SEO | One Man’s Goal - A Case Study

One Man’s Goal - A Case Study

May 29, 2008 By: Justin | 4 comments

If you follow the Make Money Online niche, I’m sure you’ve heard about the MMO blog OneMansGoal.com being sold to Marc. There was a lot of drama about it being a scam and I even received bad press because I spoke against OMG. So now I’m doing the opposite. I see this blog having some seriously hard times in the future if things don’t get better. The reason for this post is for me to give some basic advice on improving the performance of the blog. The goal is to help Marc and to teach others at the same time.

Before I start: I may sound like a jerk at times when I talk, but I am taking my own time to give this blog some advice. Take it or leave it. Its solid advice, even if you don’t like me. Marc, please take these suggestions to heart. If you need help, please contact me. I will help.

Define it as YOUR blog

Get Bryan’s name out of the title. It’s been a while now and you’re shooting yourself in the foot by branding someone else’s name. Google is going to weight his name heavily because its the first thing in the site’s title. Drop his name and rework the title. You have two options, work on branding your name or work your keyword “Make Money Online”. If you’re working the keyword, put it first!

Cloak Your Affilates

You need to cloak your affiliates by sending them through a javascript redirect. This will improve your sales and SEO. The redirect prevents you from wasting link juice on your affiliates. Also it’ll mask the fact it is an affiliate link. Do this with all on site links and all links in your ebook. The links should looks similar to this: http://onemansgoal.com/go/hostgator

Your Ads

No offense, but it looks tacky. All the 125 buttons across the bottom are pushing it. You show your HostGator ad 5 times and your GoDaddy ad twice. If you’re not selling enough ads to justify the bottom bar, remove it. A better way to promote your products would be to simply list your main ones in your side bar, then plug them in your post. When you teach people stuff, link to the product.

Post Frequency

Marc, you should post more. I know I suggested dropping your guest posters, but it wasn’t because guest posts are bad. They were writing bad content that was wasting people’s time. A GOOD guest post is never a bad thing. If you can’t post often, pull in some people who can, BUT make sure they don’t rehash useless content. Your post frequency is very inconsistent and it will make it harder to build a base of readers. There is also a freshness factor that is taken into account by Google. There are MMO blogs that are pumping out 2-4 posts a week and getting 30+ comments a post. Its hard to keep up, I agree, but that is the market you picked.

Nofollows

Do some research to learn how nofollows can improve your rankings. At a minimum, put nofollows on all the links in your footer, except the one pointing to your home page. You’re providing free dofollow links to all those people. You can leave credit to them, but you don’t have to dofollow the links.

Your Visitors

They are your bread and butter dude. They will link to you. They will promote you. They will return and bookmark you. If they trust you, they will buy the products you suggest. DO NOT IGNORE THE PEOPLE LEAVING COMMENTS! If you keep it up, your blog will fail. People will unsubscribe and stop coming back. A lot of people have been patient with you. All they want is some interaction. You must interact!

Just take a look at the people commenting here. Some seem very unhappy.

A Focus / A Goal

What is the point of your site? What do you wish to teach? How are you different?

The title of the site is One Man’s Goal. What is your goal? Why should we care? Why should I come back?

These are all questions you need to consider and answer. If not, people aren’t going to stick around. You need to figure out what you have to offer and provide it. You raised 10K to spend on a blog. That means you have some talent or skill in making money with real estate. How does this apply to your blog? How might it help your success? Any personal advice on personal growth?

Get a focus and go after it! Be excited and your visitors will be too!

Good Content

I know you’re new to blogging, but you MUST step up your content. I’m just being honest, but its not appealing to read how to install Wordpress. Many bloggers cover it in one post and you spend a week on it. Improve your content.

Conclusion

These are just basic steps that I think Marc needs to take to market his blog and improve its success. I’d work on defining yourself Marc and then work on building your brand. You are THE guy who spent 10K on a blog. Be THE guy who spent 10K on a blog and took that blog to a whole new level. It takes some balls to drop 10K on a blog dude. Its about time to make a splash in this niche. I’d fix all the stuff I mentioned. Decide on a focus and purpose. Come up with a brand and promote the hell out of yourself.

I’d get it all set up, get an idea in mind, then make a big post about the focus of your blog. Promote it and get people excited about your blog. Maybe pull in some guest writers and get one with a decent name or brand. You’ll want to implement all these changes and make an announcement. You had great publicity from the sale and it seems to be falling off. Get people interested in you again.

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Comments

4 Comments »

Comment by Emz
2008-05-30 16:25:05

Very good tips there for anyone who’s created a blog. I hope Marc reads this and takes something from it.

Reply to this comment
 
Comment by Piss Biscuit
2008-06-03 23:54:25

@Justin: Thanks for the solid advice and boy am I glad a friend recommended to NOT turn off the comments. I knew it wasn’t the best move, but it was a thought and so I wrote about it… that’s what a blog is right? LOL!

Anyway, I stumbled you a few minutes ago as a small token of my appreciation and really really really look forward to reading more about making my blog more SEO friendly.

I do quite a bit of SEO work for the company I manage, but when it came to PB… I kinda got bloggers block. I don’t think people correlate SEO and artistic creativity… but I do, and sometimes, I just run out of gas when it comes to being creative.

Thanks for stopping in, I hope to see ya around more often!

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