In this SEO case study, you're
going to learn the repeatable 6-step process one of my readers used to get his
client to #1 in Google, outrank JACOB ORAM, and increase organic traffic 12,068%
in just 6 months!
He was able to do it in a super
niche industry without spending any money on paid advertising or link building.
Pretty cool, right?
It gets better.
Over the last 12 months this SEO
strategy has been applied to several posts across his client's site, generating
232,638 visits.
That's a massive 12,134% increase
in organic search traffic.
Every month, this organic traffic
delivers hundreds of new email subscribers and potential business leads.
And you can do it too!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Overview
& results
• Step
#1: Keyword research
• Step
#2: Content creation
• Step
#3: On-page optimization
• Step
#4: Lead generation
• Step
#5: Content promotion
• Step
#6: Link building
• Key
takeaways + [bonus]
SEO Case Study: The Step-By-Step
Process JACOB ORAM Used to rank #1 and Generate 20,314 Organic Page views (With
a Single Post)
Take it away JACOB.
Today’s case study features Coupon
— a fast growing business in the commercial Shopping online.
A little background.
Alan Perlman started Coupon to
help people break into the industry, and build a business around something he’s
passionate about.
To do this, Alan needed to find a
way to generate recurring traffic and leads.
I was contracted to help with
this assignment.
I knew we needed to build an SEO
strategy centered on evergreen content that would help generate long-term
exposure, position the brand as an authority in the industry, capture leads and
convert them into paying customers.
The first post I created (and the
focus of this SEO case study) for Coupon was called "How to Get a Coupon —
The Ultimate Guide":
The article ranks in position #1
for its target keyword “How to Get a Coupon” as well as several other long-tail
variations.
Keyword Rankings and Search Volume
Keyword: How to Get a Coupon
Monthly search volume: 720
Keyword: How to get a coupon
Monthly search volume: 880
Keyword: How to Get a Coupon in a circle
Monthly search volume: 50
Keyword: Coupon
Monthly search volume: 74,000
These rankings bring hundreds of visitors to
the site every day:
In the first 6 months, the post brought in
21.4% of Coupon's total traffic...
Boasting an insane average time
on page of 05:22:
Not only is the post bringing in loads of new
traffic...
The traffic CONVERTS.
The post has captured 2,335
emails, making it a top four lead generator for the business.
That's great JACOB, but how long
did it take to reach the #1 spot in Google?
It took 3 months to hit the first
page and 5 months to reach the #1 spot.
And 6 months after publish
organic traffic had generated a whopping 20,314 page views:
Needless to say, Alan was pretty happy with
the results:
While I’ve worked with hundreds
of companies on their marketing and sales strategies, it wasn’t until working
with JACOB that I saw such rapid growth in organic, search engine traffic.
Doubling our results month-over-month has not only helped us to grow our email
list and generate revenue through our affiliate partners. It’s helped us to
transform our mere industry blog into a real, thriving business.
The Repeatable 6-Step Formula
Used to Rank Content in ANY Niche
You're about to learn the EXACT
process I use to create killer content, outrank global brands like JACOB ORAM
and deliver thousands of targeted visitors to my client's websites.
The process works in ANY niche.
And is designed to maximize your
effort-to-reward ratio by targeting keywords that are comparatively easier to
rank for.
Untapped keywords.
I usually require readers opt in
to view the full process on my blog, but exclusively for Alex Ben readers you
can check out an infographic of the process I follow right here.
Here's the short and sweet
version:
1. Keyword research and
competitive analysis
2. Content creation
3. On-page SEO
4. List building
5. Content promotion
6. Link building
You’re probably thinking:
"But JACOB, that’s so simple.”
And you’re right: it’s not
complicated (that’s the beauty of it :-) )
But it works REALLY well.
Step #1: Keyword Research and
Competitive Analysis
Since the coupon space is a
relatively new niche, news articles are getting the most links and shares.
The main publishers of this
content are big brands like JACOB ORAM.
We wanted to create evergreen content targeted
to beginner Gets, and the best way to find these topics was through keyword
research.
