We took a new domain and turned it into an online course and freelance guide platform. 

At peak, we pulled over 13K monthly visits and 650+ newsletter sign-ups—with zero link building.

What’s even more remarkable is how we pulled off a website migration midway into the project without breaking our SEO or losing traffic.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• How long it took us to rank without link building
• How we did keyword research and knew competitors were easy to crush
• The content planning process that helped us rank number 1 for tough keywords
• How we pulled off a full website migration without killing our traffic
• Actionable tips you can steal for your own projects (I won’t tell anyone)

Summary:

We built an online business and freelancing resource platform to provide the most practical information for Nigerians based on personal experiences and research.

I got some pretty good writers on board, thanks to the team at GorillaZap. 

They’ve all tried different online business and freelancing jobs before so it was easy for them.

At the time I left the project, we had published just over 80 articles, producing 13k+ monthly visits and over 600 newsletter signups.

Challenge:

The first challenge was knowing which keywords to target… cos most SEO tools don’t provide the most accurate volume metric for locations outside the US. 

It really sucked.

We also struggled with research… cos again, most of the online resources were not tailored for the Nigerian audience. 

Even the main Nigerian competitors were just regurgitating the same bullsh*t over and over again.

Results:

Tools/Platforms:

• Ubersuggest extension: detailed SERP and competitor analysis
• LowFruits: keyword research and topic clustering
• Thruu.com: content briefs
• HeadingsMap extension: scrape competitor article headings
• WordPress & Elementor: I built the website from scratch
• Trello: content management between me and writers
• Canva & Nimbus: custom images for the articles
• Mailchimp: email collection

Timeline:

Timeline (2023)	Activity
March	– Selected niche for website  – Website designing – Started initial keyword research
April	– Keyword research continued – Briefs creation Content creation
May	– Started publishing (14 articles) – Keyword research expansion for supporting content
June	– Continued publishing (16 articles) – More content brief creation for supporting articles – Started getting impressions
July	– Starting ranking – Continued publishing (15 articles) – More content brief creation
August	– Slowed down on publishing (5 articles) – Started optimizing old articles
September	– Published 9 articles – worked on internal linking
October	– Published 10 articles – optimized more old articles
November	– Published 7 articles – optimized more old articles – optimized internal links
December	– Published 8 articles – optimized internal links

How Long Did It Take to Start Ranking?

It took two months from the first day we hit publish to start ranking for important keywords… Pretty fast, right?

Here’s how we were able to skip the “Google sandbox.”

Of course, our website was new… but the domain wasn’t new per se

We’ve had the “freelancespace.org” domain since 2021.

So, it’s already friends with Google… if I can put it that way.

It’s the same idea with using “aged domains” (old domains with lots of backlinks) to help boost rankings.

While our domain wasn’t “aged” in that context (it had no backlinks), it definitely helped speed things up.

You can check out my previous case study on ebutemetaverse to see how to use aged domains.

The second reason why it took a short time to rank was cos of our publishing pace and content quality… More on this coming up.

Keywords we Ranked For?

Some of the keywords we ranked for are mentioned below:

• “Disadvantages of Piggyvest”
• “Piggyvest review 2023”
• “cheapest virtual dollar card in Nigeria”
• “Best domiciliary account in Nigeria”
• “Hot selling products in Nigeria”
• “How to become a virtual assistant in Nigeria”

Here’s a carousel of some of our featured snippets.

How Did We Know Freelancing/Business was the Right Niche?

So, how did we come up with our website niche?

Simple… Freelancing is growing in Nigeria, like, really fast.

Interest in Upwork and Fiverr is at an all-time high.

How Did I Develop the SEO Strategy?

Now, down to the main gutters of stalking competitors—we found some good websites already doing what we wanted to achieve.

The tools I used for my keyword research included:

• Ubersuggest extension
• Lowfruits (same tool I used in my ebutemetaverse case study)

Notice I also didn’t use any of the bigger names.

The main reason was because of cost… Have you seen the price of Semrush lately?

Plus, I found that Ubersuggest had more accurate data for non-US keywords.

Finding the seed keywords

When doing my keyword research for the website, I first came up with the main topics.

For me, I chose:

• Freelancing in Nigeria
• Making money in Nigeria
• Business in Nigeria

Of course, these weren’t the only ones I researched.

As I threw them into LowFruits to help me scrape related keywords, I got more ideas. 

Checking out the competitors

Now is the time to sniff out our competitors.

I’m already armed with the keywords I got from LowFruits.

So, what I do is take out one of the main keywords and throw it into the SERP.

With the Ubersuggest extension installed, you can see which website on the SERP is pulling the most traffic.

Then, I open the website, check out their ranking pages and corresponding keywords, and throw it into LowFruits again to cluster them.

Let’s do a quick example:

Say I want to research the keyword “profitable businesses to start in nigeria.”

I search for the keyword on Google and use the Ubersuggest extension to view the top-ranking keywords for that particular page.

Here, Moniepoint is on the first page.

Now, I open Moniepoint in Ubersuggest to see the top-ranking pages and copy the main topics.

I do this for more websites around my main search terms.

LowFruits has an inbuilt feature that lets you scrape your competitors’ page and keywords faster.

Next, I throw all the topics and keywords into LowFruits to start the clustering process.

Creating Clusters

LowFruits is a simple yet powerful tool.

One of its standout features that helped me achieve the 13k/month traffic is topic clustering. 

It helps you cluster keywords based on how many URLs they have in common in the search engine result pages (SERP).

This tells you if you should target all the keywords in one article or take some out and create new topics.

For example:

If its 50% or above, then you should target in one article

If its 40% or below, then you might want to write a new article for it.

