What’s your favourite 3 letter word? I know what mine has been this past year, yep that’s right SEO! Although 2009 was a bit gnarly for me in places, the little thorns in the usually sweet-smelling affiliate ointment galvanised my determination to insulate myself from margins that were on the wibble. This is a process I first began just over 2 years ago when I was a 100% PPC affiliate. The first year saw some small progress and I managed to get myself to 80% PPC and 20% SEO.
However, once the dust from our nuptuals had settled and the credit crunch had really bit, I applied myself to the business of garnering organic traffic like a woman posessed. The results? An absolutely brilliant increase in my profit margin and turnover. I will leave the explaination of why combining PPC and SEO can be so powerful to Nadeem Azam – he did a great post on that a while back.
Now I’m Not Letting Any Numbers Slip But…
I can show you how the impact on my bottom line looked! I keep monthly stats on all of my sites and do love a good graph. So here’s my monthly income and expenditure graph (numbers removed!!)
The distance between my profit and expenditure (green and red lines) which you can see in January is a pretty accurate reflection of how it had been for the whole of the previous year. As you can see, throughout the year the amount I’ve been spending on PPC has not increased that much whilst the green and blue lines (profit and turnover) have adopted a pleasing upward trend, followed by a terribly exciting spike around the festive season.
In 2009….
Investing time into writing content and building quality sites reduced the percentage of my turnover I was spending on PPC from 49% to 25%. Given that a good chunk of my new income has come from sites which are only a few months old I’m incredibly optimistic about consolidating my success further in 2010 and reducing my reliance upon Google Adwords (because I’m starting to get alarmed about how they view affiliate landing pages).
How Will I Capitalise On My SEO Success?
I think I’m going to play the same numbers game I did in 2009 to keep myself motivated. Every day I set myself a target to get 8 new pages written and live. I give myself 2 hours to do this. I set aside a few hours a month to link build for my sites and am using the Content Now Link Building service to garner links for my lingerie site. I’m seeing some rather pleasing results from that and my rankings are improving all the time.
Where Will My Little Green Line End Up At The End Of This Year?
Well, after a rather sad drop in January I’m hoping it will resume its gentle upwards climb. It’s taken me 2 years to get to this point, and I feel I really know what to do this year to really secure my various sites in the SERPS and insulate Duncan and I from any more recession-esque income fluctuations.
I’ll let you know how I went in January 2011 
January 11th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Well done!
I am almost 100% organic but should really do more ppc to try and find the best paying keywords.
I have to say though, Content Now is one of the most over priced services of its type I’ve come across. You can get that work done to a good standard for a fraction of that price…
January 11th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Hi Kirsty, cool post. Am recently trying to get a lot more content out there, did you say 8 pages written and live in 2 hours? Is that written by you? seems fast!
Whether correct or not(!) any tips on faster content writing that you have picked up over the years.
Many Thanks
January 11th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Hi Jez,
Really? Where?!
Thanks
January 11th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
IMO Content is definitely the most important aspect of seo. I also spend a few hours a week linkbuilding. I have wrote my own app in filemaker to help me do this and i am having some positive results.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
@Jez, other people might well offer a cheaper service but I trust Content Now and their methods implicitly. I’d rather pay more now than potentially get a ban later because I let an unknown quantity tinker with my sites!
@Stew – yes that is written and posted up by me. I have a really nice looking template made up for all my sites. All I have to do is pop in 2 links, an image URL and write about 200 words. I am an incredibly fast typer and I’m now so used to writing up affiliate copy I don’t have to think about what I’m saying – it just sort of turns up on the page. It’s hard work getting that many done per hour, but cramming it in and setting myself a time limit means I get it all done quickly instead of messing about.
@James – good to see you innovating to get yourself those links. Well done
January 12th, 2010 at 12:22 am
That’s a cracking uplift Kirsty. You’d expect to see a huge spike around chrimbo for retail sites but you’ve managed to do it without a matching spike in spend. Good to hear some positive from all the doom and gloom about the crunch.
Paul
January 12th, 2010 at 1:58 am
Thanks Paul! Yes, I was particularly pleased with the spike over the festive season and the profit margins the business was achieving. I think a lot of my organic work really came into its own at that point. I was also keeping on top of keeping an eye on my PPC spend and margins this year – I spent a couple of hours every day going through my account and making sure everything was performing OK and adding new keywords where appropriate.
Here’s hoping I can continue to do the same in 2011 – I’ve got a honking great house to renovate
January 12th, 2010 at 2:13 am
You mean you’re using that content service to write content that you distribute? Like article directories etc?
January 12th, 2010 at 2:14 am
I’m using Content Now to get me some reciprocal and also one way links, but not via article marketing – is that what you mean?
January 12th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Hi Kirsty, thanks for the reply, and wow I am impressed! Really great stuff and good luck luck in 2010 for the upwards curve!
Thanks
January 12th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Hi Kirstly,
I also have a comment / question about the 8 pages live (congrats, that is loads lol!). Could you break it down further for me in terms of those pages – as in, are all the pages you write the same? Or is that like 4 product pages and 4 article content pages for linkbuiliding etc. Obv you have a lot of sites, but 8 pages a day where would they all go lol!
Thanks, Happy New Year!
January 12th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Just reread, and sorry I obviously didn’t mean ‘the same’ as in you duplicated the content lol.
January 12th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Hi Kirsty, Would you be kind enough to comment on how successful Twitter has been as part of your strategy? I see you use it to not only broadcast new blog posts, but to network as well. Has it influenced sales? WP
January 13th, 2010 at 12:47 am
@ShyToBuy – 95% of the time I do 8 articles focusing on individual products or broader product areas / brands. I have about 6 sites I’m currently working hard on so there’s never a shortage of ideas!
@Dillon – For me Twitter has so far had very little impact. I have some accounts for my businesses but thus far how to really capitalise upon them eludes me. I’m keeping a close eye on Twitter though as I do think it will become more important to some sites. The trick is, I imagine, successfully building a community / dialogue.
On a personal level it gets a few visitors into the blog and does allow me to network. I find that very useful. I’m not sure its had an impact on my bottom line though!
January 13th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Hi Kristy,
I am agree that your PPC levels remain same and your sales during last part of year shown us the out-standing growth. But that do really mean that you have to stay this kind of rankings effectively and that means more SEO efforts on the cost of PPC efforts.
But I suggest you one thing (Big talks with small mouth) In during last 2- 3 months, if you increased your ppc expenses by 25% i think you can book a more gap between red and blue lines.
One more thing you can say that its effect of the brands/merchants you promoting this years. next year they might be went out of demand/network.
And I believe that you get the best keyword for SEO from your early PPC efforts. So I think Its better to keep PPC efforts on the same level for this upcoming year, Don’t try to deduct it from your efforts but instead of that put more effort of same amount into SEO.
Thats it…
Thanks for post
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I like the idea of setting aside two hours to write 8 pages. I think I need to instil this kind of discipline as days/weels can go by without me writing a single page. Then when I do I realise it is really rather easy and quick to do.