Keyword research is probably the
least sexy SEO task, but it can be really exciting if you know how choosing the
right keywords can benefit your business:
• Assess
traffic potential (based on monthly search volume)
• Rank
faster by targeting less competitive keywords
• Maximize
organic traffic by targeting keyword variations your competitors are missing
• Align
keywords with search intent at different stages of the buyer journey
Finding the right keywords
Head over to the Google Keyword
Planner and type in some head keywords:
Scroll to the related keywords section and
order the data from highest to lowest search volume:
Next, download the data:
And review each keyword to find a relevant,
evergreen search term to target:
This is where I decided to focus on the term “How
to Get a Coupon.”
Why did I choose this keyword?
• It
had decent monthly search volume (720)
• It's
what beginning Gets would be searching for
• It
was a topic I could research easily
BUT the main reason...
It had a TON of related long tail
keyword variations.
Many people make the mistake of
only looking at the search volume associated with their core target keyword.
And, they miss out on a LOT of
potential traffic.
While "How to Get a Coupon"
only received 720 monthly searches, the aggregate search volume for all the
related keywords tallied into the thousands.
Finding additional keywords:
Plug your target keyword back
into the Keyword Planner and scroll down to the other keywords it generates.
You can also use the Keyword
Options filter to only show results closely related to your search term:
These are great terms to sprinkle
throughout the post and boost the relevancy of the content.
Here are some of the additional
keywords I was able to find:
Learn to best coupons (140)
Learn to best a coupon (140)
Beginner Coupon (480)
How to Get a coupon (880)
Cool, right? You're just getting
started...
The Google Keyword Planner is
good for finding close variations of your seed keyword.
But, there it there is one BIG
problem.
It shows the exact same keywords
to everyone (inlcuding your competitors).
That's why so many of the
keywords shown are so darn competitive!
Luckily, there are a few simple
strategies you can use to quickly uncover a laundry list of related keywords
your competitors are missing.
Google "Search related
to..."
First, perform a Google search
for your target keyword and scroll down to the "Searches related
to..." section. This little area is a goldmine for long tail keywords.
Pro Tip: Take one of the keywords from the
“Searches related to…” area, pop that into Google, and check out the “Searches
related to…” results for that keyword. Rinse and repeat until you have a long
list of keywords the Google Keyword Planner doesn’t show you.
Google autosuggest
Enter your keyword into Google
and look at the other terms Google suggests:
These are the most popular terms people are
searching for in Google that are related to your seed keyword.
Ubersuggest
Manually entering keywords into
Google can be very tedious and time-consuming.
Ubersuggest provides an easy way
to quickly scale this keyword research strategy.
The tool grabs information from
Google Suggest, but what it makes it unique is that it provides a mountain of
keyword suggestions from entering a single term.
How?
It takes your seed keyword and
appends every letter of the alphabet after it to produce hundreds of keyword
suggestions.
For example, when you type the
keyword "Coupon" into Google you get a list of suggestions, like
this:
But then when you enter your keyword plus
another letter, Google Suggest will spit out a different list of suggestions:
Ubersuggest will scrape all this data and do
all the heavy lifting so you don't have to spend hours manually entering
keyword combinations like "Coupon a", "Coupon b", etc..
To use it, head over to
Ubersuggest and enter your keyword:
The tool will give your hundreds of
suggestions.
Most of the suggestions won't be
a good fit for your site, but a few will.
BONUS STRATEGY: DIG DEEPER WITH
SEMRUSH
Enter your target keyword into
SEMrush:
From the "Keyword Overview" report,
click to view the full "Related Keywords" list:
Instantly you get access to 951 related
keywords, along with search volume, competition level, search trends and a
direct link to view the SERP page for each keyword:
Click on each term to get an overview report
showing you hundreds of related terms for each of those keyword.
From the list of related keywords I can see
"best Coupon" gets 5,400 monthly searches.
This is a perfect mid-funnel
search term I could target with an epic expert roundup post similar to this
one.
