bunch of great dofollow links.
At the end of the day, the ROI was ridiculous. This strategy only took about one hour of my time, and it cost zero dollars. That’s one fifth of the time it took me to research and comment on blogs. And I got two guest posts and a bunch of blogroll links on highly relevant sites.
And I think that’s a lesson I’ll keep in mind for future sites: If you base your link-baiting strategy on giving and being nice to people, the ROI is much, much better than almost anything else (aside from, perhaps, PBN links). It’s definitely worth spending some time on.
Up Next…
I really, really, really want to get on that front page. Really. Ha. So over the next week or so, I’m going to spend some time evaluating what I can do to get the maximum value out of my time. Because, honestly, I’ve been working really hard, but in terms of ROI, I feel like I could have been more efficient.
So I’m probably going to consult with Spencer to talk about what high-value activities can get me over the hump.
Then, after I get on the front page, I think I’ll probably spend more time writing new articles, focusing on super low-competition keywords.
My question for those of you following along:
Have you been trying to network? Have you used networking as a link-building strategy with other sites? How has it been working?
Til next time!
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75 Comments
Conversation
Hey Perrin,
Congrats on your success ans I’m sure you will hit the first page soon! Great link bait strategy and a clever way to make connections.
Thanks!
When I search that keyword you show up as #7. Been fun following this study.
Yep; it was a big surprise today. 🙂
As I type this you are at ranking for best safety razor at number 6!!
You are at number 7 for me as well, congratulations on the progress.
Great job Perrin! I think Spencer can be satisfied that he chose you to be his student 🙂
Quick question to the experts. If I have a page that targets a keyword with a mid 30’s KC (lets say 35), how many links would I need to get the page moving up the rankings and out of the 500+ hole?
Hi Andy,
Like all good questions, the answer is “it depends…”
It depends on how “good” the backlinks are for your site and how “good” the other websites in the niche are. The age of your website also makes a difference.
If you want to me to take a look, you can email me and I will be happy to help.
Doug
You also don’t want to just look at the KC (although that does give you an initial idea). You want to look at the type of websites as well as how well they target that keyword. Also, if the websites have a high PA value with quite a few juice links, it’s gonna be a little harder.
If you have relevant, high PA links, then it may not take quite as many as you think especially if the other sites have less relevant/lower authority links.
Yep, very happy with the chose…but it was the reader’s choice! So, the Niche Pursuits Community chose well!
It really depends, it could be more links; but it could be something like not having quality content or having too many affiliate links. Its hard to say…or it could just be waiting a week or 2.
Hey, Spencer! Do you think you could briefly list a few other on-page SEO issues that might keep someone “in the 500+ hole”? I think a ton of us newbies would definitely be interested!
I reviewed this in depth in my previous post with Perrin.
Yes, that was a great post—if I remember correctly, Perrin took off some links that he was making to himself, added some outbound links to related sites, and changed the URL to include www. I was hoping you could give a fuller list of all the things that would keep you out of the top 500. Like, for example, what you said to the poster above—not having quality content or having too many affiliate links. It might be a great post if you had a full list of on-page SEO things to look out for.
Depends on a lot of things. Like what niche, who your competition are and how many links they have to name a few Andy
Ha, there you are on page 1! Grats on the success Perrin! And well done on the coaching Spencer.
I love how you used link/ego bait to connect with bloggers. It’s definitely a layer of link building that I have never tried. And I really should. An hour’s worth of work for strong links.
Yup, worth it.
Can’t wait to see those earnings build up. Looking forward to more updates!
Thanks man!
Depending on the niche, I really think this kind of networking strategy is a very, very viable way to build quality links.
If I had a budget of $0, that’s where I’d start for sure. Plus, it’s just really fun to make friends. 🙂
Page 1…sweet!!
Great job Perrin!
You’re at 6 on my SERP’s!
Perrin,
Right now, as i can see , i search the term ” best safety razon” on my google chrome and you are the number 5!!! wow Perrin this great:)
Great job!! I can’t wait to hear about the ROI later down the road!
Same as Martha here. You’re at #5 in my region. Congrats!
