Download CV

[Live SEO Case Study] Affiliate Blog Survival/Prepping Niche

March 26, 2023
seo case study affiliate website readyprepper.net - search console stats

SEO Case Study LIVE Stats:

Update 7 – 8th May 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Current website articles: 21 blog posts with a mix of low, and medium-quality articles AI-generated and manually improved.

Current website backlinks: no backlinks created for this website so far.

Site updates since last week:

  • no big updates or changes done to the site since December 2022.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Search Console Stats 8th May 2023:


Weekly UpdatesKeywords in top 100 google results (SEMRush)Keywords in top 10 google results (SEMRush)GSC (3 month) Impress./Clicks
19 March 20235805,41k / 32 clicks
26 March 20235105,14k / 32 clicks
2nd April 20234905,23k / 35 clicks
16th April
2023
10106,02k / 45 clicks
23rd April12136,4k / 50 clicks
30th April13846.7k / 52 clicks
8th May 202315667,11k / 58 clicks

As I mentioned in the portfolio item, this was a website started on short notice. I knew I had to get back to making money online. After a 2+ years break where things didn’t quite work out as planned, I needed to start somewhere but I didn’t want to do CPA marketing (Cost per Action) as I was doing before from 2014 to 2018 when I took a break.

So I decided to go for Affiliate Marketing as it is slightly different than CPA but has similarities which is an advantage. This SEO case study is the first website I built for this to help me remember the old SEO and website days and relearn new things.

The prepping niche is not my kind of thing now but considering what was happening between 2020-2022 I was a bit interested in this for a short period. (Yes, I was in that paranoid group of people). Since I do not have much personal interest in this niche anymore I will not be making big updates to it.

To follow the SEO and ranking stats for this affiliate marketing blog go to the end of the page where I post the updates as they happen.


0. Origins Story of the Website

A bit avoidant I knew I had to start somewhere and I was delaying it. After I got into a motivational spark I finally jump into it without too much thought.

In a matter of a day, I had the domain and WordPress already installed and the idea behind the website laid out. Also, I checked some offers on Clickbank to have a general idea in terms of the content I should write.

After doing a general competition and keyword research I realized there is not a high demand but there are a couple of experts with good content based on personal experience.

Even so, I was curious about this subject at that time and I took it as a good starting point in my journey to start again to make money online as the competition while going against experts was not too crowded.

From start to finish here are the main steps I took to build this affiliate website in the survival/prepping niche.

1. Domain name and Hosting

Choosing a domain name is generally bothering me as I always overthink it and overthinking things from the beginning is not a good idea. It also makes me more prone to consider the decision I made as a bad one later on.

So I decided on readyprepper.net without too much hassle and I think it’s a good enough domain name. It represents what the niche and content inside will be about before a user clicks on it.

For the domain name registrar, I used Namecheap. For hosting I used Bluehost.

2. WordPress theme + plugins

Astra Theme

Being aware of the importance of site speed and not affording a paid theme I went with Astra in the end. The Astra theme was a late pick after the website was live and the content was almost done. I tried Hestia and Blog Diary free themes before deciding on Astra.

Plugins

I installed plugins as I went building the site and not all at once, but here is the list of the plugins I currently have on the website:

  • Accelerated Mobile Pages for having an AMP version of the page as I had very bad page speed without this.
  • Hummingbird to help with site speed and install gzip and cache controls.
  • Advanced Database Cleaner used for deleting revisions after I edited and saved hundredths of times more than 20 articles.
  • Rank Math SEO plugin to guide my On-Seo efforts when writing articles plus a lot more features.
  • Contact Form 7 for the contact form.
  • Converter for Media for converting images into WebP format images as it improved page speed overall.
  • CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent for the cookies banner integration and for writing the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
  • Fixed Widget to have the fixed widget with affiliate offers in the sidebar fixed on desktop scrolling.
  • Insert Blocks Before or After Posts Content to automatically insert the one-line affiliate disclaimer at the beginning of each post.
  • WPvivid Backup Plugin for backing up the website.
  • Site Kit by Google is used to install analytics or Google Tag Manager code on each website page.
  • Ultimate Blocks for having a nice table of contents that was customizable to my liking with a show and hide button and editable text.

