Month 2 to Month 6 after purchasing a website is part of the growth phase within the website flipping lifecycle. During this phase, you are sprinting to perform easy wins, add content, and much more.
This phase is built off the stabilization phase (Month 1).
What tasks should you perform during this Growth phase? That’s what I answer in this detailed blueprint. Topics include:
- Month 2 to Month 6 in the overall lifecycle
- 4 SEO tasks you need to perform
- 2 revenue tasks
- Tasks that I DO NOT do in this phase
- Actionable next steps
Implementing this blueprint will enable you to grow your site in the fastest way possible after buying a website.
Make sure to read up on the other phases:
- Month 1 (stabilization)
- Month 7 to 12 (exit)
Let’s get into it.
Month 2 to Month 6 within the Website Flipping Lifecycle
When the proper month one foundation has been set, then I’m ready to move onto the next steps of the website flipping lifecycle.
After the first month, these steps should already be finished:
- Monetization is switched over from the old owner’s accounts to my accounts
- Quality web hosting is in place
- The site has a great theme, plug-ins, and other design elements are finished
- Proper analytics is up and running
- Content site audit was run on the site to give me in-depth information on the content already there and where more potential wins are in existing content
- The writing team is in place
- Easy low effort revenue wins are in place
If any of these steps are unfinished for any reason, the first step is to finish those off to get the foundation fully in place.
Once those are covered, it’s time to move into the growth phase in months two through six. This is the step-by-step process of what I do next.
4 SEO Tasks To Perform Months 2-6 After Buying a Website
Don’t get bogged down in dozens of SEO tasks that come up with websites. This is the time to focus on four major tasks that are:
- Completely under my control
- Can move the needle strongly
Anyone scaling up a website for a future flip should start with these same steps starting in month two.
Task 1: Optimizing Existing Content for Better On-Page SEO
Content that is already ranking at the bottom of page 1 of Google’s search results, or even page 2 or page 3 in some cases, is content that is doing enough right that Google likes it at least a little bit.
Since the sites I buy tend to be from hobbyists or website owners who don’t optimize well for SEO, there’s a lot of room to move here. This is where some information from the site audit in month one comes into play.
I analyze all the results that are located on the bottom of page one and beyond. Why are they ranked where they’re at? What can be done to improve them?
Specific things I look for:
- Adding missing keywords to headings and subheadings
- Improve the quality of poor or mediocre content
- Add images, videos, tables, and improve paragraph spacing – correcting formatting and adding easy beneficial resources that increase time on page
These are easy SEO wins on-page that can have a major effect boosting rankings in Google once the article is updated.
Task 2: Adding New Content Targeting Low-Competition Keywords
During the due diligence, at least some basic preliminary research on keywords should have been part of the process. This is the time to take that information and use that to start researching more in-depth for a slew of new content.
I like to use a couple of tools to find low-competition keywords. AHREFs and Keyword Chef are an amazing pair of tools that give you plenty of great low comp keywords to target that should be easy to rank for.
The goal of this step is to publish as much quality content as possible, as quickly as possible. This builds authority, gets Google’s attention, and provides many more articles that can provide internal linking.
Since the articles are targeting low competition keywords, a lot of content will lead to a lot of traffic. Longtail traffic adds up, especially when a mass of new content is made just to target those low competition keyword phrases.
Task 3: Link Internally Between New and Old Content
Internal linking is one of the strongest on-site SEO practices available. Getting the most out of it means smart linking between both new and old content, and those links should go both ways.
New content should have internal links both to relatively new content as well as to older content. Older content should link to other older content, and new content.
Connecting content with internal linking this way gives a stronger boost to both older content you’re looking to rank higher in Google and has a stronger effect on newer content than if new content just links to other new content.
Old content is going to have a little more juice in the beginning, which acts as a bit of a jump start with internal linking. But long-term you want both the older and the newer content to rank which is why it’s so important for both types of content to interlink.
Task 4: Improving Overall Site On-Page SEO (Navigation, Categories, etc)
Most site owners don’t create sites with proper SEO in mind from the very beginning. This makes the task of improving the overall on-page SEO across the site very important.
Taking care of these few basic steps can make a major difference with SEO and makes it easier for Google to see which pages are important, crawl them, and rank them accordingly.
Clean Up Categories
The site needs to be well organized in a way that is easy to navigate. This means adding categories that are important to the site and which have multiple articles about that topic.
This also means removing excessively narrow or unnecessary categories. Not every category needs a number of extremely specific sub-categories.
