A couple of years ago I create a website to try and attract people who are looking up probate related topics in New Jersey. The thinking was that people searching for New Jersey Probate on Google where people going through the probate process and could possibly have a property that they need to sell. I basically wrote about 20 articles related to probate, setup an opt-in box for a probate guide and left it as is.
I never checked the site since I set it up 4 years ago. I would get a couple emails a month saying someone filled in the form to get the probate guide, of which I never created so they got nothing. I’d also get a few clicks on the ad-sense banners and made a few cents here and there.
I’m telling you all this because today, something caught my eye when I was checking my blog’s (StrugglingInvestor) stats on Google Analytics…
…NewJerseyProbate.org had almost as many unique visits as my StrugglingInvestor blog for the past 30 days. Holy Crap Batman! What the heck is happening?
Apparently, the site’s unique hits have been steadily rising over the years and have more then tripled in the past 360 days.
I took a look a bit further at which keywords where bringing in the most traffic and saw “New Jersey Probate” was the top one. A quick Google search for that term and found that my site came up in the top spot! Fan ‘Dam ‘Tastic is what I have to say about that!!
Ask me how all this happened…I don’t know. Like I said I pretty much ignored this site for the better part of 4 years. Google does take into account the age of the site to go along with the content when ranking it, so I’m sure the growing years the site has been around has made a difference.
You can be sure I’m now going to try and add a better opt-in form and try and better capture leads through this page from now on.
Could someone do a search for New Jersey Probate and leave a comment to let me know where my site comes up for you? I’m still not convinced it’s for real.
Thanks
- Suspended From YouTube – for no reason - April 11, 2022
- Make Calls and Send Texts in Podio using smrtPhone - April 26, 2019
- Email Marketing with Podio and ConvertKit: Dealing with Unsubscribes - February 27, 2019
Comments 12
It came up number one for me Scott!
Author
Thanks Carl
Nope! You are right 🙂 Congrats!! You are first 🙂
Author
Thanks Jessica
Hey there Scott. How goes it? I’ve had one of my sites spike in traffic at around the same time and I’ve read of others who’ve had the same happen with them. What I believe to be the culprit was the latest change in the Google algorithm. The name of the animal slips my mind. But, it seems that many of the sites that used to outrank the more legitimate sites that don’t employ the black and grey hat SEO were getting dropped. So by default, the legit sites increased in rank. At least, that’s my best explanation.
Author
Hey Justin! Long time no talk, hope you and all your endeavors are going well.
If that is that case, then it’s a good thing because it is rewarding people who have done SEO the right way with good content and legit backlinking.
Thanks for chiming in buddy
I see you haven’t updated the site in yrs. Are you still getting leads?
Author
I always had a 1 or 2 trickle in each month. Since I’ve updated the site about a month ago with links to my new squeeze page I’ve gotten about 5 to 10 a month now.
It came second after nj.gov.
Author
Yup, I had just checked it out again a few days ago and it moved down to 2nd now. Not as good as first, but I’ll take it! Thanks for posting and letting me me know Tod, I appreciate it.
One reason is the key word is your domain name. Google prefers .com, .net and .org all the rest are a waste of money for SEO. Second reason is you have real articles and the website is aging. Add an article every month and your numbers should go up. Well it might I am not sure how popular of a keyword “new Jersey probate” is but you are on to something. Also, you should rework some of your articles and post them on Article sites like Ezinarticles.com with links back to your website this will help too!
Author
Very good information Paul, thanks for chiming in. It’s definitely worthwhile to add additional content to the site as well, because google is rewarding more for active websites.