Quick note before you read the rest of this post, SEO & PBNs still work. After recent Google updates, building PBNs has become more risky. As a result, we have started to focus on more long term online businesses that don’t only focus on SEO for traffic. Which can also apply to emerging markets.
What ?
We will try to determine if ranking websites in emerging countries is a profitable strategy. Mexico will be our crash test dummy.
Why ?
SERPs in emerging markets are mostly uncompetitive, making it easy to rank for pretty much any keyword. The downside is that CPC’s are very low, which is a problem when your goal is to make $.
The main objective with this experiment is to determine if it is possible to overcome the lower CPC issue.
We can identify three ways to possibly do that :
- Rank for keywords with very high volume
- Identify high CPC keywords and try to rank for them
- Find new and innovative ways to monetize websites based on local consumer behaviors
Something that we’re also interested in is to see if the sandbox is as effective on Mexican Google as it is on Western SERP’s.
Why Google.com.mx ?
- Mexico is a country with a population of almost 120 millions. This means great volume potential for us
- Jorge is half Mexican, which means he has a good understanding on Mexicans consumer behaviors.
- We all live in Mexico, and we love it!
How
We’ll create two sites on new domains in potentially profitable niches. Probably one with high volume and the other with a higher CPC.
The idea here is to eventually build large authority sites.
Content for each site :
Around 8000 words the first month then 3000 new words every months.
Link Building for each site :
15 links/month right from the beginning, to see if it is possible to overcome the Mexican sandbox more easily than on Google.com
We are also considering building a website on an expired domain with good metrics. We will keep you updated if we do so.
Who
For this experiment we will hire native Spanish content writers, ideally from Mexico.
When
Hopefully, we’ll start making our first pesos before we hit the 4 months mark (it’ll be much before that if we overcome the sandbox). After 6 months, we will compare the money made vs the money invested and determine if the Mexican SERPs are worth to go after.
Cost
Content for both sites : Around $600
2 new domains : $40
1/5 of one of our VA’s time (considering that the first month will be much busier) : $100/month
Total : 1240$
How to scale if the experiment is a success
- Create more Mexican sites (from expired or new domains , TBD depending on the results) and carry on adding content to the successful ones.
- Start an internship open to any Spanish-speaking folks willing to try the foreign adventure.
- Grow our Spanish PBN
- Start similar experiments and apply the same model in other Spanish-speaking emerging countries.