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How to bring a site to the west in TOP10 without knowing anything about SEO

This article describes the personal experiences of two people: me and my colleague Maria. The experience of people who had absolutely no knowledge of SEO. In the second half of 2019, a burden fell on us in the form of promoting 2 Ratatype sites . Sites are young (born in 2019) and to the foreign market, whose languages ​​we do not know (France and Spain), and even with a very limited budget.

What you will find in this article:

  1. The real case that worked, works and will work.
  2. Step-by-step instruction “What? What for? How?" in plain language.
  3. Description of failures, where without them.
  4. Something interesting on the SEO market, but it’s not accurate.

What you will not find here:

  1. Trends 2020, 2021 or any other year.
  2. Opinions of experts.
  3. Offers promotion services.

If everything suits you, please follow below.

1. We set a goal


First of all, you need to determine the goal, it is KPI, always with a number. This is what we did. Without measuring the result, there will be no result.

It is important to study the niche and the region in which you plan to move forward. For example, you make bags for bikers:

  • Decide on the region (you will sell on the market only your country or still somewhere else).
  • Estimate how many bikers there can be in this region (look for communities, bike sales history, etc.).
  • Take a closer look at competitors: how many users go to them?
  • Set a goal.

2. Writing a plan


When there is a goal, the question arises of controlling many issues: the expenditure of time, money and other resources. Planning comes to the rescue here.

  • Specific tasks - what needs to be done;
  • Dates - when to do;
  • Budgets - how much money is needed for this;
  • Additional resources - will anyone need help;
  • Preliminary goals - how many links you need to get at a particular stage.

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3. We are looking for competitors


As soon as you find competitors, you will definitely become more aware of the market.
How are we looking?

We drive in Google the words that relate to your product, see who is in the search results. But this is a forehead. You can use automated tools. For example, Similarweb or Serpstat .

  • Serpstat will give you a cloud of your competitors. And even in the free version.
  • At Similarweb, you can evaluate whether they are competitors to you. See traffic, traffic distribution and geography.

Then drive them into a table with the necessary parameters.

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4. We analyze competitors


We take each competitor and watch it in Ahrefs (a 1-week trial version is enough for analysis) or Serpstat.

  • ? — ( , ).
  • ? — . , , , — - ( ). blogpost (site.google) — web 2.0 PBN (Private Blog Network — -/). — , ).

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5. Set up the site from the inside


Basically, we are talking about keywords, that is, the words by which you want your site to be found by users.

  • We turn to the list of competitors.
  • We analyze the most top and frequency queries.
  • Make a list and compare with your keywords.
  • Add the missing keywords to the texts of your site.

Done, now the texts are more in line with the search interests of users.

Multilingualism setting


If you have a site with different language versions, or maybe even with several domains (like ours), then you definitely need to configure this is the word from the header. If you do everything as Google tells you , then you can only earn money for yourself and a little trust from Google.

6. We are looking for people from your or related industry


For us, these people are teachers. A lot of them are on Linkedin. This is a good channel where you can find potential users of your product or those who will promote it. Then I will throw you a tool that helped us a lot - recruitin.net . There you can specify:

  • position,
  • region,
  • keywords to be excluded or, conversely, included in the search,
  • current place of work.

No paid packages on LinkedIn. Enter the data and get a link to the issuance of Google. And this is fantastic! Click on the link in Google, and all - you're on the page of the right person. Next, click “Set Contact” and “Personalize”. This makes it possible to write a short message why you ask to be friends. Empirically, we were convinced that in this way you can get a greater response.

7. Put easy links


They are submits. This is something that does not require money from you, only time. For beginner sites, it works! Go.

  1. Directories are sites with a list of sites, in short. There are thematic ones.
    • Search Google for directories: directory submission, directory, directory List. (We found over 100).
    • You remove directories with a low rating (you can think of a threshold yourself, for us it was not less than 10 by checktrust ). Remark: if the link to the site is on a resource with a bad reputation, it can work in a minus.
    • We went through the list and refused paid placement.
  2. Job sites - such as Work.ua . You can create a profile and specify a link to your project there.

