Woo Hoo!,  Looks like its time for a December closeout update.  I’ve been trying to figure out how I wanted to word this blog post because there was so much activity in this month related to both my pay per click marketing (PPC) work and my search engine optimization (SEO) work.  I didn’t want to overwhelm my readers, but at the same time I did not want to leave anything out of my post. So this will be one of my longest posts to date.  But don’t worry, I’ll section it out so you can get an organized flow of my thoughts.

December SEO results.

In my previous SEO related post, I detailed that I was recovering from the result of a Google dance and my rankings were starting to improve.  So what I did to combat this was to continuously build links to my website until my rankings came back.  Today, I”m happy to report that those rankings are holding and still improving.  On December 25th of this month, Google gave me a Christmas gift by ranking 2 of my keywords to the 1st page of Google.  My keywords are in position 9 and position 10 currently!! If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time you will know that I’ve given myself a goal to rank 6 different keywords to position 1 in Google by my birthday of March 3, 2010.  It looks like I’m well on my way to do so.  What I’ll be doing in the upcoming weeks is continuing the activity of outsourcing my link building.  I expect that next month should show a dramatic increase in my rankings.  Also, if you’ve been wondering if any of these activities have translated into an increase in traffic to my site, then I will have to say yes.  However, the increase in traffic is minimal at best right now.  Only a few clicks a day (3 to 6).   This may sound like a small amount (it is), however, I just recently reached the 1st page of Google, so I expect the traffic to my website to increase across the board really soon.

I’ve attached my spreadsheet below that details the progress of my keywords over the month of December for reference.

December SEO Chart:

You can also see that I’m still struggling with keywords 1 through 3.  I know its going to take some time to get those keywords pushed up further in the rankings.  The terms are just very competitive and Google does not give me rank for them as easily as keywords 4 through 6.  So, I’m going to try an experiment.  In the SEO realm, there are linking structures called Link Pyramids and Link Wheels.  What these structures are designed to do is funnel “link juice” or votes of confidence back to the website they are targeting.  There has been some debate on whether these structures still work or not as Google is beginning to discount the link strength of these structures, but in talking with friends on the web, they assure me that they continue to use these techniques and they do work.   So here’s what I’ve been pondering.  I met with an online SEO company recently who says they can create a link wheel structure pointing back to my website which would be optimized for the keywords I’m targeting.  I checked the company out by asking other people that use them and they seem legit.  I’m thinking I will use them to see if they can better improve my ranking situation.  Below is an image of the structure of links they will be creating for my website.

Pretty intensive huh?!?! I definitely don’t have the time to do this on my own.  I’ll update you all in about a month on the progress of this link structure.

December Pay Per Click Results

Moving on to the topic of pay per click.   Look’s like I fell short of my goal this month as well.  I was shooting for a total profit of $10,000 this month, but looks like I came up short again this month at $7,198.50 in profit.   Looking back over the month, this was because of a couple of things.

1.)  The Christmas Holiday: Not only did I not get the boost in sales that I originally planned, I was not fully focused on my campaigns as I should have been.  There were a few days where I did not run my campaign during the optimized times of day as I should have.   Also, since most people take a break from their computers and profession jobs during Christmas, I did not get the traffic from “corporate browsers” as I’d had in the past.

2.)  Offer went away: My offer went away on one of my main networks.  This hurt me as well because this network paid me weekly and I was able to reinvest my profits directly back into my ad spends each week.  Since I lost that weekly payout, I’ve been forced to depend on 2 other networks that pay every 2 weeks.  So I can’t recycle my monies as fast as I previously could.  To alleviate this issue, I’ve signed up to an additional 4 other networks that weekly once you start showing them lots of volume.  I don’t think this will be a problem for me so I’m optimistic that I can reach my $10,000 goal in January.

December PPC Chart

All and all this has been a great year in affiliate marketing.  Things got off to a rocky start at the beginning of the year when all my offers started to go away, but I’ve been able to rebound and find other products that sell well online.  I’m very excited about closing out this year and getting ready for the new year.  I pray and claim that 2011 will be an even better year for this business.  I have so many new ideas I want to put in play and I think with the renewed vigor I have right now nothing can stop my progress.   I will continue to blog about the things I have planned and will keep all you guys in the loop on my successes and failures.  I’m trying to be as transparent as I can.  This blog is my outlet and my motivation to keep going when things get tough.  I can alway’s look back and see the successes I’ve had in the past and keep pressing forward to even more future success.

Till next blog post,

James Hales (Ollie) signing off.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!