Healthy Living Guide Case Study

In today’s case study, I decided to explain the whole nine yards of what goes into Healthy Living Guide — one of my starter niche sites about health and wellness.

This will be a one-of-a-kind case study where I’ll be sharing every detail from day one until now when the site is being listed for sale. If you would like to have a look, check it out on my Active Listing page or jump to Flippa to give a bid!

General Information

• Domain: HealthyLivingGuide.co. I bought this domain in March 2021, so it’s almost two years now. The downside of a .co domain is that while the registration fee for a brand new domain is quite cheap, the renewal fee is higher than the one for a .com or .net one.
• Niche: General healthy & wellness.
• No. of articles: 145+. The site has 97 published long-form articles and almost all of which are on-site SEO optimized. More articles will be added along the way.

How It Started

In the beginning, I used PLR articles for the site without any further optimization. The site had a lot of articles, but none of which were ranking in Google. I tried to list it two times, but they all failed.

Funny enough, the reason was not because of how low the quality of the articles was. It was because of the domain name itself — a .co instead of a .com. People have the tendency to hesitate when it comes to buying a .co domain—or anything not .com in general—so I had no luck.

That’s when I decided to go back to the basics and start optimizing the articles one by one. Eventually, I figured out how to use PLR articles to ramp up the content for my sites. In the beginning, it was great—instead of writing everything from scratch, I now have a good foundation to start from.

However, as you can guess, health & wellness is a very competitive niche, and with Google’s E-A-T guidelines, it’s almost impossible for non-authoritative sites to rank high in the SERPs. That’s why I decided to find an alternative way to develop the site without sacrificing the domain as well as my hard work.

A little bit of a listing background here: After the first time listed on Flippa, the second, I opted for a well-known boutique brokerage firm that I won’t reveal the name of here. With their help, I was able to get the ball rolling.

They found potential buyers who were interested in my site and offered good money for it. However, the buyer just dropped out before the negotiation was almost finished. The listing was taken down but then never put back again.

After a lot of dead-end back-and-forth communication between the listing coordinator and me, I decided to do it the hard way: I’ll list the site again on Flippa and promote it here on this site. I’m sick and tired of being ignored by the brokerage, even though I’m paying them a considerable amount of money to manage my listing.

Enough was enough! This time, I’ve put more effort into optimizing the content and promoting it on Pinterest. The goal was to increase organic traffic and attract buyers who are looking for a good deal in this niche.

Content & SEO Strategies

To start the whole face-lift of Healthy Living Guide, I had my VA learn Stupid Simple SEO—an SEO course by Mike Pearson. Obviously, this man knows a thing or two about SEO, so I figured it would be the best way to start for my VA. Once she finished the course, we started optimizing all of the articles on our blog—one by one.

The main focus was on keyword research and content optimization. We used Ubersuggest and RankIQ to get the best keywords for our niche and determine the ones with the highest search volumes yet the lowest difficulty. Then, we optimized the content to target those keywords in the best possible way.

The process, to put it shortly, will be something like this: My VA will find all keywords from other competitors within the niche, then I will write articles that target those keywords, and finally, optimize the content to make it as SEO friendly as possible. All of the SEO practice is on-site SEO, with the help of Link Whisper to help with internal linking.

Apart from keyword optimization, I wanted the site to look professional, so I spent a small chunk of money on upgrading the theme and the design. It was worth it—the site now looks much better, and I’m sure that any potential buyer would be more inclined to buy it if they see a site with a good layout and design.

So, as you can see, my SEO and content strategies are simple. I want to build something that is easy for the vast majority of SEO beginners to understand, yet powerful enough to bring in organic results. I’m not an SEO expert, and the new owner doesn’t have to be either.

All they need to do is follow the simple steps that I’m doing and focus on promoting the site in the right way, and everything else will take care of itself. Of course, it’d be really nice if they have extensive SEO knowledge under their belt; however, what I really want to create is a site & a strategy that anyone can follow and perform successfully.

What Are the Results

One of the articles, focusing on a low competition keyword, has started to rank on Google SERPs. In Google Search Console, three keywords from that post also show up in the search queries, but still without any clicks. It’s not much, but it’s something—a start.

From Pinterest, consistency is key. Also, the quality of pins and the content that you post matter a lot. We’ve been sticking to our schedule, so now we have a nice percentage of traffic that comes from Pinterest. I’m sure if we keep going at a steady pace, then the numbers will eventually increase.

As for organic traffic, there are slight improvements when compared to previous months, especially after I implemented Link Whisper and started internal linking strategically and correctly.

The site used to have a lot of orphaned posts, meaning posts that had no links leading to them. This will hurt the overall SEO score of the website, as well as its ability to bring organic traffic.

Now that I have Link Whisper up and running, this problem has been resolved. I still have five orphaned posts, though, but within 48 hours of the implementation of the plugin, I stabled the organic traffic and started to see small improvements across the board.

Despite having a few hiccups here and there, our SEO & content strategy is slowly paying off. According to MOZ, the site now has a DA of 13—not anything fancy, but not too bad, either. It was approved by Ezoic long ago, so once the traffic increases and the ranking goes up, I can start seeing some passive income from the site. And so will the new owner!

What’s Next with Healthy Living Guide?

As mentioned, the site is ready for sale, and I’m sure that with a bit of effort and dedication, any new owner can make money off it.

The next step would be to find potential buyers—people who are genuinely interested in buying an established website with over 100 good-quality posts and a lot of room and potential for growth. I’m sure that any potential buyer will be thrilled to know that all of the SEO & content optimization has been done, and they can start monetizing the site right away.

If you’re interested in buying Healthy Living Guide, I’m sure we can negotiate a price. Just send me an email, leave a bid on Flippa, or leave a comment here and let’s talk! In the meantime, I’ll keep working on optimizing the site & see if I can get some more organic results.

With that said, thank you for reading, and I hope this post has been helpful to you. If you have any questions or need help with Healthy Living Guide, don’t hesitate to reach out—I’m always happy to help! Until next time!