a new challenge

[rogern]

Hi, Mike~
i am moving forward with my 2nd site now. my real BU project begins now.

Q1)
Critical Mass, is it what people call, "Authority site"? The reason i ask is, i find it difficult to plan and design my site to look like those authority sites ranking on page#1 for my target keywords. Well, all my site is one-man operation (at least for now), so i wouldn't dare to look as slick as big boys, but still, is there anything you can recommend i can do to design and plan my site better? i am not talking about cosmetic appearance, but the site structure and especially, i think i need help with siloing and generally how to make the navigation of my site make sense in general. BU12 covers overall steps of building out the site, but it's still difficult for me to plan and add my 2nd, 3rd, 4th pages in a way that they all come together so that my site look more expert-like to the site visitors. For example, when my main keyword and some of my related keywords(for the pages to be added) partially overlap in terms of contents or of the meaning of the keyword itself, wouldn't it look strange to visitors' eyes to have two separate pages for them? Like.. for example, "How to play piano" (Main) and "Learn to play piano" (related kw), it would look strange to have two different pages, right? But then again, if i give up "Learn to play piano", i am giving up that much of potential traffic, right? this is where i am confused..

Q2)
my test site (detoxyourliver dot org) has 4pages and getting avg 10~15 visitors a day, but i am not getting any adsense click for almost two months. i would really appreciate if you can take a look and give me some advice what i can do to improve.

Q3)
On second thought, i am thinking that if i am to focus on adsense i wouldn't really need to have such a great contents or site in general as long as my site remains on page#1. If my contents are too good, people wouldn't even have to look at my adsense ads but it will only be a distraction from reading my page contents. Is my thought-process correct?

Q4)
Are there certain particular niches or sub-markets that would work better with BU12 sites than others? How about IM Niche? Would you recommend BU12 site to enter IM niche?

Thanks for help as always~

[MasterMind]

Q1 - First, stop worrying about the big boys.

Quit worrying about siloing and SEO in general. You have the basics of SEO and following what you learned will work.

With WordPress your nav options are limited. Just set your sites up like the steps tell you to and you'll be fine.

With only 4 pages in 2 months you aren't doing much to encourage the search engines. How many links have you gotten to those 4 pages in 2 months? Seems to me you aren't doing the work you need to do and have the cart so far ahead of the horse that you are lost. Follow the steps exactly as they are.

How to play piano" (Main) and "Learn to play piano" are not the same keywords to the person looking for them. Use them both! Lol, on my acne site I have, "How to get rid of acne", "how to get rid of zits" and "how to get rid of pimples". Plus "How to get rid of pimples fast". All of those pages are unique as I wrote them. Yes they all cover the same topic. All get traffic and adsense clicks. If you don't put the phrases up because you think it doesn't look right you don't get the traffic. If you don't get the traffic you don't get the adsense clicks.

Q2 - You simpy need to get with it and get more pages up. 1 page every two weeks is simply not enough. It will be after you get your site established but it's not right now. Build your pages and stop worrying about all the other things. You don't have enough pages up yet for a good test.

Q3 - Personally I want the best content I can write or find. Google loves good content and so do the surfers. Surfers want a problem solved so solve it for them. I highly doubt you can ever have content thats "To Good". The better the content the more traffic you will get. The more traffic you get the more your ads will get clicked on. Your thought process is wrong. Follow the steps exactly and it will work.

Q4 - The IM niche is harder to sell in and get adsense clicks in. I have 3 or 4 sites related to marketing and they don't do as well as my hair or acne sites. Seems to me the surfers looking at them are more jaded than surfers looking to solve a personal problem.

My suggestions
Start getting 2 pages per week up until you hit 20.

Stop worrying about similar keywords and use them. They are search terms that bring traffic.

Do the SEO the way Mike teaches it.

Stop worrying about PR as that's all siloing is about. I have some PR 0 pages that beat PR 7 pages so you are worrying to much about little things.

Not in your list of problems but don't worry to much about DMOZ or Yahoo links either. I regularly beat them without using either.

Don't worry about .gov or edu links either. Doing research the other day I came across a site with over 300 .gov and .edu links and it was barely in the top 30. The majority of the sites above that site had few or not .gov or .edu links.

Go back, read the steps again and follow them exactly and they will work.

The things you are worried about aren't problems except for the fact you are letting them hold you back. Stop worrying about minor things and build your site out according tpo the steps.

If you want a sports metaphor you are trying to run the high hurdles and you have just learned to crawl. Build your sites, add pages, get lnks and you will start gettng adsense clicks.

