Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Day 61-90

Hey, it's time for keyword selection!

In case you missed it, here are the prior articles in this series of "Ranking A New Site From Scratch"

1. Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Day 0
2. Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 1-31
3. Ranking A New Site From Scratch - Days 31-60

So what's new?

The site has been bouncing around and has hit the front page for a 2nd time.

The first time it hit the front page, was May 17th. Less than 5 months into building the site. Read our last post to see that proof -> https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/tutorials/ranking-new-site2/

Now it has hit the front page again for the same term on June 5th.

And while yes, it is the bottom of the front page.. it just goes to show that you don't have to stress out to try to rank your desired keywords. Especially if you have been following this tutorial.

With no SEO plan, no content, almost no backlinks, a slow user experience, and a brand new domain.. you too could hit the bottom of the first page of Google. Think what a little effort could do afterward.

Keyword Selection Time

So a lot of you have been pretty amazed I put no SEO effort into the site up to this point.

Many of you emailed me freaked out that I helped build a site and didn't do any SEO audits, keyword selection, Meta Tag editing, Schema, or plugins.

Well, why would I?

I was doing SEO while Google was still a research paper. I was manipulating the Yahoo Directory for rankings and also a DMOZ editor while some of you were shitting in diapers.

That's NOT to brag.

But it is to show you that maybe a few of us old hats know a thing or two, about a thing or two.

I don't follow Google's SEO blog for updates, their twitter puppets, or even read their "guidelines" book they give to search raters.

But I do know the history of search. Specifically Google search

I also know what the SERPs tell me daily

On just those two things alone, I have been ranking websites under one year of age with barely any content or link building work as a side hustle.

And this isn't for easily gamed niches.

This keyword I keep showing you rankings for in each article has a Moz DA average of 84 for the front page. Sites that are old & well known brands with marketing teams pumping content out every day.

Sometimes you just gotta put down the RSS feed and guru courses. Sometimes you just gotta build and put in the hours of work and do things your way with no fear or stress that you are doing it wrong.

That's just what I do. And I did the same with keyword selection.

And when I did feel froggy enough to pick the keywords we needed to rank for, I spent less than 8 minutes picking them total.

No "golden keyword ratio" or "difficulty metrics" needed.

You either rank for shit or you don't. Capeesh?

Why would I bother myself ranking for low volume keywords with no competition? Sorry GKWR...

Why I would bother aiming low by even looking at what was difficult or not?

If I'm gonna rank, IM GONNA RANK. BABY.

So How Did I Pick My Keywords?

By this time I knew enough about the niche to know the major players. I knew what their websites said and what they were pushing.

I had been on Quora and read their answers, seen their Twitter accounts, visited their websites, and had a deep connection with their brand message. I knew the employees by looking them up on LinkedIn. Yeah, I did that.

All of this was passive.

I did it in spare time on the side. I let the information build up in my mind and sit there for days and weeks untouched.

So when it was time to pick the keywords, I had a passive collection of data stored in my subconscious that was marinating over and over while I slept at night.

Knowing the top keywords I needed to aim for became crystal clear.

Every competitor in this space played on a variation of one phrase. It was easy to spot after studying this niche passively what that phrase was.

And the phrase always contained 2 of the same words. In this 3 word phrase, 2 of them never changed.

An example would be similar to:

• Inbound Marketing Agency
• Inbound Marketing Freelancer
• Inbound Marketing Company
• etc

You realize when all your competitors are using the same phrases over and over, the money must be in the phrase along with the terms that don't change. In the example above, that would be the "Inbound Marketing" part.

So what "Inbound Marketing" phrase gets all the traffic?

That's where SERPWoo's Keyword Finder comes in. I shouldn't have to explain this part, but you can read this article to know more.

Once I determined which "inbound Marketing" phrases got the most traffic, I looked at my friends website to figure out which of those terms made the most sense for him and his website.

For example, if he is pushing a B2B SaaS.. "Inbound Marketing Agency" isn't going to do him much good if he does end up ranking well for it. People typing this term in are looking for an agency to consult with, not a SaaS. So this is where we skip down to the highest volume keywords that just match his intent.

So once I found the 3 highest volume phrases that matched his intent, I called it a month as far as keyword selection is concerned.

Where Did I Use The Keywords?

You're gonna scream at me, but I used all 3 phrases in the Meta Keywords and Meta Description of the homepage.

Then I used the highest volume one in the Title tag and H1 tag of the homepage.

I used the other two in the copy of the homepage once within the content. One of these phrases did land in a list element.

And that's it.

Yeah, only on the homepage. No other webpages of the website.

To be fair, I did make a YouTube of the product in action and used the highest volume phrase in the video title and embeded the video on the homepage as well.

Time Involved

One day. Less than a day really.

The longest part was making the video and editing it and I did that in less than 2 hours.

The rest of the month, I just watched rankings and traffic in Google Search Console and Google Analytics for the website.

So one day out of the month, I put in work. The rest of the month was just F5'ing stats and waiting for results.

Which BTW, never came in "Days 61-90". The results started to come in at "Days 91-120" which is our next post in this series.

Disappointed?

You really shouldn't be.

SEO isn't hard. The process is simple as long as you keep it natural.

It's only when you try to rush and chase money that things get complicated.

Add on lots of "gurus" that try to shout as loud as they can from ivory mountaintops about how they can get you to rank and what you should and shouldn't do, and you end up with lots of frustration and heart ache with your project.

Next step

Stay tuned for days 91-120 when things start ranking in the SERPs.

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