Normally you'd spend hours entering
terms into Google Keyword Planner and mine through dozens of search result
pages to uncover those keywords. With SEMrush, you get all the keywords plus a
treasure trove of competitive intelligence...in minutes! This is one of the
reasons why 95 experts rated it the #1 SEO tool.
If want to learn more about
SEMrush you can read my monster review here, and get a one month free trial
here.
Seeing the benefits...
As the post's authority grew it
started ranking for many of the related and long tail keywords listed above:
Unfortunately, this is where many SEOs take
off their hat, grab a mojito and call it a day.
The keywords have low search
volume so they are less competitive, right?
Not exactly.
Here's the thing...
You don't know how competitive a
keyword is until you take a close look at who you're competing with.
You need to pay attention to:
• Domain
authority of sites already ranking for the keyword
• Type
and quality of content ranking in the SERPs
By doing competitive analysis,
you can save a lot of time and effort that would’ve been wasted trying to rank
for impossible keywords.
How to analyze your competition
(in 15 minutes or less)
First, install the MozBar Chrome
extension and do a search for your target keyword.
Launch the extension by clicking
the icon in your browser bar (make sure it’s light blue).
Go back to the search results. You should see
some useful data below each search result:
The Mozbar extension shows:
• Page
Authority
• Domain
Authority
• Number
of links pointing to the page
Each of these can help you
determine how hard or easy it is to rank for that keyword.
You want to see pages with domain
and page authority similar to or lower than that of your site.
If you look at the following
results, many of them have low PA, DA or links:
This looks like a promising keyword to quickly
rank for.
But, you're still not done...
You also need to look at the
on-page SEO for each search result.
Specifically, look to see if
competitors are using exact match keywords in:
• The
title
• The
URL
• The
heading tags
• Alt
text
This is where things could have
gone wrong for me in a hurry.
When analyzing the competition, I
didn't pay close attention to their on-page SEO.
Fortunately, the PA, DA, and link
factors were favorable.
BUT almost every article on the
first page was well-optimized for the target keyword:
If these pages had solid backlink profiles and
high page/domain authorities, I would have wasted a lot of time creating,
promoting, and building links to this article with very little return.
Don't skip this step!
Check how well optimized the top
10 pages are for your target keyword.
Finally, look at the type of
content you're up against.
Look at the following items and
identify any opportunities:
• Content
length
• Multi
media use (images, video, infographics, gifs)
• Keyword
density
• Content
type (list post, expert roundup, interview, case study, how-to etc..)
• How
up-to-date is the content
• Social
media optimization
For example:
After examining a few of the top
ranking pages, I knew there was a BIG opportunity to crush them in a number of areas.
The top ranking article at the time had very thin content:
The entire article was only 303
words (compared to the 4,000+ I wrote for Coupon’s).
Most of the others posts ranking
on the first page were also short and offered surface-level information. Very
few posts used any type of multi media - images or videos - to supplement the
writing.
So, what did I learn about my
target keyword?
• High
traffic potential
• Relatively
weak competition
• Opportunity
to create a dominant piece of evergreen content
• Perfect
keyword for our target audience
I had a great list of solid
keywords and a solid foundation for the rest of the SEO campaign.
It was time to create some killer
content.
Step #2: Content Creation
When creating content, there’s
one mentality everyone should adopt:
“I want to create the best piece
of content on this topic — period.”
After all, what does Google want
to rank?
The best and most relevant
content for that search term.
And what do people want to read?
The best and most relevant
content to fulfill their needs.
Having a great piece of content
also makes content promotion and link building much easier.
Bottom line:
Take the time to write something
that will blow your competition out of the water.
It took me 3 days to research and
write this article.
I included as much detail as I
possibly could:
The article is over 4,000 words
long.
It includes in-text links for
easy navigation:
Note: This is a smart move for any long-form
content, because Google will often take some of these links and put them in the
search result.
This can help your post stand out
in the SERPS and increase click-through rates (now a ranking signal within
Google's algorithm).
I also included definitions for
readers, such as how to best safely, a pre-flight checklist, novice skills,
beginner skills, advanced skills, and much more.