My over all adsense CTR last month was 3.86%. Not the greatest but it was a new cash record and enough to pay the rent.

[rogern]

Hi, Mastermind~
Thank you so much for your sincere advices and thorough explanation. Yes, to be honest, i wasn't exactly doing all the linking requirements.. up to 5 links per pages max, but still i do get 10~15visits/day. i was just wondering how come none of them clicks on the ads because i know they are relevant ads.
After reading your posts, however, i realize it's way to early to analyze any numbers. I will go over the steps again and start adding pages, links.

Thanks again for encouragement and helping me from all the little distractions.

[MasterMind]

Where you place your banners can make a big difference.

On a new site without much traffic I use a 160x600 on the left side bottom or if a two column site on the right side bottom.

I use the wide 768x90 leaderboard at the top and a 386x280 on the bottom left of the post.

If I can't use the 768x90 for one reason or another I use a 386-280 on the top left and on the bottom left of the posts or pages.

All of that said, sometimes placements just don't work out the way I think. It seems to be different for each niche.

I have sites where the 160x600 in either colum sucks and others where it works great at the top of the left column but not at the bottom.

It takes traffic to figure out what's going to work best and give you the best CTR.

IMO it takes at least 200 hits per day to have enough stats to decide the best placement. Just keep making pages and getting links and the traffic will come.

Do the basics as taught by Mike and when you have those down pat you'll be ready to worry about the way more advanced things.

Lol, I just put a silo plugin on 5 of my blogs to see what would happen. Personally I don't think it will be much as PR sculting doesn't seem to help much anymore.

BTW, I've gotten over 5000 links from the BU in the last year so you're a bit behind in the linking you're doing.

It's simple, make more pages, get more links and the money will come.

Good Luck

[rogern]

again, thank you very much for sharing this valuable information from your own experiences. I will print this out and use them when i am really ready to test and analyze.

200 hits a day!! wow.. that sounds like a dream to me, but 5,000links from BU.. that's something i can do instead of dreaming on. I am ashamed to have expected a positive result for a miserable amount of work that i have put in.

After all, it is really encouraging to know that it's possible to pay the rent by following the BU steps(and, nothing more). I will get back to the basics and keep building out from tonight.

thanks again, Mastermind~

roger

[admin]

Good discussion!

Simple is good enough for web design. Anyone can do it with Wordpress.

All you need is a reasonably clean blog theme that is not too complicated and set up your site properly using the Pages NOT Posts site structure.

Make sure you have a static home page + a blog home page (it will show your blog posts) and you have the right widgets in your sidebar and/or footer.

You hit critical mass when Google starts to trust you and sees activity indicating it is a growing site in both content and links coming in.

You need at least 7 powerful URL's on your domain that Google has indexed and trusts for this to happen.

1 home page
2 article page 1
3 article page 2
4 blog post home page
5 blog post 1 announcing home page
6 blog post 2 announcing page 2
7 blog post 3 announcing page 3

That's the bare minimum to get the ball rolling.

This is all covered in the 12 steps training in BU

Summed up, if you have an exact keyword domain with a good static home page targeting a good keyword, a blog home page targeting that keyword (showing posts) and 2 article pages for related keywords (3 URL's total) you will have a site that MIGHT hit it big.

If your linking is good and the site is not stale you will start earning trust.

Have you done your linking properly?

You should also have at least

4 BU Blog Links pointing at your domain home page (when it was the temp page)

Then after Wordpress is installed:

3 internal blog post links from your own blog (announcement posts for your pages)

+ 12 external blog posts in 12 more different BU blogs pointing at your home page - article pages - blog home page - and blog posts (according to 12 steps training).

Those 16 BU blog posts should be bringing you lots of external links from at least 32 to 80 or more pages that are indexed on Google that are pointing to the URL's on your site.

All of your important URLs on your site must be linked well both internally and externally if you want Google to start seeing your site as an authority.

1 page sites or weak sites are not authority material.

See the BU members diagram for external linking

Look for the PDF:

Flow Chart Diagram #2 – External/Internal Linking Diagram PDF

It's on the 12 steps page for members

http://www.bloggingunderground.com/bu/12steps/

If you do this properly and have good content and good links coming in - it should get you started on the right foot - maybe even get you to the top for an easier keyword.

If the keyword is more challenging you need to keep linking till you get to number one and then be sure you are expanding your site with related content.

While there uis nothing wrong with creating pages to different variations of your main target keyword - yuo nee dto make sure that you are covering related keywords so Google starts seeing you as an authrity.

