My First SEO / CPA Project! - Follow Me Step By Step!

[barney2k]

Hello Everyone at CPAFix.

I've been a member for quite some time now (K's original beginners guide is the inspiration for this project), but I haven't been posting too much lately!

This is my first attempt at bringing in some CPA income.

It all started with a dropping domain I spotted while browsing on Just Dropped. (Useful for finding expiring / dropping / deleted domains).

hxxp://www.cheapcreditreports.net/

A friend of mine had sent me an offer code for a cheap .NET domain name that day so I thought why not!

Since then I've installed WordPress and got my first couple of pages of content up.

There's a couple of brief pages about a couple of credit report related.

The homepage you'll see on the site at the moment is a very basic landing page (no way near complete, evidently you don't see a big CTA there yet, which is yet to be added).

I've been looking around on the two networks I am a member of, CPAAlpha and MaxBounty for appropriate offers and have applied for approval on a couple of them.

This site is going to rely purely on SEO traffic.

There are so many things I still need to do on the SEO side:

1. Correctly configure page titles for every page.
2. Reach out to similar blogs / financial related sites and try to get some half decent backlinks. In the first instance I'm going to rely solely on blogger outreach. In 3 or 4 months I'll start looking at some more in-depth content for Linkbait (Perhaps a decent Infographic).
3. Add at least another 5 pages of LSI content (300 Words Min.) on niche-specific topics.
4. After content is completed, the internal link structure can be tidied up.

Then I've got the UX side of things:

1. Create clear CTA's on all pages within the content.
2. You'll see the Opt In widget on the left hand side of the page. I'm hoping to build a small list with this site too, which I'll not rely on for income, but which may come in handy for future offers. However, I'm currently not signed up with Aweber or GetResponse or any similar service and I'm not particularly inclined to shell out the money for one, so I'll have to look at some alternatives.
3. Create a static slider at the top of every page and ensure that every page has a really strong CTA for 1 or more offers. E.g. One credit report offer on one slide / image ... Offer for a PayDay loan on the second image ... Offer for a Credit Card on the third image, each acting like a mini landing page for each product.
4. Add a blog to part of the site, which will be used to create dummy reviews for different financial products. I won't necessarily be including affiliate links with these, but it may be useful to get some extra LSI content on the site and build up the page index a little.
5. A small bit of content curation with financial news from popular RSS feeds in widgets on one side of the page.

I won't be using Social Media at all in this project. A lot of the offers I've seen don't like social referral traffic.

And this is going to sound stupid, but by day I'm a social media community manager. I want to use this project to hone my SEO skillset, which currently isn't on par with my Social Media knowledge.

It's going to be an interesting journey and I hope you guys will be here to help me along, advise, let me know what you think and keep me motivated!

If anyone has any advice for me, please leave it in this thread as I would be really happy to hear what you think!

Also if anyone fancies designing me a quick logo, It would be much appreciated! (As you can see by the current logo, graphics are not my strong point ....)

Thanks Everyone!

Sam

 

[Marc]

The project sounds good, except: Have you ever thought about why the domain has been dropped? Because you can earn a lot of money with it? - Surely not.

The point is: Have you made a competition analysis? SEO, and even if it is an excellent SEO, is only one side of the coin. The other side is the competition. If you are in a niche with a lot of competition, it will be bloody hard work to come up on one of the top PR, or only after a very long time, cause your competitors are also not sleeping.
Financial business niches are highly competitive niches. Sorry, but I'm afraid you will only be frustrated, that´s my opinion ...

Greetings to Newcastle! (Wasn´t Peter Higgs born nearby, before he started his life as a Boson? )

 

[tac88]

Just a though it is not meant to discourage you but there is a million other places to get traffic from then Google . Google is only 23% off all traffic available on the net.
What I am saying is I do not believe that SEO is your best option !
The second thing is Why On Earth Would You Buy A Dropped domain? You will never be able to sell it that is the first thing people look for to see if the domain has ever had any drops.
With SEO you might get some traffic in 6-8 months but I do not think that it will be possible in the niche you entered.
If I was in your spot I would finish building your site up with quality content then start doing some small direct to site Media Buy for traffic. With a media buy you can have as much traffic as you want in 20 mins from now.
Just a thought

 

[barney2k]

Thanks to both of you for your advice!