I looked at everything the top
articles were doing and did it better.
Then I looked at everything they
weren’t doing, and did that too. This is the stuff that will ultimately make
your content stand out from the competition.
The result was a 4,400 word guide
that was clearly better than anything else out there.
As a general rule, make sure your
content is:
• More
in-depth
• More
up-to-date
• Provides
a better user experience
• Actionable
Important: Try to beat your
competition on every level - length, current information, design.
This is exactly what Alex did to
increase his traffic 272% in 30 day.
Ok, you have a great piece of
content. The next step is to optimize your on-page SEO.
Step #3: On-Page Optimization
On-page factors are the elements
of a webpage that influence search engine ranking.
They tell Google:
1. What your page is about
2. What keywords you want to rank
for
3. How valuable your content is
You want to make sure your
content is well-optimized for your target and related keywords.
Placing keywords in a few KEY
areas will go a long way.
Strong on-page SEO means you need
less off-page signals to rank (links), giving you a chance against authority
sites, like Youtube:
The correct on-page SEO doesn't
take a long time to set up.
Here is a list of the elements to
focus on:
• Keyword
placement (title, headers, body, URL, alt text)
• Keyword
variation (LSI)
• Multi
media
• Internal
links
• External
links
• Load
speed
Here's how to successfully optimize
your content:
1) Target keyword placement
Your target keyword needs to be
placed in these areas:
Title Tag: Your title tag is the
most important on-page SEO factor. The closer your target keyword is to the
front of the title tag, the more weighting it will have with the search
engines.
If you’re using WordPress, it’s
easy to place your keyword in the SEO title, URL, and meta description.
First, install the WordPress SEO
by Yoast plugin.
Open the page editor and scroll
down to the “Yoast SEO” box.
Adjust the SEO title/meta
description and get a preview of what your search engine result will look like:
URL: Make sure you have a clean permalink
structure. Google has stated the first 3-5 words in the URL is weighted as a
search ranking factor. If possible, include exact match keyword at the
beginning of the URL.
First 100 words: Include your target keyword
somewhere in the first paragraph of your body copy:
Heading tags: Make sure your blog
post title is wrapped in an H1 tag. Google views the H1 tag as your post
headline. It helps Google better understand the topic of your post.
Try to include keyword variations
in H2 and H3 tags within your post.
If you’ve got in-text navigation
links, it’s also smart to include it there:
Google cannot read images, so make sure to
include your target keyword in the image alt text so Google can understand what
they are about.
Note: Do NOT stuff keywords in
alt text. Instead, write the alt text in a way that accurately describes what
the image is about. Keep it natural.
And finally, place keyword variations a few
times throughout the body content.
2) Keyword variations (LSI)
LSI keywords are synonyms that
Google uses to determine a page's relevancy (and sometimes quality).
Including LSI can not only boost
relevancy, but also help you pull in more long-tail and related keyword traffic
For example:
"How to Get your Coupon”
versus “How to Get a Coupon.”
Even if the Google Keyword Planner doesn’t
show any search volume for your keyword variations, you should still place
these in your content for relevancy and to make sure you’re not over-optimizing
for exact match keywords.
Note: Don't worry about this too
much. If you write long form content, chances are you'll naturally include LSI
keywords in your content.
Next, make sure to include the
related keywords you want to rank for.
Place each of them once or twice
in the body content:
Subheadings:
And in-text navigation links:
3) Multi media
Text can only do so much.
Engaging images, videos,
screenshots and other multi media can increase time on site, scroll depth and
decrease bounce rate: three behavioral metrics Google uses to measure content
quality.
Multi media will also increase
the perceived value of your content: which means more people will either share
or link to your content.
Make sure your are including
helpful images:
And videos:
4) External links
Not linking out to external
resources is a common SEO mistake. Many people fear that doing so will cause
their site to leak authority, when in fact linking out to related content is a
relevancy signal Google use's to identify the topic on your site.
It can also signal to Google that
your content is a hub of quality information.
When optimizing the Coupon guide,
I noticed that many of the top ranking competitors weren’t linking out to any
other resources.