Clean up the categories with navigation and organization in mind. This is good on-page SEO practice and improves user experience to boot.
Clean Up the Navigation Menu
The navigation menu should be clear and easy to follow. Privacy notices, legal disclaimers, and many pages that aren’t necessary to most visitors but need to be on the site belong in the footer.
In navigation, the categories should be easy to navigate. Anyone who comes to the site for the first time should be able to quickly see what the major topics are and jump from one to another easily.
A clean navigation menu is not only a good user experience but it’s good on-page SEO practice, too.
De-Index Unnecessary Pages
There are some pages that don’t need to be crawled, and these should be indexed. The Tags Page for a WordPress site or a Thank You Page for an email signup or purchase are both classic examples of pages that should be de-indexed.
2 Revenue Tasks To 10X Growth
Month 2-6 is when you can exponentially grow the revenue of the site by thinking outside-of-the-box for new streams of revenues, and also optimizing existing traffic to convert better.
Task 5: Adding New Revenue Sources
In month 1, you should have implemented any of the major easy wins in terms of revenues. Display ads should have been added if they didn’t exist, affiliate links should have been put in by reviewed products if they weren’t there before, etc.
With those in place, it’s now time to look for new revenue sources.
A. Look for Better Affiliate Deals
Considering how many products on Amazon only pay 1% or 2%, there is a good chance there are affiliate programs elsewhere that pay far more. 5% isn’t uncommon and some programs range from 7-10% on average depending on the niche.
Find these alternatives to low percentage Amazon products and add the links.
If you have enough traffic, you can even negotiate directly with companies to work out a deal where they pay you for every unit sold through Amazon, allowing you to earn more from what you’re already selling.
B. Add Video Ads
There are several decent providers of video ads out there, and these can be a great revenue source. Even if they play in the corner on mute, you still get paid.
Many display ad brokers work with video ad companies to allow both forms of monetization to work together.
C. Do Good Digital Products or Courses Already Exist?
Digital products tend to be very lucrative. This even goes for affiliates as digital products tend to pay affiliates a very high percentage compared to most affiliate deals.
Are there great courses on Skillshare or Udemy? Is there a high-selling product on Clickbank?
Adding a quality digital product to a relevant page receiving traffic could do huge things for the overall revenue numbers.
D. Think Creatively
Some niches have unique ways to monetize. Could lead generation be a moneymaker in the niche? Is there a drop-shipping option, or small businesses that would pay for phone calls?
Some niches have additional options and some might not, but taking a few hours to look at other potential options could lead to big deals.
Task 6: Optimizing for Conversion with CRO techniques
This is when conversion rates matter. There are many best practices that can make the monetization methods already on the site work even better.
That means existing traffic makes more revenue for me as the site owner. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) tactics are a powerful way to increase revenue using the resources already available.
Examples of this would include formatting posts with many short paragraphs and multiple pictures to encourage more ad placements for display ads or changing the color of callout boxes to bright garish colors that stick out instead of blend in.
Good CRO techniques help me guarantee that I’m getting the most out of the site’s display ads and the affiliate links. This also sets the stage for best CRO practices to be used with any new revenue streams that get added to the site in these months and beyond.
What Tasks I DO NOT do in Month 2 to 6
There are certain tasks that I do not like to focus on Month’s 2 to 6. With a caveat that, I may do them if the right opportunity arises, but it’s not the pure focus.
These never replace the mandatory month 2-6 tasks listed earlier in the article.
These tasks I’ll do if the opportunity arises include:
- Building new backlinks: during these months, my goal is to focus on extracting as much potential from the existing backlinks and increasing the revenues of the site as-is.
- New traffic sources: focusing on new traffic can derail you from optimizing for the traffic source that is already getting traction. Focus first.
Sometimes the right opportunity can arise for a high-quality backlink or finding new traffic, but it’s crucial to get the other steps outlined in this article done before moving on to these tasks.
Building backlinks and finding new traffic sources will be more effective after the other tasks are completed and in place.
Actionable Next Steps To Follow
Month 2 to 6 is about growth. The idea is to sprint during these months to maximize revenues.
If you only have time for a few tasks, I highly recommend these from the above list:
- Adding new revenue sources: find affiliate partners or digital products you can promote on specific pages of the site
- Improve on-page SEO: a critical task that needs to be done early (Month 2-3). This sets up the site for growth
- Internal linking: an underrated task that can lead to high-growth. Whenever you publish an article, take some time to link to and from other articles live on the site already
These three tasks will move the needle the fastest in the growth phase.