Nice one, it’s great when you see the hard work paying off!
How many links have you put on Rank Hero?
Hey Sarah,
10 links from 5 pages. I sent 5 to my home page and 5 to my “best safety razor” article. So not too many.
First off, congrats Perrin! I see you on the first page too. You’ve officially made it!
I absolutely network to build links. We all should be. I have a twitter, G+, and Facebook page for all of the niche sites I have created recently. I use the twitter and G+ accounts mostly for networking with others in the same niche. I’ve had the most success with twitter. People are just more apt to interaction there.
I’m going to try your ego appeasing approach and see how it goes. It won’t cost me more than a couple hours of my time and will be worth it if I can get just one strong link from a site in my niche.
Hey Perrin, this is great. I saw No.6 for your targeted keyword, but the real fun has just started. My second niche site was sitting at No.5 for over 2 months with similar amount of monthly search as yours, but it only brings me 15-20 searches per day, so get the long tails going, my man.
Congrats on your success!
Perrin,
For my site I reached out to several blogs and was able to get quite a few guest posts to my website. The awesome thing was that most of the guest posts were from sites with PA of 35+. This was not done through a PBR, but links from very active blogs in my Niche.
While it does take work and effort to reach out and form these relationships, the payoff can be huge like you suggested.
One of the best opportunities that I was afforded was that one of the manufacturers in my niche caught wind of my website and sent ME an email offering their praise of my site, and I have formed a relationship with them.
All of this allows you to have a quality and relevant link profile at the end of the day.
I’ve also experimented with using Google Alerts to catch wind of other websites I can reach out to. I feel that link building shouldn’t be a “build a bunch of links and stop”. In my opinion it should be an ongoing effort. Maybe you only do a few per month after your initial push, but i think it’s important to stay involved in the niche.
Perrin thanks for sharing your method of creating content quickly. I struggle in this area more than any, your system is the best and simplest i have ever seen thanks!
Great! I was hoping it’d add some value. I appreciate the feedback 🙂
Amazing Perrin. Its amazing how you get so close to your goal when you do the little things. Little things do cost money(RankHero) :).
Thank you for sharing by the way. Can not wait to see you at number one!
I have just checked your ranking and you are #6 on the first page of GOOGLE!!!! YAYYYYY!!!!
Congrats!
Awww yea 🙂
Looks like you are #6 for me when I search “best safety razor” Congrats!!
I will 100% be doing this for my new blog. Will report back on the results.
Beauty in the simplicity 🙂
Keep us in the loop, Ben!
Now top 5!
Thanks for the awesome writing tips Perrin! That is one of the best breakdowns of how to write an article I think I’ve ever seen. You definitely have a talent!
Congrats on making page 1 – I saw you at #6 in Google!
Thanks man! 🙂
Perrin this writing turtual was amazing. i am in college and i hate English you just make it much better every English teacher should teach like this.
thank you
Thanks, Avi 🙂
It’s slightly different with academic writing, but not much. So you can use this approach in college, too!
Thanks for the tips of writing Perin,
I am a greek native speaker so i write my articles into greek and after i translate them into english and that process takes too many hours a day…I will follow your tips so i can save some time.. I am starting my niche site, i hope i can rank it soon, i will keep you updated Perrin and other friends here, your advice is important to me.
Martha
You’re on page 1 homey – congrats!
🙂
6.98 in earrings this month? :))) That just made me laugh. I wish you many more in the coming months.
Hey Perrin, nice work and thank you for the video.
Hey Perrin, i have a tip for imroving your website.
You should check out the plugin “pretty links” to help model your affiliates links and make a custom pretty link for every one of them 🙂
I’ve seen this as a recommended tactic to all affiliate sites.
Just be careful with “cloaking” the Amazon links as I think this is against their Terms of Service
Great job Perrin. You hit the first page for your keyword. Keep up the hard work.
Hey Perrin and Spencer,
congrats on ranking the site so quickly! It’s a very inspiring journey and lots of fun to follow.