I did the opposite :)
Go through your content and find
a few places to link out to the most relevant articles ranking for your
keyword.
Note: Link out to authority sites
when possible. They provide a stronger relevancy signal.
5) Internal links
Internal links can funnel traffic
and page rank from other high-traffic authority posts on your site.
They can also help reduce bounce
rate, which is another behavior signal Google looks at when determining the
quality and relevancy of a piece of content.
6) Site/ load speed
Google has gone on record saying
that page load speed is an on-site ranking factor.
Compress images and consider
using premium hosting or a CDN for faster load speeds.
Note: Load speed doesn't stop
with SEO. Kissmetrics reported that a 1 second delay in page response can
reduce your conversions by 7%.
Your on-page SEO is fully
optimized and ready to hit the front page of Google. Now, it's time to make
sure you're converting all that new traffic into email subscribers.
Step #4: Turn traffic into email
subscribers
Building an email list should be
your #1 priority.
Why?
Because 98% of visitors will
leave your site without converting.
And the average consumer will
have 7 touch points with your brand or product before buying.
Therefore, building an email list
is critical if you want to be able to continually re-engage your audience,
build a relationship and convert them into a paying customers.
Here’s the simple 3-step formula
I use to collect thousands of email subscribers:
1. Create a lead magnet
2. Set up delivery channel
3. Set up automatic delivery
1) Create your lead magnet
A lead magnet is a bribe offering
something of value to a reader in exchange for their email address.
Some examples:
• Free
ebooks
• Free
trials
• Checklists
• Mindmaps
• Infographics
• Short
videos
In this video Alex showed you how
to turn old content into a high-converting lead magnet in 13 seconds.
We decided to take a leaf out of Alex's
book and use this same tactic for the Coupon guide.
Here is the PDF version of the
article we used as a lead magnet:
3-Step
Formula will turn your blog
into a List Building Machine...
Learn how to turn old content
into high-converting lead magnets in 1 minute...and collect hundreds of email
signups.
SHOW ME HOW!
2) Optimize your website to
capture leads
Optimizing your website involves
strategically placing opt-in forms around your site.
There are many different form
types you can use, including:
• Popups
• Scroll
mats
• In-content
• Two-step
lightboxes
• Header
bars
• Lead
boxes
And more...
But for the Coupon article we
chose 2 tactics:
1. A pop-up form
2. A lead box
First, we used the Sumome List
Builder app to create this pop-up form:
As you can see, our value proposition is
joining the community and receiving a free PDF of the guide.
It pops up 12 seconds after a
visitor arrives, and doesn’t show to the same visitor more than once every 24
hours:
And it converts at 5.12%:
We then used the SumoMe Leads app to create a
leadbox that delivers the PDF inside the content.
When readers click on the button:
An opt-in box pops up:
It converts 20-50+% of the people clicking on
the button:
Check out Alex’s latest list building tutorial
and this 12,000-word guide to online lead generation and learn more ways to
optimize your website to capture email addresses.
5) Automatically deliver lead
magnet to new subscribers
I've got good news and bad news.
The good news:
Someone entered their email
address to get your lead magnet.
The bad news:
They aren't on your email list
yet.
You still have two things to do
after a reader hits the "Sign Up" button:
1. Get them to confirm their
email address
2. Deliver the lead magnet
Luckily, you can automate this
entire process.
Alex walks you through the entire
process in this article.
Here is the short and sweet:
Subscriber enters email and is
redirected to a custom confirmation page like this one:
The goal of this page is to make sure people
are clicking the link in the confirmation email you send them. This will ensure
they are double opted in.
Once the reader clicks the
confirmation link they are redirected to a page where they can view or download
the lead magnet.
Step #5: Content Promotion
Ranking content highly in Google
is usually a long tail process.
It can take several months before
your content hits the first page.
Therefore, in the early stages
you need to heavily promote your content to give it an early wave of exposure.
This will help drive social
engagement and result in some online mentions and natural backlinks. All of
which will help your content climb up the SERPs faster.
