#1 Ranking - What’s Next?
May 6th, 2008 by CourtSome of you have already picked up on the fact that my colorado lasik site is now ranked #1 in Google for ‘colorado lasik surgery’, which was one of the keywords I said I was going after when I first started the case study exactly 127 days ago. Note: There are a lot of different Google datacenters so you could see different results in your area.
I was talking about the case study the other day with one of my one-on-one clients, and I was asked what I’m going to do now with the site. There is a ton I can still do with the site.
First of all, rankings are a little unstable when you first get them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a dip in rankings over the next few weeks until everything solidifies. When I first saw that I had the #1 spot, the first thing I did was write one more article to send using Article Marketer. This will add another set of links, which will help solidify my position as the #1 site for the keyword.
Secondly, there are still a lot of other keywords related to the topic. ‘Colorado lasik’ is actually searched for more often than ‘colorado lasik surgery’, so I’m going to spend a little time targeting that keyword. If my math is correct, I’ll be able to take that one within the next 30 days. I don’t think it’s going to take more than a couple articles with Article Marketer and maybe a blogroll exchange or two.
While I’m working on that ranking, I will also be working on getting ranked first for some other ways people could search for information about Lasik in Colorado:
- lasik colorado
- lasik in colorado
- lasik surgeon colorado
- colorado lasik surgeon
- laser eye surgery colorado
- colorado lasik doctor
It’s pretty funny guys, people keep asking me why I really don’t get that excited when I get a #1 ranking like this. First of all, I’m waaaaaaaaay excited when this happens! I’m just not surprised anymore. I’ve seen this happen literally hundreds of times on sites that I’ve worked on. I’ve also worked with a bunch of clients that have been able to do the same exact thing. You shouldn’t be surprised when this happens, in fact you should expect this to happen. The approach is very sound. Keyword sniping works guys and if you didn’t believe it before, I hope you believe it now.
Seeing your site move up is a beautiful thing, especially when you know that the ranking will be really easy to maintain. I don’t expect to do much to maintain the ranking of the site, which means it will be a nice, residual earner. Since the maintenance is very small, you can manage literally hundreds of sites like this one. Mark wrote a brilliant post yesterday about scaling this stuff up. Many of you could create a site like this almost every day for the rest of your lives. I think I’ve spent less than 5 hours working on the site, and have spent about $20 for articles for it. This process is very easy to repeat!!
If you guys have any questions about the case study, please let me know. We’re getting pretty close to the point where the work on this case study is done and I sincerely hope that it’s helped you guys to see this process happen.
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May 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Holy CRAP!!! Congratulations!!! I’ve been following this case study since the first Keyword Sniping post, and I’ll have to be honest–I had my doubts when you got sandboxed…when that happens, it just doesn’t seem like things will ever change. I admire your patience…I have to learn that virtue myself. And then I have to just do what you detailed out so well.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:04 am
The sandbox totally blows wondermoneymaker! It makes me mad every single time, but sometimes it’s just part of the process. Once you’ve seen some sites come out of the box, you realize that it’s inevitable and that helps a lot mentally.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Thats great! The site went in and out of sandbox to be no.1. Thanks for showing us the way to do it right.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Nice achievement! And still no ban from Adsense
May 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Court,
What type of traffic are you seeing at the number 1 spot now? I am curious as to whether it is in line with what Wordze predicted.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Right now Fred it’s looking like the site will grab about 50 per day. That’s a little less than what Wordze said originally, and more than it’s saying right now. The problem with looking at that right now is that the ranking hasn’t spread to all the data centers yet. I’m going to say that I think the original estimation was a little high. But, we do the best with what we have. Wordtracker is saying 134, which could be double the true number in this case. Of course, I have no idea what percentage of the searches are coming to the site, and the site isn’t ranked first in all the data centers yet. I’ll have more reliable information on this in a few weeks.
Since clicks in this industry are usually worth a couple bucks, 50 people will provide a very solid income for a small site like this. From the very limited stats I have so far, I’m going to estimate the earnings at maybe $200 per month now, more when the other rankings come along. I thought I could make $500 per month on the site, as I stated in the first post about the case study. That figure might be a little high, but not by much. We’ll see how it works out when all of the rankings come.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Awesome! I’m interested in hearing some reports about the monetization next. Is it making what you expected, ad placement, etc. Great stuff!
May 6th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Like Fred I was wondering what your daily visits were and if they were in line with what you based the site on.