@Marc - I'm going to be using long tail traffic for this, with much lower competition than the main keywords in the Niche. There's a lot of traffic to be had with long tail, it just means creating the right sort of content and laser targeting pages to different phrases in any way possible! Obviously for a keyword like "Credit Report" or something similar I probably wouldn't hit the first page for at least 2 years or so, until the domain had enough authority.

What I'm focusing on is long tail traffic from a large set of keywords, thus combining to create a large volume of traffic when all's said and done! It may not be enough and I'm happy to accept defeat if and when it comes, but even just a few conversions each month will be good enough for me to start with!

I chose the Financial niche to give myself a challenge. I have an idea in my head about how things will work out, but as I said I'm prepared for failure as long as I can take lots of experience away with me to my next project.

For now I'm just focusing on content galore for my long tail keywords. Lots of LSI content should help me here so I'll probably add a bit of content every few days until New Year, then start getting a few backlinks from guest posts and see where we go from there!

@tac88 - Thanks for the post Tac! Of course there are loads of places to get traffic! I've built micro sites before at work with 97% referral traffic over 3 months so I'm well aware of the power of other traffic sources! As I said, this is my first project, so I don't want to outlay too much if it's going to be doomed to fail.

Media buying is probably the only type of paid traffic I would use with this site. However, the difficult is going to be in making a return on investment. Because of the incredibly competitive nature of this Niche, a media buy is likely to cost me an awful lot of money. If the site doesn't convert well I'm going to be bleeding cash! That's why I want to try and get the site up with SEO to at least a few visitors a day and see how many of them convert!

Maybe once I've finished the site completely I could get a very small media buy (sub $100) I could get a blast of traffic to help me identify what's working on the site and what's not? Then I'll be able to tweak, rinse and repeat until profitable!

My only issue is that I might have to spend an awful lot on media buying to get a decent enough sample to be able to draw any conclusions.

What do you guys think?

How would you recommend I go about with my media buying? Are there any networks I should be looking at in depth?

I'm already a member at BuySellAds and SiteScout but I've never used them previously!

Thanks again everyone!
Sam

 

[tac88]

Hey Sam !
How is everything going any updates yet?

 

[xxpaigexx]

Am subscribing to your thread i'd love to see how this whole thing goes.

 

[macdesier]

very nice .. thanks

 

[blogjomar]

any updates of your case study?

 

[copyninja]

any updates of your case study?

I was wondering the same.

 

[kaygrubbs]

I was wondering the same.

i second this.

I have already pmed sam, let see if he come up with somethig.

 

[operationoffers]

your offer has expired just to let you know.

When you put multiple pages up I would recommend using a bot to check your links on a rotating basis. twice a day is usually good depending on your traffic levels. Use prosper202 to track your traffic and any conversions as well. Most people on here can help you set that up if you need the extra help

a good captivating "CTA"is very key because it helps to draw your reader in. you have to look at LP's much like writing a short story or novel...really a short story because they are harder to write. tell your reader a story...start with a captivating question that will make them want to know more. for example in credit situations ask them...."The one thing about your credit score that will kill you if you don't understand" This will get most people to ask "what? why? how?

You need to keep your readers asking questions because this is not only vital in writing great short stories but absolutely essential in sales..

Telling is not Selling.....

I have a masters in Sales and Marketing and teach more then perform most of the time. I struggle with technical stuff at times but there is one that I have never forgotten......

You see you want to know right? well I wont tell you until you subscribe to my list....and while your hear why not check out some of these great companies that may help you as well. You see selling and marketing is not hard...people try to make it seem hard and would like you to believe it is so they can sell you thousand dollar programs which revolve around complex programs and 57 step processes. Do these methods work? sure. Do they have the same building blocks that all other programs have....absolutely. Once you learn the building blocks, you can use your own creativity. You can market in as many ways as you can tell a good yarn of a story.

Just my thoughts.. Hope it helps