There are literally hundreds of
content promotion strategies you can implement, but I’m going to show you the 5
I used for the Coupon guide:
• Social
media automation
• Established
social media accounts
• Quora
• Forum
marketing
• Scoop.it
GET INSTANT ACCESS
to the Content Promotion Ebook
Learn the exact tactics I used to
generate 200,000 pageviews with 14 blog posts (without spending a penny)...
GET EBOOK!
Let's drive some traffic...
1) Social media automation
First, I started off with one of
the biggest time-to-reward strategies:
Social media automation.
I set it up so the guide would be
shared to Twitter a couple times in the first week and once a week for a month
afterwards.
This gave the page a steady
stream of social signals and traffic from Twitter.
Here’s how to do it:
First, sign up for Buffer and
enter your account.
Then click inside the “What do you want to
share?” box:
A window will pop up. Write a tweet (or another
type of social post) and include a link to your article at the end:
Including a hashtag can help extend your
post's reach.
Then click the arrow next to “Add
to Queue” and “Schedule Post.”
Choose a date and time that same
week to share the article.
Create another post, change up the text, and
schedule it again for sometime that week.
Rinse and repeat once a week for
a month afterwards.
This should help you get a steady
stream of traffic and social signals to the page.
Pro Tip: Use this strategy to
find the best time to schedule your social media posts and get more traffic.
2) Established social media
accounts
If you’ve got social media
accounts with established followings, it’s important to share your content
there as well.
These people are following you
because they want to hear more from you.
Share your content and make it
personal so these people feel more connected to you:
3) Answer questions on Quora
Quora is a massive Q&A
website.
It’s also one of the most visited
sites on the planet.
It is our 3rd highest source of
referral traffic:
The best part?
Quora threads can stay active for
months or even years. Much like search engine traffic, it can drive traffic to
you passively for an extended period of time.
Here’s how to drive traffic from
Quora:
First, head over to Quora and
create an account. Spruce it up with a description, your interests, etc.
Do a search in the top bar for a topic related
to your niche:
This will bring up a list of threads that
contain your keyword:
Click through to any threads where your
content could help answer a question.
Then, write up an in-depth answer
with a link to your content at the end. Frame it as a resource that can fully
answer their question:
In-depth answers are trusted more
and typically work better than only posting your link.
Keep joining discussions and
answering questions for different search terms, and you’ll drive consistent
traffic to your article!
30-60 minutes a day is a great
starting point.
4) Forum marketing
Just like Quora, forums are
packed with people discussing different topics.
They’re perfect places to promote
your content.
Use these search strings to find
forums in your niche:
“Keyword” + “forum”
“Keyword” + “powered by
vBulletin”
This should bring up a list of
forums to choose from:
Go to one that seems relevant.
Then look at these stats to see if it’s active:
• Discussions
• Messages
• Views
• Replies
Higher engagement = great traffic
potential.
Create an account and edit your
signature like this:
Write a description about your
page that compels people to click through. Then link to it.
Next, go through the forum and
help people by answering their questions (similar to Quora).
Except this time, you don’t have
to link directly to your article, because it’s in your signature.
As you become an active member,
you will also establish a reputation as an authority.
5) Submit content to Scoop.it
pages
This tactic doubles as a content
promotion and link building strategy.
Scoop.it is a content curation
platform. People create their own pages to gather the best content they find on
a given topic.
Most pages have a “Suggest”
feature:
You can suggest a piece of
content to the owner, and if they like it they’ll share it on their page.
Although the links are nofollow,
many of them have solid page rank:
These pages also get frequented
regularly by industry enthusiasts who want to stay up to date with the best
information and share it with the platform's built-in social media integration.
Here’s how to promote your
content on Scoop.it:
First create an account. Then do
a search in the top bar for a term related to your content:
The default result is a list of
“Scoops” or specific posts, but you want “Topics”:
This will bring up a list of
pages related to your keyword.
Click through to any that seem
relevant and look for the suggestion box.
If it’s not there, the host has
decided not to accept suggestions. Move on to another page.
If it is there, copy-paste your
URL into the box and hit “Suggest.”
