Update, Day: 23
Articles posted so far: 44 (+1)
Didn't do much today. I'm letting the website get older and want to relax a bit because I have a very busy couple of weeks ahead at my job. I'll be on vacation in 2 weeks, so I plan to put more effort into the website then.
Wrote 1 article
Used a Reddit Poster to make a few more posts.
Out of 47 keywords I'm tracking, 40 are in the Top 100.
I've decided to look back and do some research on my previous articles.
Conclusions:
My old articles, even though they're completely original, aren't showing up in the top 100 search results, despite being 800 to 1.2k words long and targeting low competition keywords. Their keyword density is between 1-2%, which isn't very high, but since the keywords are long (4-5 words), maybe it's considered too much? Not sure. I don't usually stuff my articles with keywords, but I'll try to reduce it a bit more.
Interestingly, one of my test posts ranked number 1 for a specific keyword. This post was an experiment to see if I could get it to rank for similar products (like "Best iPhone X and Xs Review"), aiming for two different models. It ranked top for "Best iPhone X" but didn't make it into the top 100 for "Best iPhone Xs," even though I mentioned the iPhone Xs several times. I'm not sure why, but maybe Google prefers reviews to focus very specifically on one thing? If it doesn't start ranking soon, I'll take the "Xs" out of the title and create a separate post for it, because the keyword seems worth pursuing. P.S.: "Best iPhone X" is just an example, not the actual keyword...
I also tried out two posts to see if I could rank for many different products by listing them one after another, like: "keyword to rank for: list products 1 by 1". So far, it seems like it's not working. The best rank for the first post is in the top 30, and the second post isn't even in the top 100 yet. It's still too soon to say for sure, but it doesn't look good.
The articles that are just 200 words long and have content that's not unique are really unpredictable. Some are doing amazingly well and are in the top 10, but about 90% of them are ranking somewhere between the top 30 and top 80. This might be because of the website's age (that's what I'm guessing), since these articles are new and probably shouldn't be ranking high yet. But it's strange that some are doing really well while the rest aren't moving much.
I have 4 posts ranking in the top 111, and they all use longer keywords. Here's how they're doing:
Post at #4: Keyword is used 2.56% of the time, with 300 words of unique content out of 500 words total.
Post at #6: Keyword is used 2.79% of the time, with 175 words of unique content out of 700 words total.
Post at #8: Keyword is used 1.59% of the time, with 286 words of unique content out of 1276 words total.
Post at #11: Keyword is used 1.80% of the time, with 430 words of unique content out of 1093 words total.
It seems like using keywords a lot might actually work better, even if there's less unique content and fewer words overall. The keywords for posts #8 and #11 are a bit less competitive, but both are still pretty easy to rank for.
This doesn't really help me figure out what I'm doing right or wrong. But, since it's only been 3 weeks, I'm going to wait another month or so before I decide if I should update these articles. If there's no significant improvement, I'll have to think about what to do next.
The goal is to make $100 a month in profit so I can pay for conversion.ai and use it to create 100% unique content for all future articles.
Here's a screenshot of the case study posts up to now:
"+++"