{"id":2207,"date":"2021-05-31T04:52:19","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T04:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seobuddy.com\/blog\/?p=2207"},"modified":"2021-10-08T08:14:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T08:14:47","slug":"my-seo-journey-r-j-weiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seobuddy.com\/blog\/my-seo-journey-r-j-weiss\/","title":{"rendered":"My SEO Journey: R.J. Weiss from thewaystowealth.com – On growing authority (DR55) in the YMYL space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My SEO Journey is a new series where entrepreneurs and Indie makers will share their honest SEO Journey filled with failure and success, and most importantly proven results. Episode #16 features R.J. Weiss from The Ways to Wealth<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is YMYL?<\/strong>

Some types of pages or topics could potentially impact a person\u2019s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. We call such pages \u201cYour Money or Your Life\u201d pages, or YMYL.<\/p> <\/div> <\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"R.J.<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My name is R.J. Weiss. I\u2019m the founder of the personal finance blog The Ways To Wealth<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before running the blog full-time, I worked in financial services. I worked for a small firm, so there was no marketing department. That was back in 2009 and blogging, social media and local search were becoming more and more important by the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was no longer viable for a small business to settle for a brochure website with a handful of pages, so I volunteered to take on the responsibility of expanding our digital presence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where I started to learn about SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 2016: with some experience in SEO under my belt, I launched The Ways To Wealth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t have grand plans for the site. In fact, my original idea was to make it a small niche site consisting mostly of reading lists from famous investors. But the site did well early and I decided to double down, expanding beyond just reading lists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, search is the site\u2019s second-biggest marketing channel, behind paid social. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our search history has been a wild ride for sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At our peak, we brought in over 210,000 organic visitors per month.
Currently, we\u2019re bringing in about 70,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Domain<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Your content strategy, best tips, or failure?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d summarize my content strategy as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Test out different content verticals, looking to see what sticks
    i.e., what Google actually ranks your site for. <\/li>
  2. When something does stick, go deep into that vertical. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    For example, one of our pillar pages is an article on legit online jobs<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"URL<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Once I saw Google ranking this article well, my aim was to create a lot of related content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    My approach is to think of the main problem someone is trying to solve when they search for a term, and then create content from every possible angle to help people solve that problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I like to think of it as, \u201cIf I were writing a book to help someone solve this problem, what information would I include?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So while my process begins with keyword research, that becomes less important once I find a vertical that\u2019s ranking well. At that point, it\u2019s more about creating great content that helps people solve problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How you tackle long tail keywords before aiming for the kingmaker keyword?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I look for sub-intents within large seed keywords, which I feel I could get long-tail traffic from and possibly sneak onto Page 1 for the seed keyword. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No tool. It’s examining the SERPS very closely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I like to look for outliers, specifically low DA sites getting on page # 1 or lower DA sites or even low DA sites on page # 2, that get a lot of traffic (according to AHREFs) for a lot of long-tail keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For example, I have a post on side income ideas<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There\u2019s some heavy competition from big-name sites for that seed keyword. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So, it\u2019s my goal to look at the sub-intents of that keyword and create a piece of content that can solve a different sub-intent than the top-ranking pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you look at the SERPs for the keyword, a lot of the content is fairly similar:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"SERP<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    In this particular case, I took a different approach than the rest of the sites, writing about ideas that can make you more than $10K a month rather than covering the topic through a more general lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n