3. Keyword Research and Competition Research

The way I did keyword research here was a rather old-school method. It was from when back I was doing CPA back in 2018.

I used 3 main tools to do my keyword research: UbberSuggest Free Trial + Google Keyword Planner + Scrapebox.

Here is the process I followed to generate the keywords that I will later use:

  • I took two high-ranking prepping websites and put them in Ubbersuggest under Keyword Research > Keywords by Traffic. Then I handpicked keywords that were about stuff I was curious about.
  • Took those keywords and use my old Scrapebox > Keyword Scraper Tool to generate as many keywords related to those keywords. The tool scrapes the autofill suggestions from selected search engines.
  • Use those keywords in Scrapebox’s Google Competition Finder Addon to find all the websites that use the exact match keyword on their pages.
  • Put all those keywords again into Google Keyword Planner and download the data. On a new excel file, I matched keyword by keyword to match the Scrapebox Competition Finder Results with the Avg. Monthly research data from GKP for each keyword.
  • Handpick those keywords that have Low Results from Scrapebox Competition Finder with at least 50 avg. monthly searches from GKP data; for a new website stick with very low competition results, below 1k-2k.

    Check below the steps explained with images:

Having this list of keywords with low competition and with at least 50 average monthly searches I was good to go and create some content. These are not many searches but for a new website this is the best strategy to go.

That’s because to help your website increase its metrics you need visitors on your site. If you go for high-volume keywords and high competition the chances of ranking in desirable google positions are slim.

Note: Checking the exact match keyword (word within quotes) in google is not necessarily a fair assessment of the competition. But for this keyword research strategy, it was good enough.

Note 2: My strategy is to not rank for specific keywords. I will write articles using overall low-competition keywords and wait to see what opportunities arise. If it goes well with what I have as a new website I will consider taking it to the next level and do actual proper research based on detailed competition analysis.

4. Generating/Writing the Content

Generating the content? Unfortunately (or happily) yes.

As soon as I learned about how good AI gets, I wanted to learn more and did some research. Skeptical about this at first I went on with the Writesonic AI Writer & Article Generator as they seem to be updating the platform regularly and that’s a good sign for me.

I quickly understood that having AI-written content is only a good start. It’s like researching on google but faster – just like using a tool like Scrapebox to generate within seconds the keyword phrases from the autofill suggestions that would take hours to copy-paste manually.

AI is by no means a way to generate articles and post them on the website straight away. It’s a good start and that’s what it is.

How I generated the content?

I simply took those hand-picked keywords from the merged excel file in step 3 and put AI to generate my articles based on those keywords.

Writesonic has the option to input subheadings within the article and for those, I handpicked the questions from the people also ask section in google search results.

So for example, if I was using the phrase 3-day emergency food supply list as an article generation idea, I would put that phrase into google and handpick the questions from Google Search Results snippets. See below what I mean.

I would also go deeper and expanded each question to show me more questions.

google search page screenshot with people also ask snippet used as subheadings

However, I soon realized that AI provided some one-sentence answers that didn’t make sense or were not nearly answering the question. Maybe it was because I was using too specific questions that there is not enough content for that topic on google. Or maybe simply because Writesonic was not so good when I started using it around late 2022.

I would go then and skim through each generated article and if it was a very poor article I would give it another go or I would handpick the subheadings that were not answered properly and give those individually one more go.

I also had one folder for each article where I saved it together with the keyword/phrase used to generate that article.

5. Rewriting the articles

Now it was time to take each article individually and manually rewrite it. At this stage, I would not bother too much with the on-page SEO or use the focus keyword in my writing. I would simply read through the article and rewrite it based on the ideas already provided by Writesonic.

Where it seems to do so I would do research manually and add content to add more information to the article or because the AI didn’t answer the question well enough.

6. Searching and adding feature images + in-post images

Taking a break from all that writing and researching it was now time for some visual work. Besides the necessary feature image, I would also skim through each post I would search and download free stock images from sites like Unsplash, Pixabay, or Pexels.

Having the folders created for each article I download the images in small format and save them in each corresponding folder.

