http://www.greenbeansnmore.com

This site is a perfect lesson on organic SEO and how to apply basic techniques and turn a site into a traffic powerhouse..

This site currently averages around 5000 unique visitors per day, and that’s on a normal day. during those times of the year when holidays are upon us, this site has pulled in as many as 25,000 unique visitors per day.

The comments you will read below that are Cathy’s are attributed to her, I have added my own comments when needed.

Let me state that even though I come from a background of SEO, I really never spent much time teaching Cathy SEO. I gave her the owners manual to Dreamweaver, signed her up for some HTML 101 classes at the college which they canceled before her courses were complete, and I spent maybe an hour or two with her at the beginning.

This site is a passion and a labor of love for her. It was not built to make money but does pretty well.

The niche was selected simply from a conversation we had where Cathy said she had no idea what topic to build a site around. I told her she made some really killer green beans and that was it.

She likes to cook. And this site 2 years later is the end result though it is always a work in progress.

There are no professional graphics. To this day she rarely asks me a question about anything related to the site, in fact she doesn’t let me near it or have anything to do with it.

It’s her baby, and one she is quite proud of.

It proves that you don’t have to always have a site that is in those all too common niches to make some decent money online.

If you have a passion, it can turn into a very profitable site if you put some work into it. It won’t happen overnight.

But it can certainly be done.

Cathy’s comments:
I had taken html coding classes at our local community college and needed to use what I’d learned before I forgot it. I decided to write about green beans because I like them! It was Dave’s idea to call it green beans “n more” so that I would be able to add information about other vegetables on the site.

Dave’s Comments:
I did suggest the domain name and registered it for Cathy, she had no idea of how to choose a domain name nor register one and still to this day, doesn’t.

Cathy’s Comments:
I used a very basic site design with the menu on the left. I chose to use broad topics relating to green beans on the menu such as “how to grow green beans”, “freezing green beans”, “canning green beans”, “varieties of green beans” and “green bean recipes”.

Dave’s Comments:
I did help Cathy create the very basic template, that’s about all I did, I created the images and the very basic layout. As you can tell, I’m not very good at site design which is why I make my living in other more suitable areas.

Cathy’s Comments:
Once I had the pages above made I started adding green bean recipes.

As the site grew I got a lot of traffic several months after it was launched, in the following spring for the search term “growing green beans” and similar searches, but then the traffic would slow. It was Dave’s idea that I add topics that would have people searching my site on a more year round basis. I decided to add Thanksgiving content. I then added “Holiday Recipes” and “Valentines Day and Romantic Dinner Ideas”.

Dave’s Comments:
This site absolutely rocks at Thanksgiving time especially. The traffic is incredible. When I suggested that Cathy expand her search terms she really didn’t think there would be much search traffic for them. But go to any keyword database and search for terms as seemingly benign as pork chops, and you’ll be amazed at the number of searches, and virtually no competition.

Cathy’s Comments:
Over time I have added recipes for BBQ’s and cookouts, Mediterranean and Indian recipes. Each adding potential for more traffic and giving me more traffic year round.

Here are some of the things I do.

1 ) Keyword research.  I NEVER make a page without doing keyword research – NEVER.

I use Keyword Universe in Wordtracker for this. I search the
terms in Google with quotes. When I do a search for a
particular term – use “avgolemono” as an example, I use a variety of the terms in Wordtracker such as “avgolemono sauce”, “avgolemono recipes”. I do a Google search for the actual term to find different words associated with it on other pages, such as “greek lemon sauce” and “greek recipes” and “egg lemon sauce”.

When using Wordtracker I pay attention to how many searches the term receives. Of course you’ll find the more searches the term has the more competing pages it has.  When my site was new I chose terms with less than 50,000 competing pages in Google, when searched with quotes,  Now that my site is ranking well in Google I will use keywords with more competing pages. I use a variety of words with high and low competing pages.

I use a variety of keywords (usually 8 to 10 or more) when writing content on a page and when writing the meta description, title, h1 tag and url. Always remember to keep the writing natural. Don’t overstuff with keywords. Here’s a pretty good example of that http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/greeklemonandeggsauceavgolemono.html.

Dave’s Comments:
Keyword research. The most important element of any project. Choosing a niche that is both doable and gets search traffic. But the way you use the keywords is very important. Those of you who have purchased my Profit Loophole course have a very detailed explanation detailing what Cathy broadly describes above.

I confess, that the couple of hours I spent with her at the beginning dealt with keyword research. Get it right and you will do very well. get it wrong, and well, probably not.

But it is not rocket science, it is one of those areas that you can apply some very specific techniques to and come away a winner more often than not. The key is to truly understand the concepts, apply them and repeat them.

Cathy’s Comments:
2 ) Quality content & Updating the Site. One thing that’s always been very important to me is the quality of content on my site.  I did a lot of reading and research to come up with informative content for my pages. I still do reading and research and update my pages “growing”, “canning”, “freezing” and “variety” pages several times a year.