I’m building my own niche site related to jewelry at the moment, which I plan to monetize with Amazon Associates and other affiliate programs. So your project comes in handy 😉
I love your link building approach and in fact I just created a blogroll with relevant blogs in my niche this morning, before watching this video (btw. great presentation Perrin). I might adapt Perrins way and write a little summary for each page, so the owners value it higher to be mentioned.
I’m curious how traffic and sales are related, what’s the conversion rate? I’m not sure whether I missed that, but it would be nice to know.
Best regards,
Jan
Thanks, Jan!
This was an experiment for me, so I really didn’t even spend much time on the blurbs.
If I was going to do this again, I’d make the blurbs even longer and more unique, which would hopefully increase the already high (around 50%) “conversion” rates for the webmasters.
Something to try!
Hi Jan,
An interesting coincidence, I was also trying to find a rough relation between site traffic (pageviews) and sales on Amazon just yesterday
So I searched through Flippa looking for some statistics of the sites sold. The stats below are rough ones (and yes I know it depends on the niche, buyer keywords targetted etc). However a rough estimation is better than nothing.
While the figures I wrote below can change between lets say 1/2-3x and 3-4x I believe
The conversion rate usually varies between 0,11% – 0,89%. So if you have an average of 10.000 monthly pageviews you might expect between 11-89 sales per month
Hope this helps
Hey Perrin, you are at the top 5! Thank you for the tip with outreaching to people. I’m certainly going to follow your steps here.
Cool!
@Irfan and Jan – here are the conversion data from my site. Out of 19,341 visitors in the last 30 days, I had 883 clicks to Amazon. In Amazon I had 126 sales at the same period. This is right at the range you’ve stated above.
Perrin,
I’m curious about something. How many posts did you make on the RankHero network?
Just 5 for $97 or whatever it was. Same deal offered on the Webinar 🙂
Thanks!
I was just curious because if you have those 5 posts then combine it with the other link building but still in the top 5 now then i might use RankHero.
I have 3 expired domains with PA of 35+ and if I combine that with RankHero then I should be in good position.
Also, I want to say congrats on your success. It is ALOT of work and time, but it’s definitely worth the payoff. I started following Spencer at the start of this year, and based on all the information he provides, I put a niche site together that currently brings in between $500-$700/month and there is still TONS of content I can add to the site, but I am going to start on another site that has some solid potential before I start to post additional content to my original site.
I hope one day to make this my full-time job.
I’ve actually decided to write the majority of content myself just as you have. Previously I outsourced content and it’s totaled almost $500 which has already paid for itself, but if I can write one article/day then I shouldn’t really need to outsource it. We’ll see how long I stay on that path. Haha.
Totally!
And the strength of RankHero links depend on the competitiveness of your niche.
For a keywrod wit ha competitiveness in the mid-30s, Hayden recommends about 25 PBN links.
However, for a keyword with a competitiveness in the mid- to high-20s, it seems to be a lot less. 🙂
Also, congrats on your success! $500-$700 is awesome!
🙂
Perrin
Awesome job Perrin and I’m sure you’ll rank on page 1 very soon.
Networking works great for my site too and I just released my own little eBook that I did together with other bloggers in my niche. It’ll be a great traffic generator since I gave copies to the participating bloggers to distribute on their blogs. On my site I use it as an incentive to get more newsletter subscribers. People love free stuff! 🙂
Dan
Awesome! That’s a pretty sweet strategy for an authority site. 🙂
Top 3 now. You rock, Perrin. When you reach no.1, please let us know how many days That take you to rank in total.
This case study is just getting better and better!
Cheers,
Sibo
Perrin
That link bait method is super brilliant! I lvoe this idea and I’m gonna apply right away for my site. Actually, really funny, I was just checking my metrics and I saw a visitor coming from a blog I never built link upon. Only thing I’ve done on that blog was to praise by email the author and tell him how I enjoyed reading it, not asking anything in return… and the blogger put a link to my blog!!! Awesome! 🙂
So I’m gonna follow on that direction.
Just one question though: how do you make sure these super links have the right anchor text to help you rank? or well, you just leave it up to the blogger to put whatever anchor they want?