As part of On-Page SEO I start by renaming each image with words from the keyword used to generate that article, usually the keyword I am trying to rank for or a variation of it.

7. On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO was done with the help of the Rank Math WordPress plugin to help me with keyword density but also for other important things such as:

  • having the keyword in the first 100 words
  • having the keyword in the title
  • the keyword in the URL
  • add images alt tags
  • add a power word (top, best, amazing, etc.) in the title and a number
  • write a custom meta description to attract curiosity and clicks
  • adding media such as images and text
  • add at least 2-3 links to external relevant sources
  • add a table of contents to each post.
affiliate marketing case study - rank math seo on green
Rank Math SEO Plugin

The goal when using the Rank Math SEO Plugin for WordPress is to have the highest possible score from 0 to 100 by following the guidelines they suggest as you write and customize the article and its elements. In the example above I have an 83 out of 100 score which is not the best but it is on the green side of things.

For the affiliate links, I would read through the articles and find products that would fit that paragraph and add them straight away into the articles. I also saved the products on a separate draft page just for affiliate products and also created a Shopping list with prepper products.

For the Clickbank affiliate products, I would already have some products saved right from the beginning. I added some of them to the sidebar from the start before adding them inside articles.

Inside the articles, I added the ClickBank affiliate links in a more obvious way such as below.

Whilst the Amazon affiliate links are added inside the articles where is more relevant to have a product there in case the reader wants to check that out.

For each affiliate link, I also had to tick the ‘Open in a New Tab” option as well as tick the ‘Set to Nofolllow’ button in WordPress.

Also testing the affiliate links is important. I would do that by clicking on them and checking in the Clickbank Analytics dashboard if it has registered.

The Amazon links wouldn’t bother to test but I would be more mindful when picking the product to link to as I don’t want to provide an affiliate link to a product that already is or will soon be out of stock.

9. Scheduling and Repolishing the articles

All posts were saved as drafts and are pretty much ready to be scheduled over some time. What I did now went through all the posts individually and read them once again.

The idea was to polish the blog posts and I this stage I would trim off the unnecessary words, sentences, and sometimes paragraphs. Or I would rewrite the same idea more succinctly and shortly.

It’s time-consuming, especially since I am a perfectionist and articles are one of those things that always can be improved upon. But the main idea is to make them more readable and user-friendly. And that means being more succinct and deleting unnecessary words and phrases.

The articles have been scheduled now and added a few internal links to any relevant posts were scheduled before the one where the internal link was added. It was not fit to add an internal link to a blog post that was scheduled with a 20 days delay, so I will have to go back again and do more internal linking once the articles are all published.

The last scheduled article was published way back on 15th December 2022. As I am writing this it’s 19th March of 2023. Ever since I have not been to any new articles.

10. Analytics, Search Console, Google Tag Manager

Now that the website is pretty much done with it, it’s time for some technical stuff.

Added the website readyprepper.net to Google Analytics by using the Site Kit WordPress plugin as it seems to be the most convenient way. The WordPress Site kit plugin also connects to Google Tag Manager so that’s a bonus.

affiliate website case study 1 - site kit plugin integrations
Site Kit WordPress Plugin Connect Services

Adding to Search Console required me to upload the verification file to the root folder of the website in my Bluehost’s File Manager. Also adding a sitemap in GSC is important. Rank Math provides the sitemap so I used that since I already had Rank Math installed.

At the moment of building the site, I was also doing some GTM courses on LinkedIn so it was good timing to practice some GTM tagging.

Here are some examples of tags made in GTM for capturing the user’s browser hours at the moment of visiting my site along with page scrolling percent and outbound link clinks tracking.

11. Waiting for Feedback from Google

Now it was time to let the scheduled posts go on and eventually see how the website performs over time. Honestly, I am not expecting much but it was good practice to get back to the online world.

As soon as I finished this website I took advantage of the momentum and start building the 2nd Affiliate Website which you can follow its journey here in this 2nd Affiliate Marketing Website SEO Case Study.

Final Words

This was in a nutshell the process of building this readyprepper.net Affiliate Website No.1. For someone new to this might be overwhelming. But I am sure for many others this is child’s play while also getting a sure financial return.

