Revamping Old Content

In my last post, I mentioned that one of the ways I hope to generate more traffic in the upcoming year is by revamping old content.  I managed to do this successfully with one of my early articles on HubPages simply by changing the title.

The article was first published on June 8, 2009 and did not generate a lot of interest.  It took learning about keywords and search over the ensuing 3 months or so, but I figured that the problem with the article was the title.  To illustrate, compare these two titles:

(1)  Ease Into Stocks Positions a la Livermore

(2)  Trade Stocks Like Jesse Livermore

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the first title was the original which did not generate a lot of traffic (I think it might have been under 30 views through October).  After learning a little about keywords and search, I changed the title (without altering the article at all) to the second iteration.  Now the article is getting an average of 1 view per day.

Granted that may not seem like a lot of traffic for some niches and authors, but for me, I am pleased that the change was positive.  I suspect that if I look at some of my other early articles from last summer, I could make similar adjustments with additional positive results on traffic.

Currently, this article is on Google page 6 when searching for Jesse Livermore.  The only link that I have made to the article is at Xomba.  Plus I have the HubPages RSS feed on this blog.  I will often see this article show up as a "Hot Article" since it will tend to get a few surges of traffic now and again.  With a little more promotion, it is possible that I could do even better.

Anyway, the point was that maybe I could review several of my poorer performing, evergreen articles and revamp the titles and my keyword targets.  Maybe this would result in more traffic.  Having a better sense of what people might be searching for in Google is one of the keys to making money online.  Like I said, I have learned a lot in the past year and plan to keep learning.  

Carpet Bombing Your Niche Keywords

If you have any knowledge of military history, you will understand that carpet bombing refers to the practice of just dropping tons and tons of bombs onto an area without any real concern for aiming at a specific target. Instead, complete destruction of the area is the desired result.

This should be the goal of any successful internet writer when it comes to his/her target niche--namely, complete and utter coverage. I can provide a small personal example of this as it relates to my SEO Experiment.

For those who have followed this blog for a while now, you may remember that in October 2009, I sought to target the keyword phrase, "SEO Experiment." I had been reading about search engine optimization and was just learning what backlinks were and finally gaining an understanding of the process of ranking in the search engine results.

I decided to write a blog post with the title, "SEO Experiment" and see if I could rank for that phrase by creating various links using related articles on various self-publishing sites like HubPages, InfoBarrel, Xomba, etc. By using these techniques, I was even able to get to Google page 1!

But the best part is that even though I haven't done any work on the post since November, I am still showing up at position number 16. Furthermore, there are lots of related articles that show up in the top 100 search results in Google. For example,

1. Why Am I Doing An SEO Experiment? on HubPages at position 21
2. 5 Things I Learned From My SEO Experiment on Xomba at position 35
3. Update on the SEO Experiment from this blog at position 51 as well as a link to this update on BlogEngage at position number 95.

Granted that may not sound all that great, but I am sure that a little bit of effort could improve those rankings.

To me, that is encouraging and suggests that if you have a decent paying niche without a lot of competition, it would be relatively easy to carpet bomb the internet with articles and dominate the search results for that particular topic over time.

The trick comes in identifying a relatively uncompetitive niche that will still pay well. Of course, I guess that is what separates the professionals from the rest of us. My goal over the next several months will be to identify a few niches in which I can compete and see what happens. If nothing else, I will have developed additional content along the way.

Thanks for reading! I hope that this example has been helpful. I know that I learned a lot by undergoing the process.