Are you finding that you are getting the estimated number of clicks for your ads and are they paying in the range that you estimated.
great case study.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Check out my response to Fred, BW. It should shed some light for you.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am
cheers
May 6th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Congrats! Your success has definitely motivated me to start working harder on my own site. Thanks for all of your hard work.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Court, if you want to trade blogroll links let me know. My general eye health site has a PR4.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Hi Court, I just wondered how you maintain the ranking of a site like that? Do you still add content or will you work on building links periodically?
May 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I might add a new post every once in a while, but won’t do it that often. I will add links as needed (if the ranking slides).
May 6th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Thanks Court. You have been very open.
Congrats on the number 1 spot in a very competitive sector. My first thought on reading your title was start working on the next step up in the keyword.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Hi Court, I’m a new reader of your site and thank you for the great info you provide. Congrats on no. 1. I’d love to know where you got the articles for the site from for $20. If I could get content for this price I know I could develop sites like this rapidly and monetize them.
Mike
May 6th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Mike we actually have some people who we trained to take care of that for us. We pay them a per-article fee for their work.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
You can find some cheap writers on forums and stuff. But just get a few samples and always start with a small assignment to test them out….
May 6th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Awesome Court! Glad to see that happen. Gives me hope and something to shoot for. So to target the other kw’s guess you just keep following suit now with those.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Court,
Unless I missing something, I am not seeing any form of monetization at all on the colorado lasik surgery site. Is there a reason for this? Do you wait to put adsense on until the rankings are good?
May 6th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I actually do have Adsense on the site. You can read about how I’m doing that here:
http://courtneytuttle.com/2008/05/02/how-to-show-ads-to-search-traffic-only/
May 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
This case study has definitely been very inspirational/motivational for me! It’s great to follow along and be able to watch as stuff like this happens, so we know just how real it is. Can you give us a rough estimate of how much you think you will make per month on this site in the long run?
Thanks so much, Court!
May 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
This is a very rough estimation Muscle Post, but I’m going to say maybe $400 per month.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Court, to what extent do you think the case study increased the speed of getting the #1 ranking? Because of the case study, you got a lot of links to your Colorado Lasik site from here and other blogs that many of us wouldn’t enjoy as we start down the keyword sniping path.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I knew someone would ask that DR.
I have another site that was created during the same week that is also already ranked #1 for its keyword. I have never linked to that site from here and have never told anyone about the site. The keyword I built the other site around is similar in difficulty.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Thanks for the info. Frankly, that really surprises me, but it’s certainly good news.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Congrats Court =P
If you don’t mind explaining,
“If my math is correct, I’ll be able to take that one within the next 30 days.”
What exactly are the calculations that you use to determine the time frame?
May 6th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I’m looking at the strength of the sites that are ranking for that keyword, the amount of links I already have, and the links I can get in the next 30 days. I already know that my onpage SEO is better than the other sites so it’s a game of links. I’m pretty good at this point at estimating what it’s going to take.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Congrats! I have a few questions, though. I was shocked by the fact that you said you’ve spent only 5 hours on the site.
Checking out your backlinks, I see lots of links from that seem to come from articles. Was this volume achieved by means of Article Marketer? If so, I may have to go sign up for that.
Also, I noticed a lot of comment on do follow blogs. How did you find these blogs (some seemed quite obscure), and did the 5 hour time include this commenting?
I guess I do see that the keyword sniping method works, but I’m puzzled at how you achieved this level of link volume with such a small amount of work time. I’m willing to put in the hours, but it seems by your standards I’m super inefficient at link building. Thanks for showing me the possibilities, though.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Yes I used Article Marketer to build a lot of the links. It takes seriously about 2 minutes to submit an article there and it gets sent to hundreds of sites. We only submitted like 4 articles (that we paid other people to write).
Yes the five hours included the commenting. There is a list of dofollow blogs here:
http://courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/
If you do the math, I don’t think you’ll be surprised by the 5 hour estimate. I wrote 7 short blog posts, submitted some articles that I didn’t have to write to Article Marketer, commented on some dofollow blogs, and asked some sites to do blogroll exchanges.
Most of the link building techniques are very high leverage. Honestly Fender, if you want to get serious with this you really need an Article Marketer account.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Court, would/do you use Article Marketer for social blogs, like this one, or only for keyword sniping?
May 6th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I would use it for ANY site I wanted to build links for, this one included.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for the reply, I think I’m going to be subscribing to Article Marketer here in the very near feature then. You have an affiliate so I can get you some cash for it?
May 6th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
[…] Courtney Tuttle has a post on how he has gotten the number one ranking in google for a particular keyword phrase. The article is nice, but it is the tail end of a larger case study he’s been doing on keyword sniping. If this interests you, you might want to check out the larger case study. http://courtneytuttle.com/2008/05/06/1-ranking-whats-next/ […]
May 6th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Hi Court,
Based on this article, I read your original post on
Keyword Sniping. In you, you talk about setting up a wordpress blog with about 10 pages, all linked to your main page. You also say that you should review the dates from the posts. However, I see on your Lasik site that you’re using the dates. Is there a reason for this?