Dave’s Comments:
The point Cathy makes here is an important one. Her site is a constant work in progress, it is never done, Any page is subject to being updated with fresh content, and she does this on a regular basis, I’m not talking massive changes, but small changes and additions. But this is not a site for which she spends hours per day working on. In fact we’re talking a couple hours, a couple days per week.

Cathy’s Comments:
All content on my site is in my own wording. Where I have quoted or used exact recipes I give a link or name the source.

3 ) Updating the site. I try to add at least two recipes a month, sometimes it’s more. I also use my own pictures on the site.

4 ) On some of my early pages I used bbq-a, bbq-b, bbq-c, etc. as page url’s. I now use keywords in my page url’s – example;

http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/persianlovecake.html

5 ) When writing a title I use up to three keywords, and use a combination of terms that have high search numbers and lower search numbers. If I am posting a recipe from a particular source (and I try to use trusted sources that are well known) I may use the name (author or website) in the title. I use other keywords in the h1 tag.

6 ) As I often see my page come up on a Google search with the meta description I take care in writing a description that I think will catch the eye of the searcher.

7 ) I update the index page on a fairly regular basis using content corresponding with a particular time of year. Spring it’s growing green beans, Summer it’s bbq and cookouts, Fall and winter it’s Thanksgiving and holiday recipes.

8 ) Whenever I add a new page or update pages I always update my sitemaps.

9 ) Getting links has probably been the most time consuming and frustrating thing I’ve had to do. When the site was new I sought out links from other sites. As I had no “page rank” there were very few who would link with me. I literally sent out hundreds of requests. Now that the site has some ranking I often receive link requests. I have opted to only link to similar type sites and I don’t accept directory links. If you visit my link to us page you’ll see my link criteria.
http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/link-to-us.html

Dave’s Comments:
I gave Cathy NO direction in this area really, she came up with her own policies and decided how she wanted to do her linking entirely on her own. I bet in the past 2 years she has not asked me more than 5 questions about linking.

Cathy’s Comments:
I think what has also helped my site to rank well is linking that others have done to me on websites (chowhound.com, mothernaturenetwork.com) blogs (cumberlandfarmersmarketassociation.blogspot.com), gardening sites (schoolgardenweekly.com), and even newspapers (Chicago Sun Times, Charleston Gazette).

What has brought these people to my site is QUALITY CONTENT.

Dave’s Comments:
Build Quality Content and the big sites will find you, and if you’ve got something good to offer, it can pay off big time without you even having to do much. Several years ago I had a site of mine featured in Wired magazine. I had no idea till I saw my traffic go through the roof for about a week. It was a site that was on a normal day making about 20 sales and that shot up to over 100 per day just from one link, and it was all direct traffic.

Links from big sites are not just about the link pop they can give you. It’s about buzz. Those people who come to your site from major sites, are quite likely to bookmark your site. That’s stickiness. Those people tend to return again and again, and then tell others. It’s not true viral marketing but has some viral aspects to it.

Cathy’s Comments:
10 ) Article writing. This is another great way to get links to your site. I used ezine articles, especially when the site was first launched. They review all the articles and will let you know what they do and don’t like. They only post QUALITY articles. A great place to use the keywords you’ve researched.

Dave’s Comments:
EZA is a great source of traffic as well. Their articles tend to rank very well in Google. Good quality articles submitted to EZA can expect to get a click through rate of about 15-20% to your site listed in the author bio.

Cathy’s Comments:
11 ) Monetizing the site. I did not put Google Adsense on my site for several months. Dave felt it was best for the brand new site to appear non-commercial. I have several affiliate ads on my site which obviously work within the green bean/recipe theme (gardening, spices).

I have had the “opportunity” to eavesdrop on many conversations that Dave has had with clients over the years on how to get their sites to rank higher in the search engines.  While I really didn’t understand much if any of what he was talking about at the time, once I started building my site certain things that I had heard often, started making sense to me.

These are the points I’ve picked up:

1) Choosing a market you can rank well in
2) keyword research
3) quality content
4) updating the site on a regular basis
5) linking

Please keep this in mind – results don’t happen overnight. Don’t give-up on your site. You will be rewarded in time for your good work.

Several months ago I asked Dave a question about a link I was offered and his reply to me was “continue to do what you’ve been doing”.

Dave’s Comments:
While this is just a very broad overview, it should give you a good idea of what it takes to build a single site from scratch that can start out as nothing more than a hobby, an interest, or a passion you have, and turn into something much bigger.

Remember, a lot of the biggest online sites today were never built with the intention of making money. They were built as hobbies, projects, a means to share.

So while there is nothing wrong with working in the more common markets if that is your choice, don’t ignore things that may often seem out of the ordinary or a topic not often discussed on marketing forums. The reality is there are so many topics and niches that can turn into money makers, that you are only limited by your imagination, and the effort you put into it.