    • Google sites for queries: List of job site, job site, work site. (We got about 50).
  3. — , , , , , - . . , .

    • analyze site. ( 60).
    • .
  4. — , .

    • : slideshare, pdf share. ( 10).
    • , .
    • .
  5. — , . , Facebook Linkedin :)

    • social network. ( 30).
    • (, ).
    • - .
      : , , . , - . 3 , 2 (, producthunt) . 3-4 .
  6. — , .

    • : video hosting, video sharing. ( 20+).
    • .

8. -


So we form public opinion about the product and massively popularize it. And also we dilute the link profile of the site. A chicken by the grain, and your brand is invested in the minds of people. We do this not ourselves, but with the help of Referr.ru - good guys, average price on the market, approach to customers is very loyal.

We can do it ourselves, but we decided to delegate this part of the work.

9. Outreach


It's simple: if you want the Internet to know about you, then you need to be everywhere. Your brand and links need to appear on other sites. Therefore, sites need to be asked about this.

  • You select various interesting queries for you, about 10 pieces for each language.
  • Gather the top 100 from Google for each of them and upload these sites to Checktrust.
  • Delete duplicates and sites with a low rating.
  • Sort all sites by traffic and start contacting the most visited sites first.
  • I almost forgot! Write articles or offer existing ones.

10. We write letter templates


Highlight what types of requests to sites you may have, and write letter templates for these requests. For example, a request to add a link to you in an existing article, a request to write about you on a resource, a request to post some of your material (article, picture, infographic).

Translate all this into the desired language. It is important here! Write in the native language of the site (do not make our mistakes when we wrote to the Spaniards in English), then the response will be higher.

What should be the letter.

  1. A catchy, clear theme.
  2. Small volume.
  3. Consists of items:
    • greeting;
    • praise of a resource, article, product;
    • the main request - explain what you want;
    • a question that will prompt to answer.

11. Bonus

  • We write technical articles or articles about your work on the project. We create our own heading in the FB, blogger, medium or everywhere. We write in our native language and translate it into English, and preferably in the language of the country in which you are promoting.
  • Outreach surges. It is important to understand that outreach works not only as an opportunity to get a link. You can place a link on a resource that will attract traffic to your site, with good traffic. Users will be interested in your resource, spend enough time there and do some targeted actions.

    In France and Spain, article 2 was written about us with attendance of about 1 million / month each. After that there was an explosion on the sites, which entailed a lot of good.

    1. We got additional free traffic to the site (yes, cap).
    2. .
    3. — . .
  • :) . ! : - . , . , (test de mecanografía). 3- , 2 , , .

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,


  1. . . , , . - , . 10 000 . Ratatype 6 . . , 4 +.
  2. . . . , . 4 - . , , — . :

    • .
    • .
    • Price.

    We chose 2 sites with traffic of 9 million and 400 thousand users per month. With a price of $ 100 and $ 30 respectively. In the end, nothing. Why did it happen:

    • We did not pay attention to the distribution of desktop and mobile traffic (and this is important for us, since our main traffic is desktop).
    • We didn’t see where the users were coming from. For example, to the one that is 9 million, they come from Google for some specific requests and not to the main one.

    Therefore, my advice is this: you can use exchanges, but you need to approach the choice of sites very carefully. Well, you should not use them at the start. Especially if there is no finance for this.

Instead of conclusions


When we started to advance, we did not believe in success, since there was no knowledge and resources. But we were not afraid to try, read a lot, studied. We liked the result:

  • Ratatype.fr - average position is 7.4.
  • Ratatype.es - 10.2 (already almost the top 10).

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Ratatype.fr

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Ratatype.es

We are actively continuing. And we decided to share our experience, so that everyone who has a website will use this instruction and break into the top 10.

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