Proper Profits

Case Study: How To Get a Competitive Top 4 In Google In 2 Months

About 2 months ago I built this site as part of the sales funnel for Real Revenue…

UPDATE:

The site is now at position #1 AND #2 as this screenshot shows – PLUS it has the photo of me in the Google results – which builds greater trust and clickthrough…

 

NOTE:  I’m not done yet.  This is early days.  I just thought I’d show you this now, so we can watch it and track it together over time…

As you can see it is already ranking in Google and is showing on the first page at #4. Now, I am not saying that #4 is particularly great. I don’t think it is. It’s not bad in itself, but I would not be happy with just that – if it were its best position it would ever gets…

BUT it is a good START – especially given that it is a fairly competitive market and the site has been live for only 2 months.

I will be happy when it is at #1 or #2

There is an interesting and important thing which I wanted to test with this site – see if you can guess what it is, as you read on down the page…

The Aim: Why Do This?

The plan is to be in front of people searching for “niche research” and the like, to help them with their Niche Research, and in so doing, introduce them to the Proper Profits Coaching System and show them how it can help them increase their business income each month – ie to make more money!

The Research

So first off, I did the market research around this. And yes, you can see the exact steps on how to do this market research within the Proper Profits training – and the text-only part of it is in the FREE report which you will find at…

www.NicheResearch.co

Yes – the niche research process that I went through to ascertain IF this was a viable business option is what the site itself offers as its free report and squeeze page incentive!

In a nutshell, I used Market Samurai to check if I could find a sweet-spot search term that is searched for a lot, but not crazy competitive.

I usually double check what Market Samurai says for the number of searches, with what the Google Keywords Tools says. Here is the screenshot from Google Keywords Tool…

So then I look at the top one, “Keyword research” in Market Samurai’s “SEO Competition” module (this is really where Market Samurai is incredibly useful. The other functions are handy, but can be mostly done for free. The SEO Competition module does in seconds what would take hours to do using the free options. Hence why I use Market Samurai a LOT!)

This is the Market Samurai SEO Competition view for “Keyword research”…

If you’re not completely familiar with Market Samurai, get the free Niche Research Report here which outlines in detail how best to use it etc

In that screenshot above, you can see there is a LOTof red there.

That means that should be a red light to you as a niche to go into. It’s going to be VERY competitive.

Before I completely put the “keyword research” option to one side, I always check for one sneaky backdoor into the top of Google…

The pure keyword domain name!

IF I were able to get a decent Top Level Domain (TLD – ie .com, .net or .org for global markets, or the country-specific equivalent eg .co.uk, .com.au etc)…

IF I were able to get a pure keyword domain with a decent TLD then I might just stand a chance of competing…

So I go to my preferred domain registrar site www.uk2.net and lookup “keyword research” in their domains box.

As expected, all decent TLD domains have gone ie keywordresearch.com is taken, keywordreserch.net is taken etc

Now I could go for a non-pure keyword domain (this is covered in more detail within the Proper Profits training). This means carefully choosing a near-pure keyword domain but which has some other word in it eg keywordresearching.com (note the “ing” on the end there?)

There are a couple of TLDs available for keywordresearching – but to be honest, I still see it as up against a massive amount of competition – old established domains with vast amounts of backlinks – plus the average PageRank of the top 10 results is 5.4 – which is way too high to niche target. Ideally you want an average PR 3 or less.

To go for this keyword, you would need to go all guns blazing – to have ALL of the tools outlined in the Proper Profits training – AND to full-throttle go for it.

Which means ‘all eggs in one basket’

So “keyword research” is not a good target…

How about “niche marketing”?

That’s not as much red as for “keyword research” – but it’s still fairly red – which means it is going to be quite competitive.

IF we were able to get a pure keyword domain, we *might* be able to get this new domain into the middle of page one by hitting it with a lot of backlinks AND having set it up perfectly, as outlined in the Proper Profits training…

IF we were to get a pure keyword domain… Which we cant, because they’ve all gone!

Now, again, we could get a non-pure keyword domain – which I am sure we could get to #7, given that there is a newish domain at #7 with relatively few backlinks (1,877 backlinks in the screenshot above). We might get to #5, depending how it goes.

But the option to get to a best position possible of #7 or maybe #5 is not good enough for me.

You see, the truth is that positions #1 and #2 get a massively disproportionate amount of the click-throughs – after #2 or #3 the click-throughs REALLY drop off.

