Help With Affiliate Blog?

[bernieshawn]

So I'm trying to bring my affiliate blog back from the dead in order to bring in some income to support living expenses.

My blog used to get around 7,000 visitors a month and between $500 and $1000 a month in commissions. All traffic came from Google. A year ago it was penalized and traffic dropped to about 2,500 visitors a month. I submitted a reconsideration request a couple months ago and they decided to penalize it even further. Now, it only gets around 1,000 visitors a month.

I haven't put any content on it since the first penalty (a year ago) so the only thing I can think of is to start putting consistent content on it. I am really hesitant to do any link building since it has already been penalized.

Is there anything else I could do to help bring my traffic levels back to it's old levels? 7,000 visitors a month really isn't a lot, so it's not like I'm trying to get to 100k a month or anything like that. Just enough to generate around $500-1k a month so I can focus on bigger things without getting a job (already doing an unpaid internship).

The URL to my site is buydiamondrings.org if you want to see the site/niche/whatever.

Thanks a lot for any help!

 

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[kwerner]

From just a quick look at your backlink profile, it looks a little spammy IMO. Lot of blogroll links and forum profiles on unrelated sites. Probably overoptimized for your keywords too.

You might try building out 30 web2.0's with unique content, 2-3 pages each, with some pics / videos on the pages and have them point to your site without using your keywords. Instead use stuff like click here, website, diamondrings.org, etc. as the anchor text. Throw in some links from authority sites as well on some of the pages.

Basically try watering down your anchor text optimization to make it look more natural and build higher quality links. (I have to do this too on my authority site that got hit from the Penguin update.)

You mentioned that you're getting 1000 visitors a month, where's your traffic coming from just out of curiosity? From the tool I'm using (ahrefs), it doesn't show your site higher than page 4 for any of your keywords.

 

[bernieshawn]

From just a quick look at your backlink profile, it looks a little spammy IMO. Lot of blogroll links and forum profiles on unrelated sites. Probably overoptimized for your keywords too.

You might try building out 30 web2.0's with unique content, 2-3 pages each, with some pics / videos on the pages and have them point to your site without using your keywords. Instead use stuff like click here, website, diamondrings.org, etc. as the anchor text. Throw in some links from authority sites as well on some of the pages.

Basically try watering down your anchor text optimization to make it look more natural and build higher quality links. (I have to do this too on my authority site that got hit from the Penguin update.)

You mentioned that you're getting 1000 visitors a month, where's your traffic coming from just out of curiosity? From the tool I'm using (ahrefs), it doesn't show your site higher than page 4 for any of your keywords.

Google Analytics shows around 75%+ of my traffic still coming from Google. Not sure how it's actually getting there (SERP's suck, obviously).

Do you think just adding content will help bring in more traffic? My thinking is that Google will see new content being added consistently and start to "like" my site more.

Then again, I've already been penalized AND had my site reconsidered unsuccessfully. Maybe it's beyond repair?

Maybe it would just be better to start over on a new domain? My domain is still a PR3, though, so maybe it can be brought back?

I'm still scared to do any link-building though (haven't done any in a year). Is it safe to?

 

[joona]

I'm still scared to do any link-building though (haven't done any in a year). Is it safe to?

There is only one way to find out - try it. I don't think there is anything wrong with building some links in a way kwerner recommended. Just stay away of mass links.

 

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[kwerner]

Do you think just adding content will help bring in more traffic? My thinking is that Google will see new content being added consistently and start to "like" my site more.

Then again, I've already been penalized AND had my site reconsidered unsuccessfully. Maybe it's beyond repair?

Maybe it would just be better to start over on a new domain? My domain is still a PR3, though, so maybe it can be brought back?

I'm still scared to do any link-building though (haven't done any in a year). Is it safe to?

Those types of links should be totally safe as long as the content is unique. And like joona said, there's really only one way to find out.

On adding content, you could try but I wouldn't expect it to remove any penalty.

Google Analytics shows around 75%+ of my traffic still coming from Google. Not sure how it's actually getting there (SERP's suck, obviously).

This is what's truly remarkable to me. Even after doing a manual search for some of your keywords, I couldn't find where the traffic would be coming from Google. Cool though if it is.

Good luck man!