A client reached out to me, unable to figure out what was wrong with his website. He bought an EMD (Exact Match Domain), but it wasn’t ranking at the top. Could it be a penalty?
I took a quick look at his site and noticed weak keyword optimization via NeuronWriter. After making even minor content adjustments as I suggested, impressions finally started showing up in Search Console a week and a half later!
Now, how to push it further?
Honestly, I facepalm at what people sometimes do—and truth be told, I’ve done my fair share of wild things too.
Buy an outreach link for $900? Why not. Better yet, buy 3 right away!
Run a direct exact-match anchor blast, not knowing if the site will get flagged as spam? Sure, let me try! Sounds fun!
Then comes the moment when the money is spent, but there are no top rankings.
I would love to explain and teach the person so they don’t waste $5k for nothing, and encourage them to assess the competition first—where giants are sitting that won’t be nudged by three outreach links—but unfortunately, the opportunity was lost.
And what have I realized is best to do?
- If someone is a beginner and doesn’t understand the basics—first, analyze the competition.
- Then evaluate the link-building budget.
- And only after that build the website.
Sure, you can build a site right away and blast links at it, but unfortunately, that doesn’t always work if the SERP top is already packed with authority sites.
Or target a specific low-volume search intent from the start.
Overall, I’m really shaking my head 🙂 and coaching someone isn’t a 15-minute consultation or even an hour. For a beginner, it takes months. And very often, the people reaching out to me are complete beginners who need everything shown and explained step-by-step, which takes time.
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If you are a beginner, I genuinely get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that needs to be explained. And for a beginner, that shouldn’t cost $100, $300, or maybe even $1,000. So I’m thinking about what to do.
What would you advise him?