This is a story about a poor guy with an inept domain that wanted to build a site geared for a very competitive keyword and his long, agonizing journey toward the true light of SEO wisdom.

Here's a little foundation for what I'm about to cover here. A while back I bought a stupid domain name. It was one of those fairly useless domain names that might have been good for maybe selling used cellphones or something.

The thing is, though, I'm a poor SEO guy as of then. I don't have time to tailor a site for used cellphones with the pitiful amount of money I have. This was my thinking not long ago at least.


After sitting on this domain name forever I decided to put a site up there and give myself to the study of SEO or search engine optimization.

It seemed like an interesting subject and I knew to those that managed to learn SEO, marketing, and some web design would fall infinite riches. It really sounded good to me.


So I went for the throat so to speak. More precisely I picked out some search terms that I will probably never be able to get traffic for in my lifetime. Smart I know.

This had the grand side effect of having the site sandboxed by Yahoo and Google until pigs flew.


Recently they flew, however, and I've come out of the sandbox altogether and hit face to face with a few SEO surprises. I did manage to get a tiny trickle of traffic but not from the terms I tried to get it from.

After trying to optimize those pages for the key terms, I received traffic from I got more traffic. This, of course, started me down a long road of speculation and hair pulling.


After many, a night of such I have come up with a few things that I believe will give anyone the power to eventually pull traffic off the net and convert it into a good decent living. I'll probably write an ebook and make millions one of these days.


Optimize by the page
Don't fall into the trap of focusing totally on building this far-flung and far-reaching site that will rule the world or make you millions instantly.

Unless you have lots of money, you're going to need to work for your traffic. Plan your site out carefully and make sure each page is a precision crafted piece of art.

I love serverside scripting and dynamic websites, but I've come to realize there is a danger that people will overuse it. I know I have.

If your site is dynamically generated, make sure every page isn't a total cookie cutter image of every other page. It's good to have the same navigation and same general layout but each page also needs to be special.

Each page should have careful, proven SEO techniques applied to maybe a single key phrase.

Don't try to optimize one page for a handful of phrases. Just focus on one phrase. Do your keyword research and, whatever you do, don't haul off and pick a key phrase with 2 billion wealthy competitors in Google.

Pick something that can be attained and can get you some traffic relatively fast. Select a phrase that is as specific as possible to your particular niche and still gets a couple thousand or so searches per month from Yahoo.

Whatever you do, make sure that one web page has good, solid, desirable content that is keyword rich and one of a kind. This will help make it special.

At the same time, your content obviously needs to lead the customer toward your intended goal of monetizing your traffic.


Keep it simple
I've found to my dismay that building a complex website with all the content management stuff and all the database thrills aren't exactly what gets the attention of search engines.

Weirdly enough this can be true for internet surfers too. A nice, clean layout with very accessible content and intuitive navigation will be recognized by both search engines and surfers alike.

If you can figure that part out, you've just pinned down about 90% of SEO in my opinion.


Engineer your site for your traffic
When you start getting search engine traffic to your site takes a very close look at what they are searching for. I assume you have some kind of statistics program and can mostly see what search terms people are using to get to your site.

When someone comes in with a keyword or phrase you haven't optimized to do a little research. Does the page they are coming to need to be touched up to include the search term or would this search term merit its search engine optimized page to handle the traffic.


Conclusion
With every page, you add you are gaining another potentially valuable piece of internet real estate. If you're doing your job right then eventually, each page should get its own traffic, and you should begin to attain your goals. Patience and learning are the names of the SEO game.

Source SEO Masterclass https://nairalearn.com/course/search-engine-seo-masterclass/

Nice One Boss, Always Dropping Great Tips On SEO,,,

Getting sand boxed is one hell of a situation for website owners, I've been through it, and to be candid if not for passion for blogging I'd had given up!

Sorry Bro

Thanks God You Never Gave Up

questechie:
Getting sand boxed is one hell of a situation for website owners, I've been through it, and to be candid if not for passion for blogging I'd had given up!

Well detailed and simple. This must be a product of experience and experimenting. Sometimes it's always good to have been there to tell the lessons better.

