IMM1: Part 8 – Getting Those First Rankings

It's been almost two weeks since Genevieve's last post and the big reveal, which means her site has had a bit of time to “marinate” in the Google soup (I love that analogy). She's actually got a few rankings already, which I'll reveal later.

This just goes to show that what I've been talking about works. On Site SEO is massive. I've included a whole chapter on it in my new niche sites guide, so check it out.

For the next tasks, I had Genevieve do lots of fiddly work. She had to set up Google Authorship, submit her site to Google Webmaster Tools, and add Google Analytics to it. I really wanted to see how a newcomer would get on. I remember the first times I delved into the scary pits of Google's back-end services, but I don't think I'll ever remember exactly how confusing it all is.

Unfortunately, Genevieve helped me remember, as she didn't have a good time.

Still, she is very tenacious and in the end got it all done.

Joining The Community

I finally recommended to her this week that she join Wealthy Affiliate for training purposes. Yes, I'm walking her through everything and will get her successful, but she needs to view some tutorials and training on WordPress and Google things, so WA is where I sent her. Welshy has put together a great video here on the various things she needed to do.

It worked for the most part, but Google has changed its interfaces a bit since the video was made (and so has WordPress), so it did take longer than expected, and I had to step in a few times to clarify which buttons she needed to click. You'll see about her frustrations below.

The Reason For The Delay

This is exactly why I made Genevieve wait though. I see people get stuck and frustrated with their websites all the time, and after they've finally slogged through these confusing steps, they've got nothing to show for it. Genevieve won't have these feelings though.

For one, she was much more familiar with WordPress by the time I asked her to do these tasks, and for two, while she was doing it, her awesome content was already written and slowly getting crawled by Google. What does she have to show for it? Well, a whole lot!

Check out her rankings after just a couple of days of submitting her site to Webmaster Tools:

This is absolutely fantastic, especially as we've done zero promotion for the site at all. If Genevieve can add a few more pages of content and then do some basic promotion, she'll start making even more progress.

We'll obviously have more details of all of that in the coming weeks, but for now, it's over to her.

The following is written by Genevieve:

Weekly Tasks

For my next tasks – a bit of “admin” task.

I needed to add my site to Google Webmaster Tools  and Add Google Analytics  and Google Authorship to my site.

These will help me get my site indexed in Google, and help me track traffic to my site.

The Human Proof Designs team recommended that I sign up for a free account at Wealthy Affiliate (which I did) to follow training on how to do this.

The Human Proof Designs team said WA is a massive online marketing community where he learned how to do all this Internet Marketing stuff. It's got a free starter membership, and a paid premium membership. For the purposes of learning about WordPress and setting up WMT and GA, I can make do with the free membership, so he thinks that's where I should start.

He gave me the info on how to go to the video tutorial. He said it's great because if I get stuck or have any questions, I can comment on the training videos, etc.

My other task for the week was to just explore the WA community and see what other things I could find and learn. A good place to start (per The Human Proof Designs team) is here.

I watched the video tutorial on how to do my next tasks. It was a little bit overwhelming for me (at first), I needed to watch it again a few times and then try doing the tasks while watching the video tutorial.

Google Analytics Issues

I was able to set-up the Google Authorship and the Webmaster Tools. I was just having problems with setting-up Google Analytics. After I pasted the Tracking ID on my site and click Update Options, I refreshed Google Analytics but Status showed as “Tracking Not Installed.”

The video tutorial is very detailed and was presented well. For me, I just find that I have to watch, stop, restart the video (many times) so that I can follow and apply what's being presented. I was a little confused at times where he's at (at his site or his gmail/google+ account) or how did he get to where he was.

The other thing too is there are slight differences on what I see on the video screen and on mine. One specific example is when Craig pasted the Tracking ID from GA, the Tracking Domain field popped up right away. On my screen it didn't – I was wondering why it didn't appear. So I clicked Update Options, then the field appeared.

The Human Proof Designs team was very helpful. When I emailed about my issues, he responded quickly. He checked my site and he said I put it (Tracking ID) in correctly. He said after that I should click the blue “connect with Google analytics” button above it and that should do it.

So after I clicked the blue “connect with Google analytics” button, it took me to Google Analytics – for me to allow access. Well…duh, of course it won't work if I didn't do that! 🙂

I have watched the video another time Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. It's a little bit better, I was able to understand more and follow along.

There's also this Webmaster Tools data sharing within Google Analytics. I wasn't able to follow along at first because the layout (on my screen) is not the same as the one on the video. Then I scrolled down below the video, that's when I saw the screenshot that I can relate to. I followed the instructions and was able to do the task (I think).

I was also able explore the WA community a bit and see what other things I can find and learn. The site is really a very good resource for online business. I need to go back and spend more time exploring the site.

I feel so bad that I'm behind on my tasks. Sometimes things happened unexpectedly and beyond your control. It's been an eventful month (mostly on the beginning) for me. I'm just thankful that nothing very serious happened. I'm counting my blessings. I think that's about it. Thank you for your most valued support! Thank you to The Human Proof Designs team for their unwavering patience, encouragement and support!

Back to The Human Proof Designs team:

It's a pain that things are often changing online. Somebody makes a tutorial, then the whole interface is redone. A lot of namecheap tutorials are redundant now because they completely overhauled their site, but it was a necessity.

The good thing about joining WA is that if you DO run into an outdated tutorial, you can ask questions and someone from the community will chime in to help you, or will even make a new tutorial.

Moving Forward

So Genevieve has already got her content indexed and a few decent rankings. Now she just needs to get MORE content indexed (write more) and improve on those rankings. This is probably the part most newcomers struggle with the most, which means you're going to love it!