Experimenting with SEO and ChatGPT

Hi, hope you're doing well. Today I'm going to talk about an experiment I'm doing with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

A family member of mine recently asked for help on what they can do to improve there website : thejunkboys.com

They said they've been losing traffic and less people have been calling. They have a monthly bill for SEO services which cost over $100.

So I went and looked into the Google Search Console to see what was going on.

As you can see from the chart they've been consistently ranking the same on average for the last 2 x years. This is an average position ranking for all keywords. If you are paying a decent amount of money you should expect some results.

For 2 years of service they paid $2400.

This is the typical case for SMB's(small medium sized businesses). Something needed to be done, no progress has been made. I went to get some more information on their domain. A good resource is ahrefs.com/backlink-checker, it tells you your sites domain authority, and number of links on the web that link to your site. Domain authority is a rough estimate from 0 to 100 on how much the web trusts your site.

After looking at the lists, I see comments on random blogs linking back to the site, and a very low domain authority of 4. So great news, there is a lot of room for improvement.

My role typically is a backend developer, I am not an expert on SEO by any means. But to be fair it isn't that complicated a topic.

I did some research, and had some discussions with experts and I'll condense what I currently know.

You must start from the user, think of how you can genuinely help them, create content for them, and solve what they are looking for.

At every step of their journey through the web you should be there, providing helpful articles and resources.

SEO is a long term game and it takes time for Google to index your site properly so you need to focus on specific key words.

I checked out the keywords for thejunkboys.com from the ones they are trying to rank for in the google search console.

They ranged from rubbish removal, trash removal, junk removal, all around the GTA, and many more.

I used another tool to help me isolate which keywords I should focus on: https://ahrefs.com/keyword-generator

The key here is to find a key word with a large amount of monthly traffic and a low KD, typically under 10/15.

This means its quite easy to rank on the top listings for it.

From the list I found Junk Removal for thejunkboys.com to be the best pursuit and effort.

So I've been creating content to target these keywords. Only 10 articles a week to ensure a gradual ramp up of traffic and indexing.

I've also been focusing on creating quality backlinks to increase the domain authority.

Its still early stages but week after week it is steadily growing.

With SEO, it is a long term game, and the more people talk about the more trust search engines will have for your site.

Hopefully with the tools listed in this post you can have more visibility on your website, and create an SEO content strategy.

This has been a letter from a coder.

Best Regards,

Tyler Farkas