Keyword research before content creation is the way to go if you expect to get organic traffic from search engine, I use think it's a mere say till I almost got frustrated with my first blog.

I don't write contents now without doing a keyword research first and aim at a target and profitable keyword. Since I imbibed in it, my blog has been getting organic traffic like mad. There's no rocket science.

Creating quality back links will as well compliment your effort, this is very very important for search engine to rank your site.

Having done that carefully, relax and be patient while your dividends matures.

Thanks
You Are On Point

View Your Site, A Great Site You Have

Donraqh:
Well detailed and simple. This must be a product of experience and experimenting. Sometimes it's always good to have been there to tell the lessons better.

Keyword research before content creation is the way to go if you expect to get organic traffic from search engine, I use think it's a mere say till I almost got frustrated with my first blog.

I don't write contents now without doing a keyword research first and aim at a target and profitable keyword. Since I imbibed in it, my blog has been getting organic traffic like mad. There's no rocket science.

Creating quality back links will as well compliment your effort, this is very very important for search engine to rank your site.

Having done that carefully, relax and be patient while your dividends matures.

Donraqh:
Well detailed and simple. This must be a product of experience and experimenting. Sometimes it's always good to have been there to tell the lessons better.

Keyword research before content creation is the way to go if you expect to get organic traffic from search engine, I use think it's a mere say till I almost got frustrated with my first blog.

I don't write contents now without doing a keyword research first and aim at a target and profitable keyword. Since I imbibed in it, my blog has been getting organic traffic like mad. There's no rocket science.

Creating quality back links will as well compliment your effort, this is very very important for search engine to rank your site.

Having done that carefully, relax and be patient while your dividends matures.

What's your backlinks strategy? And by the way, how useful are backlinks from Nairaland to one's blog?

Silvermoney:

What's your backlinks strategy? And by the way, how useful are backlinks from Nairaland to one's blog?

I think Nairaland is typically a no-follow attribute by default, and has no seo value, except on traffic!

questechie:

I think Nairaland is typically a no-follow attribute by default, and has no seo value, except on traffic!

I thought so too.

questechie:
Getting sand boxed is one hell of a situation for website owners, I've been through it, and to be candid if not for passion for blogging I'd had given up!

How do you know for sure that you've been sandboxed? And how long did your sandbox imprisonment last?

I suspect I night be in the same situation with a relatively new website that I have. How much longer do I have to wait and what can I do to reduce my sandbox jail time?

Silvermoney:


How do you know for sure that you've been sandboxed? And how long did your sandbox imprisonment last?

I suspect I night be in the same situation with a relatively new website that I have. How much longer do I have to wait and what can I do to reduce my sandbox jail time?

It was really that bad! Started around early 2014, which I believe coincided with Google's Penguin update, https://www.questechie.com was so severely hit that it won't even appear on serp with your search for the name itself. It lasted for about 3 years, Alexa ranking fell from 300k to 6m, and I lost all sponsored posts client except for some few Chinese clients that still check in once in a while. The problem with the site was technical and had to do with structured data which was badly coded in the former template, I then changed to this current template and the next penguin update saw the site recovering partially until now that it's fully recovered.

questechie:

It was really that bad! Started around early 2014, which I believe coincided with Google's Penguin update, https://www.questechie.com was so severely hit that it won't even appear on serp with your search for the name itself. It lasted for about 3 years, Alexa ranking fell from 300k to 6m, and I lost all sponsored posts client except for some few Chinese clients that still check in once in a while. The problem with the site was technical and had to do with structured data which was badly coded in the former template, I then changed to this current template and the next penguin update saw the site recovering partially until now that it's fully recovered.

I have no idea what you mean by badly coded structured data. Would like more insights about this. Can't imagine not appearing in serps for three months, not to mention three years!

How can a new site avoid this

Silvermoney:


I have no idea what you mean by badly coded structured data. Would like more insights about this. Can't imagine not appearing in serps for three months, not to mention three years!

How can a new site avoid this

While I won't undertake to lecture you on seo, but to clarify what structured markup is all about. Some templates are not search engine optimized, and one of the important seo factor is structured data markup. And point of correction, I never said my site did not appear on Google, rather it's buried in the serp!

On point