- Dave -

Incoming search terms for the article:

• Metodi Metev
• http://www profitocracy com/2009/08/20/how-a-complete-novice-took-a-site-from-scratch-to-over-1500000-annual-unique-visitors-in-2-short-years/
• bbq wordtracker

One of the first things you learn in SEO is not to follow or believe what you read in forums, but believe what your eyes and data tell you.

There are a lot of myths perpetrated on a lot of forums regarding Page Rank, and really anything related to search engines.

I’m not going to come out and claim I know everything about how page rank operates, nor every dark secret about SEO, anyone that claims they do is a liar. And that would include most of the folks who work at Google. Only a few are really privy to that info.

But the continuing obsession I see from many regarding Google Page rank is not only foolish, in many cases, it is just plain wrong, and more importantly, really wastes a lot of valuable time that could be used pursuing more profitable activities.

Let’s talk about a couple basics.

1) Don’t put much stock on what you see on that little green toolbar. At best it is nothing more than a really rough estimate of your true Page Rank from a snapshot in time that often is many months ago. It has virtually no relationship to your CURRENT internal Google page rank, which more than likely is a constantly moving and adjusted value.

2) The toolbar’s main purpose has always been as a data gathering tool for Google. Sure it offers you some features other than the little green bar, but just be aware that if you are using Page Rank checker, you are passing info on to Google about your surfing habits.

If you have no issues with this, no worries, but if that’s all you need a better option if you are using Firefox is to grab this extension.

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

So does Page Rank matter?

Well it’s pretty clear that the influence Page Rank has on actual rankings is very mixed at best.

Now let’s not confuse Page Rank and Authority. Remember, Page Rank is factored on a page by page basis, Authority is more likely site specific.

Let’s say you got a link from a major authority site, whose front page has a PR of 8, but your link is somewhere on an internal page that shows little or no page rank. What is the true value of that link?

A link from an authority site regardless of the PR of the page is going to be weighted more heavily than a link from a page on another site with an equal PR, that has far less authority.

Page Rank may be indicative of the general authority status of the site, but the PR of the specific page is not what passes the real value to your site as far as the effect it will have on ranking.

Authority also can be talked about in terms of trust, how much is the link from a site trusted?

So use Page Rank as a very basic guide to trying to come up with a site’s authority or trust.

Another important factor to consider in determining the value of a link, is the spidering frequency that a site receives from Google. A real easy way to check this, and it’s far from fool proof is to just check the cache date of a specific page.

If you have a site that is both deeply indexed, and getting the internal pages deeply spidered on a frequent basis, the site has some quality to it, regardless of the actual Page Rank being displayed.

While it is generally true that sites whose PR is higher tend to get spidered frequently, that is not always the case. But so can sites who PR is low or zero why? Well, if your site is indexed, your PR is higher than zero, and you have no idea of the true internal PR Google is using. There are a few tools that try and guess it, but it’s just that, an educated guess.

The reality is there are many factors that you need to look at when trying to place a value on a link, and far too many people are only looking at the Page Rank of a site and that is a huge mistake.

I have a lot of sites that are ranking in the top 5 for fairly competitive keywords that have a PR of 0 or maybe a PR of 1.

These are not new sites or sites that just showed up in the top spots recently, these are sites that have been hanging around the top 1-20 positions for quite a while.

The first thing I look at when trying to place a value on a link is the possible authority status of a site. Again, I’ll use the front page PR as a guide but it is just a very rough indicator of authority, but if a site has some perceived authority I don’t care what the PR is of the page my link will be on, as long as it is spiderable.

You can also try and gauge authority status by looking the Alexa rating of a site. Is the trend going up or down? Is traffic steady or very spiky?

I then focus on site saturation which can easily be done by entering

site:www.domain.com

…into Google.  The more pages indexed the better.

I then look at the cache dates of the front page and some random internal pages. It’s important to make sure the internal pages are getting spidered fairly often as well.

Another possible item you can look at is the actual age of the domain. do a whois search. An older domain is always better, but not if the domain has had multiple owners, and has been dropped at a registrar multiple times, so this one I don’t worry about too much.

I rarely concern myself with the PR of a specific page.

So, even if a site has a low or no PR, even on the front page, if that site is getting indexed heavily with very frequent cache dates, I’d still gladly take a link from that site.

Google tends NOT to aggressively spider crappy sites, at least not consistently.

I’m still amazed when I see threads of excitement on forums stating that Google has done a Page Rank update, Great you now have a very rough estimate using a totally generic methodology, of what they thought of your site some time in the past.

And also remember, Google updates the toolbar PR, probably 3-4 times per year, at most. Why not more often? What’s the need? They get exactly what they want out of the toolbar now without having to expend much in the way of resources to get that data.

- Dave -