Whilst getting some money out of this project would be nice, I am primarily seeing this as my first stepping stone to becoming a good online earner and eventually an expert in SEO and building websites.

Also, check my local Romanian photography services website case study where I speak about local SEO factors as well as a more simple and refined overall process with backlinks building and a more involved overall approach.

From now on I will post any other modifications I am doing along with the stats from Google Analytics and Search Console as well as Semrush.com.


Update:

As I already mentioned this is not a website I am planning to update regularly. It is not a niche I am currently invested in personally and that’s a strong deciding factor if I am going to work on the website or not.

Nonetheless, I think it is a good experience. It helped me regain back my SEO and website skills after a 2+ years break. Let’s see how it goes.

Below will follow the updates I am doing along with the progression of SEO stats using various known tools.

Note: The last scheduled article was published way back on 15th December 2022. As I am writing this it’s 19th March of 2023. Ever since I have not written any new articles so I will not be surprised if this does not rank well.

It’s only a 21-blog posts website with low, and medium content based on AI tools and own research on other websites in the same niche. On top of that, I have not done any Off-Page SEO whatsoever.

Even so, I am curious about what happens.

As mentioned at point 3 on the keyword research step, my strategy is to not rank for specific keywords. I had written articles using overall low-competition keywords and I am waiting to see what more I can do if opportunities arise and the website starts to go up in SERPs.


Google Rankings periodic updates

From here on I will be planning to post updates on a weekly basis. Follow the journey and see what a decently On-Page SEO optimized SEO can do with just 21 low-medium quality blog articles.

I will be using semrush free account to pull out the stats as well as the Google Search Console stats to see judge the metrics of the website.

The main metrics will be:

  • total keywords ranking in Google top 100
  • total keywords ranking in top 10
  • average aggregate position from Google Search Console
  • umber of impressions and number of clicks from Google Search Console

Update 1 – 19th March 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Readyprepper.net Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats:

affiliate website case study 1 - 19 march 2023 semrush stats

Readyprepper.net Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Search Console Stats:

affiliate website case study 1 - 19 march 2023 search console stats

Update 2 – 26th March 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats:

affiliate website case study 1 - 26 march 2023 semrush stats
Semrush Stats 26 March 2023 – Affiliate Website 1

After 3+ months since the last of the 21st articles was posted, I have only 1 keyword in the top 11-20 positions based on Semrush.com

I have 17 keywords ranking in the top 21 to 50 position in google SERPs.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Search Console Stats:

affiliate website case study 1 - 26 march 2023 search console stats
Search Console Stats 26 March 2023 – Affiliate Website 1

In Google Search Console things don’t seem to be much different. The overall trend in terms of average position seems to be reaching a halt and it confirms that the website as it is now will most likely not go up in SERPs.

Update 2 Thoughts – 26 March 2023

Overall it seems like the website will not thrive by itself just with 21 low to medium quality articles.

As I am busy now with other projects such as the 2nd affiliate website I am building along with my own photography services website, I will not invest too much time in the Affiliate Website 1 project.

I am also building a Romanian SEO and Web Design website but that’s for a later case study. I will post it here on andreiturca.com when I will start to properly work on it.

I will still be updating this Affiliate Website 1 regularly to check the stats and other updates that I will undergo if any.


Update 3 – 2nd April 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats:

affiliate website seo case study - website 1 update in semrush from 02 april 2023

Compared to last week’s update I now have 3 more keywords in the 21-50 bracket and 2 fewer keywords in the 51-100 google position bracket.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Google Search Console Stats:

affiliate website seo case study - website 1 update in search console performance from 02 april 2023

There is some positive uptrend in terms of average keyword position here, but nothing drastically improved. The difference is slim compared to last week as it’s 51.5 vs 51.2 in terms of avg position of all keywords.

Update 3 Final Thoughts – 26 March 2023

The first out of the 21 posts on the website was posted in October 2022. The last post published is on 15th December 2022.

It’s been almost 4 months since the website has not been updated with new content. I think it’s safe to say that at the moment this site is not going anywhere.