Usually it is quite easy and natural to find the other keywords that could be pages/articles

For liver detox it should be especially easy. Let me look at your site and I will come back and answer your questions 1 by 1.

[admin]

Q2)
my test site (detoxyourliver dot org) has 4pages and getting avg 10~15 visitors a day, but i am not getting any adsense click for almost two months. i would really appreciate if you can take a look and give me some advice what i can do to improve.

Your site is #9 on Google for detox your liver

Usually only the top 3 or 4 sites get any decent traffic. So you need to push it to the top to get traffic.

It does look good - so you don't have to worry about LOOKS hurting you. However you need to work on linking. Their are LESS posts than there are pages. Are you announcing all your pages with posts on your own blog? You need to!

Exact match your keyword only gets around 320 searches per month - that's enough - if your site is #1!

[detox your liver]
320 170 $1.36

You need to be at the top to get enough to make money with this site.

I'd say this site could easily make 100 to 200 a month in Adsense earnings if you can get to Critical Mass with 10 to 15 pages of related keywords

hERE ARE SOME KEYWORDS i WOULD CONSIDER TARGETING

[detox your liver]
[how to detox your liver]
[detox your body]
[how to clean your liver]
[how to detox your body]
[liver detox]
[detoxify the body]
[detoxing your body]
[how to cleanse your liver]
[detox your body alcohol]
[foods detox your body]
[drug detox]
[alcohol detox]
[detox programs]
[rapid detox]
[detox program]
[best way to detox]
[weekend detox]
[home detox]
[24 hour detox]

[admin]

Q3)
On second thought, i am thinking that if i am to focus on adsense i wouldn't really need to have such a great contents or site in general as long as my site remains on page#1. If my contents are too good, people wouldn't even have to look at my adsense ads but it will only be a distraction from reading my page contents. Is my thought-process correct?

Q4)
Are there certain particular niches or sub-markets that would work better with BU12 sites than others? How about IM Niche? Would you recommend BU12 site to enter IM niche?

Content too good? Not true. You need to create a site that has info on it that will keep people there - if the ad is right they will click it if they can see it.

It depends on the keyword - not the niche - if the kewyword has volume and high avg click and at least a few related keywords worth trageting - it should work

Some will be better than others - but let the KEYWORD find you - don't worry about the niche too much

I think IM is actually good to go after - if you find keyword opportunities no one else has found you could snag a top spot and become an authority - so don't rule out IM

Any niche that has Adwords ads showing should be fine

[rogern]

Hi, Mike,
Thank you for taking the time to go over each key point with great advices. You are the BEST teacher i ever had since high school. Sometimes, i tend to distract myself by constantly thinking about all the possible ways something can or might go wrong instead of taking action to find out myself. i know it sounds all too gloomy but recently i realize this whole internet marketing thing has gradually changed the way i deal with my day job as well in a positive way. For example, i am now better at allocating my time during the day so i can have time to work on developing my sites. I like to think of it as all part of growth in personal as well as business level.

Now back to work on my 5th page.. ^^)

[admin]

Thanks! The secret is focusing on the important stuff and not letting the noise get the best of you.

It's funny - I just had a flash back to when I first started doing this internet thing and I was so into it and it was overwhelming how much money was coming in.

When I first discovered the only limit to how much you could make was how much you threw out there I was on a mad mission to get as many sites up as I could. I could barely sleep. All I wanted to do was hammer away and get more #1 top rankings. I was addicted to the success.

I discovered shortcuts and found ways to get work done faster and more efficiently and was getting good at deciding what was important to do - and what was a waste of time.

I don't know why but I vividly remember when I was in line at a grocery store and I was feeling very impatient and was so frustrated that I had to wait. All th e lines were long and slow and it was such a huge waste of time.

I felt trapped and helpless because I was starting to get so accustomed to finding shortcuts and ways to multitask and so forth and this grocery store thing didn't have any possibilities to get me out the door faster.

I couldn't find a solution to make it faster but I did find a way to make use of that wasted time - I brought something with me to read while I was waiting in line. Probably the Planet Ocean SEO newsletter or something like that.

It was crazy - I used to print out stuff and read it while waiting in line at the store or while eating lunch out etc. so I could at least keep up on all the trick seo things that would get me on top faster!

I settled down and relaxed more eventually but I still fondly remember those early days when it felt like every minute not hammering away was losing money.

I'm much more relaxed now and haven't been doing that for along time. In fact I stopped reading stuff at meals a long time ago

I still just wish that LIFE could have a fast forward button like my Tivo does

[rogern]

I feel what you saying here, Mike.
Thank you, really.

[admin]

All right! You're FEELING IT! Awesome!