Adjust the image to the size you
want (I like to go full size):
That’s it! The page owner will
review your post and decide whether or not to feature it.
Go back to your search results
and keep doing the same thing until you reach the daily suggestion limit (7).
Scoop.it is a quick and easy way
to build some links and get initial exposure for your content.
Speaking of links...
The final part of this case study
is going to break down how I built links to the Coupon guide, which helped push
it to the top spot in Google.
Step #6: Build links
Backlinks are still one of the
most important ranking factors.
Here are the 5 strategies I used
to build links to the Coupon article:
1. Blog commenting
2. Directory submissions
3. Fake forum account link
building
4. Weekly roundups
5. Resources/links pages
GET INSTANT ACCESS
to 13 Killer Link Building
Strategies!
Learn how to build quality
backlinks in any niche, climb the search rankings and drive a wave of targeted
traffic to your website (FAST)!
GET EBOOK!
1) Blog commenting
Yes, lots of people have
denounced this strategy, but I still do it.
Why?
Because it WORKS.
The key is to choose pages that
are DA 30+ and relevant to your content.
Here’s an example of one I built
for Coupon:
A solid DA 58 link:
But here’s what happens with blog
comments:
Some get accepted automatically
and some get reviewed first.
If it gets accepted
automatically, it doesn’t matter how you post the comment. You’ll get your
link.
If it goes through a review
process first, which most do, you’ll want to be a bit strategic about it.
I’ve tried two main methods:
1. Creating a fake account and
pretending to be a curious reader.
2. Being myself, providing a lot
of value in the comment, and linking to my article.
Funnily enough, I've found the
first approach (fake account) gets accepted more often.
So experiment and see what works
best in your industry.
2) Directory Submissions
Next, I went to a bunch of
directories around the web and submitted a direct link to the article.
Most people submit their home
page, but I wanted to get as much bang for my buck by sending link juice
directly to the page.
Here are four directories you can
try:
DMOZ (DA93)
R-TT Directory (DA63)
So Much (DA58)
You can find more high DA
directory sites in this guide.
Go to each site, find a link to
submit your URL, and choose the most relevant page.
It will most likely go through a
review process before being accepted.
This strategy got us some great
links for minimal work, including a DA71 page:
3) Fake Forum Account Link
Building
Forums are some of the most
authoritative sites on the web, especially if they’ve been around for a long
time.
Links from them can carry a lot
of weight.
If your site has already got a
lot of exposure, you’ll most likely get links from forums through people
naturally linking to your content in conversations.
If you don’t have a lot of
exposure yet, you may want to manufacture some yourself.
You can try posting a portion of
your content as a new thread, then link to the full article at the end so
people can get the rest of the info.
But since a lot of forums are
weary of self-promotion (even if you have a valuable resource) moderators like
to delete these threads.
As with anything in online
business, it’s still worth experimenting with.
For our guide, I decided to go
ahead and find a few forums in our niche that allow followed links, create some
fake profiles, and join conversations and included a link to the guide.
Use gmail to create a few fake
email addresses to create accounts with.
4) Weekly roundups
Weekly roundups are articles that
curate the best content of that week into a single post.
The publisher spends the week
reading and looking for awesome articles to link to in the post.
It's a win-win. You provide a
great resource for their audience and get a quality link in return.
All you have to do is find blogs
that publish weekly (or monthly) roundups and pitch your content to them.
Here’s how:
First, use these search strings
to find roundups in your niche:
“Keyword” + “weekly roundup”
“Keyword” + “link roundup”
“Keyword” + “weekly link roundup”
“Keyword” + “best articles of the
week”
Then click “Search Tools” → “Any
Time” → “Past Month” to find actively updated roundups:
Once you’ve found some roundups,
head over to the site and find the publisher’s contact information. Then send
them an email like this:
Hi [NAME],
My name is [YOUR NAME], and I'm
on the team at [WEBSITE].
I'm writing to make a possible
article suggestion for your next weekly [TOPIC] roundup.
I came across your roundup
yesterday and got a ton of value out of it. Nice work!