Also, I only see google adsense on this site, and the ads seem to vanish when you click to other pages. When you return to the main page, the googe ads are gone. Is there a reason you decided to go so lightly with the monetization of this particular site?
Regardless, this post has been featured in FullTiltBlogging.com’s Daily Blog Summary today. Great post!
May 6th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
It is reall y great that you shared this case with your readers. I went to the site through G search so the ads would appear and clicked 4 of them, figured a bone is the least I could do.
Question; Archives show content added in March and Dec. only. Would it have been better to have more regular content updates or does that not matter? Also, can you select the date you want seen for each post with word press? I have not used word press yet but will be soon.
Thanks again!
May 6th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
dave, don’t click on those ads unless you’re interested in the site it takes you to. Non-converting clicks will lower Court’s smart pricing score for his whole adsense account and end up costing him more than the 4 clicks you gave him.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:20 am
You clicked on the ads??? WTF!! Do you want Court’s a/c to get smart priced? He specifically said before he didn’t put adsense up because he didn’t want us to click on ads.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:11 am
No April, I do not want to see Court get smart priced since he provides a valuable service. I did not see his previous post about not clicking the ads. Had I seen it I would have known better, I thought, (without knowing) that it would help him.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am
PLEASE don’t click on the ads Dave! I know you have good intentions, but it only hurts my account.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Court I mentioned this before but I don’t remember you responding. I signed up for a free Article Marketer account and have gotten nothing but bad experiences with it and absolutely nothing to show from it.
I did a mini type of review on my site and virtually all the comments were negative as well. It seems you are the only person I can find who has anything positive to say about Article Marketer. Now I know the free account is free and what should I expect for free but if they give away a crappy sample how do they expect me to then go sign up for something that seems of very poor quality?
If you could comment on this I would appreciate it.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well, I’m not Court but do have an article marketer account. Experienced some difficulties at first but once you figure out the classifications and setup your articles accordingly, other than some simple revisions to make them readable and less ad like it has worked like a charm. I’m having much success from being able to utilize their services and saves me a ton of time to focus on what I need to to make the most of the sites.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Nuker -
Like Court says, we use Article Marketer a ton. The free version of the site is worth about as much as you pay for it. Maybe they need to improve that if they want to generate real customers who convert from free to paid subscriptions.
We’ve had quite a few comments on the blog saying things like “I submitted an article to A.M. six days ago and it’s still pending review” or “my article finally got approved but I’m not seeing any links from it”. We never have that problem with our paid subscription.
Buy a membership, submit lots of articles, reap the rewards. We promise.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Mark,
I have a quarterly subscription for Article Marketer. As a whole, I have been very pleased with it. However, I currently have 3 articles sitting in the queue for distribution. One has been sitting there since April 23. I have submitted two support tickets and so far no response.
I really like the service, but they need to do a better job distributing articles.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Nuker the free account sucks. Period. With the paid account it will take a couple days to get articles approved and that’s good enough. The benefits outweigh the negatives or I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re looking for a perfect service, you aren’t going to find it right now.
I personally can deal with any issues because of the obvious benefit. Frankly, if you started a site in the same niche with someone that used this service they would wipe the floor with you.
I don’t know what to tell you Nuker, if you aren’t willing to deal with a service that isn’t perfect you aren’t going to be as effective as you could be.
My sincerest apologies if this seems harsh, it isn’t meant to be!! I honestly want the best for you, even if that means disagreeing with something you believe.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Court I’m just trying to find the truth. I almost paid for the service and then decided to try the free one first since they did offer it. I’m just confused because you and Vic are straight up but then what I read elsewhere contradicted what you seemed to be saying.
Please remember this is not a cheap service and if I do it I will not be paying the monthly but plopping my dollars down for the lifetime plan. I hope you can understand why I would want to research something completely before a purchase like that.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I can understand that. That said, I have an account. Need I say more?
May 6th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Would you consider it better than using article directory submission software to help automate submissions?
May 6th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Justin it takes 2 minutes to submit to like 800 directories. Yes, it’s MUCH better.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:00 am
I just checked the most recent thread on Article Marketer on the Warriors forum. It seems like about 80% of the comments there are negative as well. This is confusing how so many people can be dissatisfied with the service and yet Court and Mark say it is great. How can so many people be wrong? Very confusing to me.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:16 am
This comment is for anyone that has questions about Article Marketer.