Although I picked low-competition keywords, I don’t think this is going to help it too much. The website is dead in Google’s eyes s it has not been updated for over 3 months.

I’m still curious to see if it goes up by any bit from here. But I have a feeling that will not be going anywhere except I will be writing more blog posts or doing some SEO or social media posts.

As it is now without any kind of work to get some eyes on the website it’s just not going to do it. We’ll see soon as I will be updating this nonetheless.


Update 4 – 16th April 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Current website articles: 21 posted with a mix of low, and medium-quality articles.

Site updates since last week: no changes made to the website.

  • changed hosting from Bluehost to SiteGround and installed the Siteground WordPress optimizer plugin to improve site speed
  • no updates or changes done to the site since December 2022.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats:

affiliate website 1 seo case study update 15th april 2023

The number of keywords ranking in the top 100 has doubled since the last update two weeks ago. That’s interesting as I did not expect much of this website. I’m curious to see where it goes.

Who knows, maybe it will be worthwhile posting some updates after all, even though I wasn’t planning to do so.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Google Search Console Stats:

affiliate website 1 seo case study update 16th april 2023 search console stats

Not a big improvement but I also have an increase in Impressions and Clicks in Google search pages which is also nice to see. The trend in ranking keyword position also looks nice as it is becoming more steady rather than dancing up and down as before.

Here is a table comparing the stats over time of all updates:

Affiliate Marketing Website 1 SEO Case Study Over time Stats Table

Weekly UpdatesKeywords in top 100 google resultsKeywords in top 10 google resultsGoogle Search Console Avg. KW’s PositionGSC (3 month) Impress./Clicks
19 March 202358050.75,41k / 32 clicks
26 March 202351051.55,14k / 32 clicks
2nd April 202349051.25,23k / 35 clicks
16th April
2023
101048.76,02k / 45 clicks

Update 4 Final Thoughts

It is clear Google has taken note of the website after almost 6 months since the last post was published on the website. That’s a lot of time for a website to start seeing some upward movement.

But that’s how Google works today. I remember building tens of thousands of new links using link-building tools 6 years ago. People are still doing that today creating millions of links per day to feed Google with.

No wonder Google has become so slow and selective in indexing, crawling, and ranking websites. There’s just too much supply of new links and new websites, most of which are probably spam.


Update 5 – 23rd April 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Current website articles: 21 blog posts with a mix of low, and medium-quality articles ai generated and human-modified.

Current website backlinks: no backlinks created for this website so far.

Site updates since last week:

  • no big updates or changes done to the site since December 2022.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats 23rd April 2023:

affiliate website seo case study 23 april 2023 update semrush

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Google Search Console Stats 23rd April 2023:

affiliate website seo case study 23 april 2023 update google search console

Based on semrush the website has now 20 more keywords ranking in Google top 100, and for the first time, I have 3 keywords ranking in top 10 between the fourth and tenth position in Google. Nothing on the first 3 positions yet.

And based on Google Search Console I have 400 more impressions and 5 more clicks, as well as 1 point up in the Average Position.

So far so good, but will this website still go up? Even though there are no backlinks and only 21 articles posted that are AI-generated and modified manually?

Time will tell. A big part of SEO is time will tell.

Here is a table comparing the stats over time of all updates:

Affiliate Marketing Website 1 SEO Case Study Over time Stats Table

Weekly UpdatesKeywords in top 100 google resultsKeywords in top 10 google resultsGoogle Search Console Avg. KW’s PositionGSC (3 month) Impress./Clicks
19 March 202358050.75,41k / 32 clicks
26 March 202351051.55,14k / 32 clicks
2nd April 202349051.25,23k / 35 clicks
16th April
2023
101048.76,02k / 45 clicks
23rd April121347.26,4k / 50 clicks

Update 5 Final Thoughts

Overall this website has a strong upward trend thus far. Of course, I will have to post more SEO articles and improve upon the ones posted if I want to see this site in the first positions consistently.

But for now, I will just keep it like this and see what happens with just 21 low to medium articles.

I have done some decent On-Page SEO for every blog post with good keyword usage in meta tags, titles, image alt tags, internal linking, etc. And that’s pretty much all about it as it sits now.