We recently published an in-depth
guide to [TOPIC]. It takes people through 18 chapters of step-by-step training,
in the hopes that by the time they apply each step, they'll be well on their
way to [RESULT].
Here's the link to the guide:
[URL]
Either way, just thought you
might like to consider it for your next roundup.
Keep up the great work!
Cheers,[YOUR NAME]
If the publisher likes your
content, they’ll include it in their next roundup:
This got us some great contextual
links on some high authority sites:
5) Resource/ links pages
This is the strategy where we got
most of our links. It’s the one that really propelled the guide up to the top
of the first page.
(And it’s also how I built one of
the best links I think I’ll ever build.)
Resources and links pages are
similar to roundups, in that they link out to lots of useful content.
Many sites publish them to expose
their audience to related content they don’t offer on their own website.
Once again, these publishers are
all looking for one thing:
Valuable content to add to the
page.
Great news, because you just
created the best piece of content on the topic.
To get your link, all you have to
do is show it to them.
Here’s how:
First, do a search in Google for
these search strings:
“Keyword” + “resources”
“Keyword” + “links”
“Keyword” + “intitle:resources”
“Keyword” + “intitle:links”
“Keyword” + “inurl:resources”
“Keyword” + “inurl:links”
“Keyword” + “intitle:resources
page”
“Keyword” + “intitle:links page”
Unlike weekly roundups, you don’t
need to filter the results based on date. Since these pages are evergreen, it
doesn’t matter when they were published.
Next, head into each website and
find their contact information. Then send each website owner an email like
this:
Hi [Name],
I was checking out [SITE NAME]
just now and found your excellent [TOPIC] resources page.
I’m on the team at [SITE NAME],
and we just published an in-depth guide that helps people [BENEFIT].
Here’s the link: [URL]
I wanted to ask if you wouldn’t
mind including us on your resources page: [URL of THEIR PAGE]
We’ll be improving it
continuously to provide people with the most up-to-date information as the
industry evolves.
Either way, keep up the great
work :)
Cheers,
[YOUR NAME]
This strategy landed us a lot of
excellent links on highly relevant sites in our niche.
And on some high authority sites:
Including, a DA 96 link from MIT!
(Couldn’t believe that one.)
With our strong on-page signals
and these links coming straight to the page, Google propelled us to the first
page for our target keyword.
We stayed in positions 4-10 for a
few months, but I’m sure you’re wondering how that we hit position #1.
Let’s break it down:
How Coupon Hit the #1 Position in
Google
After that link building
campaign, I didn’t build any more links to the Coupon guide.
In fact, we hardly touched it.
So how did the article leap
massive sites like JACOB ORAM and land in the #1 position?
Well, first off, being on the
first page for that keyword got it a lot of exposure, especially when the
article started ranking for all of the long tail keywords.
This got the guide some great
natural mentions and links:
(But notice that it didn’t happen
until we promoted our content to get exposure to it in the first place.)
Second, I believe it was the
strong on-page signals we incorporated into the page.
This article deserved to rank #1.
It was the most in-depth and
up-to-date, had the best multi media mix (screenshots, images and videos), and
it was highly optimized for the target keyword.
As time went on and the backlinks
were crawled by Google, the page began to increase in authority and gradually
climbed up the SERPs.
They even highlighted our article
above the regular search results:
This shows just how much Google
trusts the page, sees it as a top resource, and actively wants people to read
it.
A Key Takeaway From This SEO Case
Study
This is a scalable SEO strategy
you can use to rank in ANY niche.
We have since repeated this
process for many other relevant keywords with similar results:
You probably won’t rank #1 for
every article you publish. That’s the nature of SEO.
But, by following this proven SEO
strategy you will find great target keywords every time and get MORE content on
the first page of Google.
A GIFT FOR YOU
I’ve collected the best resources
(articles, guides, tutorials, etc) I’ve found that break down each part of the
content promotion and ranking process you just read:
1. Keyword research
2. Content creation
3. On-page SEO
4. List building
5. Content promotion
6. Link building