Its basically up to you to decide.

You’ll understand this better when you study keyword clustering—or I could create a guide on it if you want; just let me know.

Now, its time to check out our competitors.

After several days and nights, I had about 300 topic clusters, and it was time to prepare my briefs.

Preparing my SEO Content Plan

I have the keywords

I have clustered them

My next step was to create an SEO content map.

This is basically a spreadsheet containing all the topics I want to cover so you know all the topics you’ve published and what’s left… and so much more.

I had two content maps.

1. To track the overall content production,

2. To track my internal link structure

Trust me, you don’t want to mess with internal linking (more on this later). 

Having a well structured internal link map helps your website A LOT because every post links to every other post, making it easier for search engines—and visitors—to find relevant supporting information.

How Were the Articles Written?

So, let’s go into the content creation section proper.

Prepping Content Guidelines

If you’re working with multiple writers for a project, you want to make sure that they:

• Understand what the search intent is
• Know what information you want in an article
• Know the core message or CTA you want to push

The only way to achieve this is through a content brief.

Of course, you might think that good writers will “know” these things once you give them the topic.

But omooo, you’d be surprised.

That’s why I take my time to prepare each content brief, from topic to word count and even article structure.

But before that, I created a general writing guideline.

This specified:

• The overall goal of the website, i.e., to provide the most accurate and relevant online business content
• Our general writing style in terms of sentence length, tone of voice, etc.
• What writers can say and can’t say within an article
• Which brands or services to promote—super important for monetization purposes.

I created a total of three guidelines…

The first brief is an overview of the brand and what we plan to achieve.

The section brief covered the usual stuff like sentence structure, language usage, research methodology, and other guidelines.

In the third brief, I specified the requirements for writers in terms of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

Creating the Content Briefs

I created briefs using two methods: Google Docs/Headings Map and Thruuu.com.

For the first method, I use HeadingsMap to scrape all my competitors heading tags.

Then I filter out what I need and prep the brief right inside a Google Doc.

When I create briefs with Google Docs, it usually follows this pattern:

1. Title
2. Main keyword
3. Word count
4. First H2
5. Other H2s
6. Notes
7. Rought outline
8. FAQs

All the information that I add to the briefs will be filled in based on the keywords gotten from LowFruits and our competitor analysis (HeadingsMap).

But to be honest, it takes quite a while to prep all the briefs from my content plan sheet.

That’s why I use Thruuu.com sometimes.

Thruuu is a simple, yet, powerful tool for generating content briefs based on live SERP analysis and artificial intelligence (AI).

All you have to do is input your keyword and let it work its magic.

Here’s an example of a brief I created below:

https://app.thruuu.com/brief/share/8bcc3930-3d5b-11ef-84c1-853fe765be6a

Once I generated my briefs, the next step was sending them off to our writers to do their magic.

Writing the Articles

Like I previously mentioned, I had a separate content guideline for writers. 

They already had enough time to read through it and understand what I wanted.

Most of my articles follow a certain pattern, which includes the following below:

• Answer first.
• Put your keywords correctly.
• Reduce the grammar; no one cares.
• Be as practical as possible.
• Custom images.

You should be familiar with this pattern if you’ve read my ebutemetaverse case study.

How Frequently Did I Publish Content?

I officially started publishing by May of 2023 and followed an inverted pyramid publishing style… I just came up with that

Basically, I published more articles during the start of the project and then reduced the posting frequency along the way.

Why did I do this?

Simple: so I can keep track of what I’ve interlinked.

I wanted every topic to be tightly knitted in such a way that my visitors won’t leave my website for any reason at all.

In short: I provide them with EVERYTHING they need.

And internal linking is the only way to achieve this kind of document connections.

Internal linking is super important for ranking a website

Remember when I mentioned that I had a separate sheet to track supporting articles?

This is where it comes in handy.

Here’s the process.

You start publishing your pillar articles first.

Then you start creating and publishing the supporting articles (this could be some inner concepts you mentioned).

Then, you go back to the main article and include the link.

You can see an example in this article on the best digital skills to learn.

We published 86 articles from May to December 2023.

So, How Did I Pull Off the Website Migration?

I believe the first question would be: why migrate in the first place?

The simple answer is that we wanted a better domain name that embodied the trajectory of the website.

So, we decided to move from “freelancespace.org” to “freelancespace.africa.”

Mind you: I have NEVER performed a site migration in my life.

And most YouTube tutorials scared the hell out of me…

Thankfully, I found the Updraft plugin (after about two weeks of research).

It basically allows you to create and save a full backup of your website on Google Drive.

Then, you can upload it into a new website… and that was it.

The scariest part wasn’t the migration—it was maintaining our SEO rankings.

Because, changes like that would most likely affect your URL structure. 

A lot of things could go wrong if your old URL doesn’t match the new one (or redirects to it).

To solve this, I uploaded a simple code snippet into the htaccess folder of the old website.

The snippet is a sitewide 301 redirect. 

Once implemented, it helped send all the traffic (and Google bots) from the old website to the new one easily.

I’ll write a full article on website migration and interlink to this section as I cannot go into the nitty gritty details here.

So What’s the Current State of Freelancespace Africa and Future Plans?

Well, my partners and I had to pause the project due to some personal reasons.

Still, the website is pulling a decent 18K clicks in the last three months.

The next step for the project is to launch detailed bootcamps and courses around freelancing and business.

And also improve its presence on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Hopefully, we’ll resume publications and updates soon.

Also, we’re looking for partners.

You can hit me up on LinkedIn if you’d like to contribute to the project… 

You can purchase the entire website and go forward with the course launch.

Or you could be a direct partner and work with me to continue things.

Whichever one, I’m open to offers.