For a couple of weeks, Perrin and I have been discussing how to build links to his niche site, aPennyShaved.com. One of the strategies that we discussed was using link bait.
Today, I’m happy to say that Perrin has taken some of the ideas that we talked about, including link bait, and has had some nice success getting guest post opportunites!
Unfortunately I was a bit busy, and so Perrin and I were not able to do our weekly call. However, Perrin decided to go out and create a presentation on his own. And I have to admit, his Prezi setup puts my Powerpoint to shame!
Has the student now become the teacher…?
A Note About Rankings…
I also just wanted to make a quick note about the rankings of aPennyShaved.com. Ever since getting some Rank Hero links and now some guest post links as discussed below, the site has been steadily climbing in Google for the term, best safety razor.
As expected, the site does tend to bounce up and down a few spots each day. So sometimes its 15th, then its 11th, then 14th, then 12th… This is to be expected with a newer niche site, especially one that is actively having links built to it.
So, the site is SO close to being on the first page right now…and depending on when you check it may or may not be already.
With that, I’m going to leave the rest to Perrin! Enjoy his awesome video presentation below, then read exactly what is working for him. Great tips here!
Perrin’s Video Review + How to Write a Killer Article in 45 Minutes or Less!
Perrin’s Week 11 Write-Up
Eleven weeks down! This one was a fun one. I’m so close to the first page I can taste it! (More on that below). And that is super, super exciting for me. I’ve only had a site on the front page once a long time ago, and that was a total fluke.
So building a site from scratch and working it to the front page with a few hundred bucks and several dozen hours of sweat equity will be a major accomplishment for me!
So I’m pretty excited. Let’s talk shop.
Status Update
Ranking. For the past several weeks, the site has been steadily climbing. After fixing some on-page optimization issues, it jumped from 500+ to 96 in a single afternoon. Then, it went from 96 to the 40s over the next couple of days. After adding my PBN articles to the Rank Hero network, I noticed a pretty steady climb to the second page, and I’ve been floating around the high teens for the last week or so.
Today, however, I’m sitting at #11! Eleven, guys. I’m so stoked about that, and I’ll tell you more about what gave me that boost below.
Earnings. In our last call, Spencer and I showed you some of the sales we’d made so far. The exciting part was that we were finally starting to see some razor-related sales, which was awesome! However, since then, I haven’t seen any more, which makes me think those sales came from some blog commenting I was doing around the same time (and the resulting traffic). So right now, I’m sitting at $6.98 in earrings for this month.
Traffic. I’m finally starting to see just a tiny bit of organic search traffic for my target keyword, “best safety razor.” Google Webmaster Tools shows that I’ve gotten 500 impressions and 50 clicks for that term. Pretty sweet! I’m not ranking for too many long-tail phrases yet, however (that I can see, anyway), so I’m hoping those will start to trickle in as the site matures.
Overall, I’m really pleased with the progress of the site. I feel like it’s got a lot of potential energy now, like a bullet waiting to be fired. If current trends continue, the next couple of weeks should be pretty crazy 
Link Bait!
We’ve been talking about it. You guys have been asking about it. And we finally did it! And the results were…
Awesome!
Our initial link-baiting strategy has worked very, very well. It’s landed me a handful of really great links, and I’ve seen a jump in the SERPs since those links have started getting indexed (from around the bottom of the second page to the top of the second page).
Here’s what we did…
Basically, we created a “Top Shaving Sites & Resources” page, which included the top 8-10 shaving blogs I found during my research. Here’s the important part: I chose sites I really liked!
I was planning on reaching out to these people to start a relationship, so I only chose sites I thought were really cool, valuable and interesting.
Then I reached out to those webmasters to say they made the list. The idea is to connect with people by being nice to them and doing something cool for them before you start asking for stuff. And I was very sincere about this. Remember, I chose blogs I actually thought were really cool in the first place!
So, I sent all of the webmasters some version of the following email:
“Hey [Name]!
Just wanted to let you know I gave you a shout-out on our “Top Shaving Sites & Resources” list. If you want to check out your blurb, here’s the link: [Link URL].
Anyway, it’s just our way of saying we appreciate your work. Thanks! :)”
And that’s it! The way I see it, this wasn’t a “link bait” strategy as it was a strategy just to make some friends in the niche.
The Results
The results were amazing! It turns out people really appreciate nice gestures.
Of the eight or so people I emailed, two offered to let me guest post (I followed up with one, and the other offered to return my nice favor). Several more emailed me just to say thanks.
The best link, though, came from one of the higher-authority blogs who just added me to his blogroll as a thank-you (without me asking). That gave me a bunch of great dofollow links.
At the end of the day, the ROI was ridiculous. This strategy only took about one hour of my time, and it cost zero dollars. That’s one fifth of the time it took me to research and comment on blogs. And I got two guest posts and a bunch of blogroll links on highly relevant sites.
And I think that’s a lesson I’ll keep in mind for future sites: If you base your link-baiting strategy on giving and being nice to people, the ROI is much, much better than almost anything else (aside from, perhaps, PBN links). It’s definitely worth spending some time on.
Up Next…
I really, really, really want to get on that front page. Really. Ha. So over the next week or so, I’m going to spend some time evaluating what I can do to get the maximum value out of my time. Because, honestly, I’ve been working really hard, but in terms of ROI, I feel like I could have been more efficient.
So I’m probably going to consult with Spencer to talk about what high-value activities can get me over the hump.
Then, after I get on the front page, I think I’ll probably spend more time writing new articles, focusing on super low-competition keywords.
My question for those of you following along:
Have you been trying to network? Have you used networking as a link-building strategy with other sites? How has it been working?
Til next time!