Nicolas.
I didn’t worry too much about anchor text, honestly. Most of the time, I just included an “About the author” box, and just used the title of my blog.
Here’s one of the guest posts, so you can see: http://howtogrowamoustache.com/mustaches-of-the-ok-corral/
🙂
I feel Baited…
Hi Douglas! Its just what the SEO industry calls it…really its just making friends the good old fashioned way. I wished it weren’t called “ego bait” as well…rather I wish it were just called, “saying nice things about each other”.
Hi Perrin,I like your blog.Very happy to see your website with a lot of useful knowledge, success always!
Excellent post Perrin,
I really liked the way you reached out to the other sites in your niche, that’s a cool technique I may have to borrow from you.
I’m wondering though, why would you risk your site and all the hard work buy admitting to buying posts and links on a blog network?
For 5 links, or whatever you purchased, surely you’d be far better off just reaching out to a few more people instead of jeopardizing everything for a short term gain.
I know everything is a gamble, but this one just didn’t seem like the payoff was worth the potential downside!
Cheers,
Steve
We covered this pretty extensively in the last post. Generally, I think a mix is best. Also, PBN links are usually a bit stronger b/c they often “stick” to the front page, so they enjoy all of that page authority. Guest posts, on the other hand, often get buried in blog posts one or two pages removed from the front page, which sometimes means lower page authority.
Hello Gentlemen:
Sorry but my group started recently to view your outstanding material. We are just in the initial stages. Nevertheless, I hope you might help answer the following
First we found a kw that has “list” at the end of the phrase. It looks promising but want to be positive this modifier does not pose a problem.
Secondly, I have found for one of our kw searches only 7 websites in the top 10 in google (the last three are missing). How should we interpret this? I hope you can shed light on these two questions. Many blessings.
Hi Perrin,
I was one that asked about your writing. I never was a good writer. One thing thing that keeps me going is that I’m doing something that will not easy for me. However by doing, I conquer my fears and have self-improvement. Okay, enough of that.
Want to give you a special thanks for this post.
I’m also at a crossroad. I chose a site that has too many eCommerce competition on the first page. So I want to make a change. I have located a decent keyword and would like you, Perrin, to look over my Long-Tail results. I took a snapshot of the screen for you, like you did.
Thanks again. You’ve been great sharing your progress.
Hi perrin & Spencer,
I have been following your project since few weeks, and its good to see that you are finally on your way.
Inspired from you i have also started working on my project, i am still at content creation stage, and i want to know how do you sort the best products for your niche. what was your criteria to find best 12-13 best safety razor that you are showing in your table. It would be very helpful if you can shed some light on it.
Good luck for your project.
Thanks
Just poked around Amazon and found razors with lots of good reviews 🙂
Great job Perrin!! I follow your work and getting good result too on my photography website 😀
One thing I’d to ask about. Do you build link to all pages or to the page that you are targeted, ie best safety razor page?
I buy a link building service and it boost me to #12-15 after one week for my 2nd target keyword and #15-20 for my third targeted one after the second week. I was building link to the 2nd targeted page at week 1 and to all of the page at week 2. How do you think?
Thanks,
Kevin
+1 for League of Legends on Desktop! ;D
Haha. Awe yea. My IGN is Soupertramp. Look me up! I’ll play a game with you!
Just checked, #3! Niiiiice!
I realized i over-researched for my articles, and it took me about 2-3 hours to write a nice 400-600 article. I’m giving your method a try and see how i do!
Thanks a lot for the great writing tips. I really needed to upgrade my slow writing “skills”.
Keep the good work Perrin.
Cheers!
Perrin:
Great post! I’ve been writing for more than 40 years and found your information to be well organized and presented. I use a similar method, but I do take a little more time to complete an article. I usually give my copy the Overnight Test. I write it, set it aside overnight and come back to it the next morning to read it with fresh eyes. Tweaking content for flow is key. The KISS method works well. I know I’ve succeeded in my job when someone reads my stuff from start to finish without realizing that they are reading. Glad to see someone else as dedicated to writing good stuff. Nice job.