Jason as you may have noticed by now, Mark and I are basing our comments on the results we get from using Article Marketer. Everyone else is commenting on customer service, which is obviously somewhat of a problem for them.
We could go back and forth all day on this, but the truth is there is no other service like Article Marketer right now (that I know of) and the benefits of using it are huge.
People are complaining that their articles take a while to get distributed. Well, did they get distributed? Yes. Then there are people that won’t use the service because of their complaints. Are there articles getting distributed? No.
Think about what’s happening here Jason. Nuker (by the way I really like Nuker) and others are hesitant to get accounts because they are mad that it takes too long for articles to go out. Then they are mad at the lack of customer service. In the meantime, people like Mark and I just keep filling the pipe which results in literally thousands of links that these other people aren’t getting.
Jason, I honestly would like Article Marketer more if they didn’t have the issues that they have. However, the truth remains - if you and I start sites in the same niche (assuming you don’t use the service), you have absolutely no chance. It will take you 20 hours to build the links I can build in 30 minutes.
I have been paying for an article marketer account for almost 3 years. I tested the water for a while and then bought a 2 year subscription. If I could go back I would have unloaded the $500 that it cost back then for a lifetime. I would honestly pay $1,000 for a lifetime subscription. Why? Because it saves me hundreds of hours of work every month. Once my current subscription runs out, I will be paying for a lifetime subscription.
Did you read Mark’s comments about how well he’s doing with his e-commerce site? Guess what? He wouldn’t have done it without his AM account.
How people can continue to cripple their businesses because of complaints about customer service is beyond me - I just don’t get it.
Jason I have a pretty good idea of how many people have purchased AM accounts, and I can tell you that it honestly gets pretty old hearing people complain about how hard link building is. It isn’t hard at all, but people just don’t do it. I’ve said 100 times that people need AM accounts, do they have them? No. Then they complain about how hard it is to build links. Then they complain about how hard it is to make money.
You asked “How can so many people be wrong?” They aren’t wrong Jason. AM has customer service issues. I could complain about those issues. There have been several times that I’ve had to wait a while for articles to go out. It hasn’t happened that often in the last 3 years, but it has happened from time to time. People are telling the truth when they complain about this.
However, if people say that they aren’t getting any results, they simply have no idea what they’re doing. I hope that you realize that 99% of people that are doing this business make no or very little money. If you or anyone else is going to listen to these people, it’s only going to hurt you.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Court, I agree with what you’re saying. I subscribed to AM via you’re link as soon as I read you talking about it some months ago. I reckoned that if I’m going to have your success I need to get your tools.
This biz is like spinning plates. Constantly running back and forth building content, getting links, building content, getting links… It’s crazy! With AM I simply add the article and move on knowing that it will eventually get where it’s supposed to.
I’m having a problem with one article that they are constantly coming up with new reasons why they can’t distribute it which is a pain in the arse but overall it’s worth it. However I’m thinking of trying isnare just to see how it compares.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Court, thanks for writing that detailed explanation. Based on what you said here, I came home and decided to pay for the service.
Unfortunately it is not that simple (it never is). They will offer you a $299.00 lifetime price on the special offers page. I clicked on that, signed up with another email for a new account, confirmed my email, and now the offer has gone away. It seems they have a little loop going where you never get to a page where you can actually pay for the $299.00 price. The only pages I can get to are a $399.00 price and I think a $499.00 price. I submitted a ticket and asked them how to get the $299 price I was offered so we shall see.
Bruce
May 6th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Hi Court,
This is real interesting and thanks for doing it.
I am trying to understand the links you have coming to the lasik site. You have a bunch of 3,4,5 PR MyBlogLog links which I cannot for the life of me figure out what they are and how you got them.
The other question I had was about your links from this blog and others you own to the site. They are also relative high PR links and that is great if you have other websites but I don’t. It seems that perhaps it was easier for you to take this lasik site to the top of Google than it would have been for me to do it since I have nothing to point in it’s direction. Am I correct that someone without any high to medium PR websites would not have been able to do what you have done. Thanks and I hope you have time to respond.
Jenn
May 6th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Jenn, I was skeptical at first, too. But if you follow his advice and submit articles, comment on blogs, submit to directories, and get relevant sites to link to yours, it will happen before you know it. I got my first site ranked #1 for its keywords just recently and am now working on my next site.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Jenn if you read in the previous comments you will see that I have done this exact thing with other sites without linking to them from here. With respect, you are dead wrong.
I started another site with a keyword similar in difficulty at the same time - it’s also ranked #1 without a single link from this site, or any other of my strong sites for that matter.
You could do the exact thing, the thing is most people won’t do it and will continue to look for reasons that other people have advantages over them.