Welcome back to my WP site case study update. Check out the previous month’s update here, and the archive of updates here. This will be a quick update. I am in the “waiting” phase of the site as it starts to rank for keywords.
Make sure to read this guide on expired domain authority sites.
Let’s get to the numbers.
🆕 August 2020 Update
August was the fourth full month of ownership. This month, I continued adding content and had my VA optimize all the pages with affiliate links. Let’s review the stats:
AHREFs Comparison: July vs August
July 2020:
August 2020:
Metrics are growing in AHREFs. We added a few referring domains, some organic keywords, and traffic. Slow and steady wins the race!
Current Traffic
August traffic below:
Last 4 months traffic:
Things are improving in terms of traffic. Hoping for this growth to continue.
Improvements in August 2020
📓 Content
I added 27,769 words of content equivalent to 11 articles to the site this month.
I continue to use the agency at 2 cents/word.
They are doing a good job. They even take screenshots and create data comparison tables; beyond what I expected. Love it!
🆕 Site redesign
I did a full redesign of the site. That included the following:
- Obtained a new logo from Fiverr
- Optimized the theme design using GeneratePress Premium
- Added author pages
- Change theme colors, page container size to be wider, etc
- Added floating widgets with an offer. This follows the user around on the sidebar
Here is an example of what it looks like on the Homepage:
Here is an example of what if looks like for Posts:
This is a one-time investment of my time that will lead to higher conversions and better UX.
My recommended theme: I highly recommend GeneratePress to create your websites. It’s easy to use. Easy to customize. Very lightweight. The page speed out of the box is incredible. For example, my outdoor site has 600 articles and is resource-heavy, however, GeneratePress still gets less than 2 seconds page speed. Check out GeneratePress Premium here.
💸 VA Optimized Pages for Conversions
Last case study, I mentioned I will train up my VA to do the following:
- Create CTA buttons
- Create comparison tables
- Add contextual links
- Create placeholder links (domain/recommended/product) using Pretty Link plugin
He was successful in getting all of that done! The only way that was possible was after I did a full example he could follow.
VAs are not experts. You have to show them exactly what you need done once, and if the VA is talented, they can pick it up and finish the rest.
Here are examples of the improvements:
I love that he was able to add in placeholder links. A placeholder link is essentially a shortened link using the plugin like Pretty Link. The VA created such links for all the services I have reviewed on the site.
So as soon as traffic starts picking up, I can signup to the specific affiliate programs, grab my affiliate link, go into the Pretty Link plugin, and replace the placeholder link with my affiliate link. I never need to edit the post itself. Easy!
⏭️ Next Steps
- Continue researching keywords and adding content
- Do on-page SEO (interlinking of articles, improve keyword density, etc.)
- Monitor and add affiliate links as traffic increases
Stay Tuned!
So far, the project is showing promise. It’s slow but that’s the game.
I know that this will pay off since, in this niche, the revenue per visitor is extremely high.
Let me know if you have any questions!