I am curious about the next week’s update.


Update 6 – 30th April 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Current website articles: 21 blog posts with a mix of low, and medium-quality articles ai generated and human-modified.

Current website backlinks: no backlinks created for this website so far.

Site updates since last week:

  • no big updates or changes done to the site since December 2022.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study SemRush Stats 30th April 2023:

seo case study affiliate blog SEMrush SEO Stats 30th april

Based on semrush the website has now 17 more keywords ranking in the top 100 and 2 more keywords ranking in top 20, out of which one is ranking in the position between 4 and 10.

It is not an impactful growth but it is still a growth and that’s fine for me.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Google Search Console Stats 30th April 2023:

seo case study affiliate blog search console stats 30th april

And based on search console stats, I have only two more clicks and around 250 more impressions on a 3-month basis. That’s really not much and I already mentioned this is a website with only 21 articles and low to medium quality content. I would not be surprised at all if this affiliate website simply goes all the way down

As for the average position, I don’t think it’s important as the average will always be a high one considering that a lot more keywords in the low position compared to higher ones. Anyway, compared to last week (47.2) I have an Average keywords position of 46.2.

So far it seems is still going up very slowly, but again I expect nothing impactful to happen.

That being said here is a table comparing the stats over time of all updates:

Affiliate Marketing Website 1 SEO Case Study Over time Stats Table

Weekly UpdatesKeywords in top 100 google resultsKeywords in top 10 google resultsGoogle Search Console Avg. KW’s PositionGSC (3 month) Impress./Clicks
19 March 202358050.75,41k / 32 clicks
26 March 202351051.55,14k / 32 clicks
2nd April 202349051.25,23k / 35 clicks
16th April
2023
101048.76,02k / 45 clicks
23rd April121347.26,4k / 50 clicks
30th April138446.26.7k / 52 clicks

Update 6 Final Thoughts

Overall I think the website is somehow growing. But without any more work being done will simply not be in a position to earn affiliate commissions or any money at all for that matter.

But it is nice to check how Google behaves with this kind of website that has low-quality content but has proper on-page SEO such as internal and external linking, heading structure, title, image, and keyword optimization.

Until next time, see you on the first page of Google!


Update 7 – 8th May 2023 – Affiliate Website 1 Stats Update

Current website articles: 21 blog posts with a mix of low, and medium-quality articles ai generated and human-modified.

Current website backlinks: no backlinks created for this website so far.

Site updates since last week:

  • no big updates or changes done to the site since December 2022.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Search Console Stats 8th May 2023:

Based on SEMRUsh, I now have 18 more keywords ranking overall in the top 100 positions with 2 more keywords ranking inside the 4-10 positions. Also 7 more keywords inside the 11-20 positions bracket.

Affiliate Website 1 Case Study Search Console Stats 8th May 2023:

seo case study affiliate website readyprepper.net - search console stats

And based on Google Search Console, I have around 400 more impressions and 6 more clicks since the last update.

Affiliate Marketing Website 1 SEO Case Study Over time Stats Table

Weekly UpdatesKeywords in top 100 google results (SEMRush)Keywords in top 10 google results (SEMRush)GSC (3 month) Impress./Clicks
19 March 20235805,41k / 32 clicks
26 March 20235105,14k / 32 clicks
2nd April 20234905,23k / 35 clicks
16th April
2023
10106,02k / 45 clicks
23rd April12136,4k / 50 clicks
30th April13846.7k / 52 clicks
8th May 202315667,11k / 58 clicks

Update 7 Final Thoughts

It’s nice to see some steady growth. Considering it’s a website with only 21 articles on it, it’s pretty strange in my opinion.

Compared to my other website where I have done at least twice the amount of work, this little website surpasses it in many ways.

In fact, on this update, the other website has proven to be on a final downtrend. I had to take some actions and try to recover.

Overall I’m still curious about where will this affiliate website go. This case study seems interesting so far. I will definitely have to post more articles if I want to see some more clicks and increase the chances to get some affiliate commission sales.

That is all for now. See you in the next update.


Posted in SEO Case StudiesTags:
Write a comment