So we keep looking…

Now to “keyword analysis”…

There is less red here – but the top 10 results is still largely populated by sites with a lot of backlinks (many with 50,000-plus) and ALL older than 4 years old) and the average PageRank is 4.8 (too high to easily compete)

Pure keyword domains have all gone so no chance of sneaking in that back door…

Given the high SEO competition I would not go for a non-pure keyword domain (unless I REALLY wanted to go for this market – maybe later…) – but my estimate would be that we would get to about #6 given the non-pure keyword domain which is currently at #6 there, and that it does not have a massive amount of backlinks (2,292 backlinks)

So moving on from “keyword analysis”…

To “niche research”…

Now this obviously gets far fewer searches than the previous keywords we’ve looked at – but I would always far rather be at #1 for something with 3,000 searches than at #10 for something with 30,000 searches – because the drop-off in click-throughs from position 1 to position 2, 3, 4 down to position 10 is exponential.

That means that the click-throughs in position 10 are a tiny fraction of the number of click throughs that the site at position #1 will get.

So now let’s look at the Market Samurai screenshot for “niche research”…

Da-da-da-DAHHH!

Now we’re getting down to far less red! Much better for us!

I’ve taken this screenshot recently hence why you can see my site nicheresearch.co at #4 – so obviously this wasn’t what I saw when I first did the research for this.

Looking at the sites in those top 10 results there, there are only a few keyword domains – which means we have a chance to compete if we can get a pure keyword domain…

And the average PageRank of those top 10 is only 1.9. Much better!

Now, those sites at position #10, 9, 8 and 7 were there 2 months ago. I looked at them and KNEW I could beat them – for a number of different reasons…

They are relatively new, they have fairly few backlinks and they are not fully optimized on their sites (shown by the “N”s in the right side of the Market Samurai results)

So I figured I could/should probably beat those to get my site to about #7 or 6.

The site at #6 now has a lot of backlinks but is not a keyword domain and is not perfectly optimized onsite for this keyword – so I figured I would likely be able to beat it (and already have)

So this is how I got to #4 within 2 short months. Yes, Search Engine Optimisation takes a long period of time.

But the god news is that I have spent approximately a total of 2 and a half hours work on this site, including setting the site up and some follow on marketing.

When I set this site up I followed exactly the Proper Profits ‘Site Setup’ checklist. I literally opened the Checklist file myself and followed it – doing exactly what it said.

Now what is interesting is that if you look up at that last screenshot you will see that my nicheresearch.co site has a puny, tiny amount of backlinks – only 96 backlinks!

And yet it is outranking sites with 1,000, 3,000 an even 87,000 backlinks!

How can this be?

In short – because I set it up exactly as per the Proper Profits Site Setup Checklist!

That means setting it up right, populating it right, and doing a few things right after the site setup.

If you havent already, you can get access to this checklist within the Proper Profits Coaching System

Now, my assessment / educated guess / hope is that my site might get to about #3 or #2 within the next 3 – 6 months. We’ll see.

And again, I am NOT pushing this hard at ALL! Just a few gentle, strategic SEO steps as outlined in the Proper Profits training

So did you guess it?

What the thing was that I was testing in this site’s promotion?

It was the .co domain ending and whether it had any effect – positive or negative – on a site’s ranking.

There has been a lot chattering amongst SEO forums and blogs about whether the .co domain ending might not have a good impact for global markets because the .co is strictly originally the domain ending for Colombia (country in South America)

It is a practical reality that country-specific domain endings (eg .co.uk, .com.au) sites get better SEO results in that country. So when I am targeting the UK for a specific niche I always try to get the .co.uk and the .org.uk of the domain.

But the question was whether the .co domain could rank well outside of Colombia.

And the clear result is that this .co site – www.NicheResearch.co – is ranking very nicely in the USA and globally.

Now that is certainly because I set it all up as per the Proper Profits checklist and followed those steps and tweaked the settings to get this working. But the question I wanted to know was “would I be able to rank a .co site well globally”.

And the answer so far is “YES”

So don’t be afraid to get the .co version when you are looking for a good domain name. The only downside is that the .co domains are more expensive – but if a niche is working going into, then the extra cost for the .co should not be a barrier to you.

Good luck.

I hope you’ve gained some insight into how we do market research and how you should think it through.

Let me know what you think – your thoughts and the best bits you learnt here. Let everyone know in the comments below…

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