How My 1st Clickbank Product Review Ranked #1 On Google

Ever written a post you’re proud of that you think will rank on Google, only to watch it land on page 4-5 or worse?

That has happened to me a lot. I started learning to build websites and optimize for search about a year ago, so I’m at least 3-20 years behind most of the professionals working in the industry. However I recently implemented everything I’ve learned in the past year while optimizing my first Clickbank product review. I think the results speak for themselves.

My Conversiobot review was pretty good to start off with. It sat around 2000 words and answered most of the common questions rooted in related search terms. It had a hyperlinked table of contents, a dozen optimized and alt tagged images, and a keyword density of about 1%.

It landed on page 4.

I’ll be honest, I was slightly heartbroken. But a fiery determination rose up inside me. I honestly believed that my page 4 review was better than those on page 1. The issue is, most of them had backlinks and superior domain authority. I knew I’d need to pull out all of the tricks I’d learned in the past year in order to have a chance of advancing to page 1.

In the rest of t his post, I’ll outline the steps I took to bring my review all the way from the bottom of page 4 to the top of page 1, in the #1 spot. As I write this the #2 post has 17 backlinks. I didn’t think I’d be able to beat that with on-page optimization alone, but I did!

Note: This post contains affiliate links and referral links; if you click on them and make a purchase, I may receive a commission of some type at no additional expense to you.

SEO Basics: Keyword Research, Headings, and Content Structure

In November 2019 I wrote a beginner-level guide to keyword research and SEO, and everything in it is still very relevant in 2020. If you’re not already an intermediate-advanced search engine optimizer, I highly recommend reading that article before continuing with this one.

First let’s review some basic principles of on-page SEO.

Basic On-Page SEO Checklist

• Use the target keyword in the URL
• Use only one H1 tag which contains the target keyword
• Use the target keyword near the beginning of the first paragraph
• Use the target keyword in subheadings and paragraphs throughout
• Use variations of the target keyword and related keywords throughout the content
• Reduce excess Javascript, CSS, and image size
• Use relevant keywords in image file names
• Use relevant keywords in image alt text
• Use modifiers and synonyms for your keywords throughout the content
• Link to and from relevant posts of yours (internal linking)
• Link out to authoritative resources on the topic (external linking) 

That’s a lot to think about, so I’ll briefly explain the points above.

On-Page SEO Explained

A target keyword is the main phrase you’re trying to rank your post for. In the case of this Clickbank review, my target keyword was “conversiobot review”.

An H1 tag is a type of heading which lets search engine spiders know that the selected text is a title and/or important.

Javascript and CSS are the programming languages that make most websites do interesting things and look cool. However, having too much of them on a page can slow down its load time and prevent the search engine spiders from effectively crawling the content.

Image size refers to how much server space your images are taking up. The larger the files are, the slower the content will load. You can reduce image file size by first resizing images to a web-friendly size using a free tool like TinyPNG.com.

Alt text is the “alternative” text search engine spiders use to identify images. Screen readers which make it possible for reduced vision/blind visitors to navigate the web also use alt text to understand what images are showing.

A modifier is a word like “best”, “top”, or “free” that can help your article appear in varied longtail keyword searches.

A synonym is an altered or reordered version of the target keyword. These will also help you rank for search terms which you could not possible anticipate.

Crafting the Initial Post

In order to draft my review I first built the table of contents. I found the most popular longtail keywords and a few other variants related to Conversiobot. Those became my subheadings. From there I expanded each heading into a section with one ore more paragraphs. I even included a FAQ section and a bonus, because “covnersiobot bonus” was one of the commonly searched keywords.

Overall, it was a well written and structured piece of content.

Page 4. It landed on Page 4.

I made a fresh cup of coffee and returned to the computer.

How I Optimized My Review to Move It From Page 4 to Page 1

 I took a closer look at the highest ranking reviews in the niche. I had already modeled my post after them, but I started noticing things I’d overlooked before. Here are the advantages they had:

• Greater domain age and authority
• Backlinks from external sources (some with high domain authority)
• Longer content
• Embedded YouTube videos
• More click-worthy titles

I also noticed that none of them had optimized for the following things:

• No one had done a really great job of covering the entire topic (chatbots for websites)
• No one had answered all questions related to the topic (this optimizes for voice search)

The Optimization Process

The first thing I did was return to my keyword research. I expanded my list of relevant longtails, which gave me more subheadings to use and more topics to address. Then I turned all of those keywords into questions which I imagined people might ask their phones. 

“Hey Google! How much does Conversiobot cost?”

“Hey Google! Is Conversiobot a scam?”

“Hey Google! Is Conversiobot worth buying?”

And so on. Once my content addressed all of those questions either directly or indirectly it was about 800 words longer than it had been originally. 

There was nothing I could do about external backlinks or domain authority, but I still had a couple tricks up my sleeve. I recorded a twenty minute video review of the product and uploaded it to YouTube, then linked back to my review in the description and embedded the video in my post. I also made a second Conversiobot video (a demo) and linked from it to my video and blog reviews.

Finally, I built an internal link from an older, relevant blog post of mine.

I edited the title to make it more clickable, and I reindexed the post in Google Search Console.

The end result was a #1 ranking!

The Aftermath

Over the next couple weeks, my post moved up and down but it stayed firmly in the top half of page one. I didn’t make any more changes, except to promote it occasionally on social media. As I finish writing this article, my review sits in the #1 position behind the featured snippet, which is fine by me. I’ve got other posts to work on.

Within twenty-four hours of ranking the post #1 I made my first affiliate sale, and I made my second sale almost exactly a week later. 

All of this with a year-old domain I’ve been blogging in during my spare time. It has very few intentional backlinks, and rather low authority as a result. But it gives me a place to write and optimize my content… and for a well-chosen keyword, that’s enough.

 My Updated On-Page SEO Checklist

• Use the target keyword in the URL
• Use only one H1 tag which contains the target keyword
• Use the target keyword near the beginning of the first paragraph
• Use the target keyword in subheadings and paragraphs throughout
• Use variations of the target keyword and related keywords throughout the content
• Reduce excess Javascript, CSS, and image size
• Use relevant keywords in image file names
• Use relevant keywords in image alt text
• Use modifiers and synonyms for your keywords throughout the content
• Link to and from relevant posts of yours (internal linking)
• Link out to authoritative resources on the topic (external linking) 
• Aim for longer content than the competition
• Embed a single relevant YouTube video (preferably similar length to content)
• Use a click-worthy title with numbers and power words
• Cover the topic as completely as possible (don’t just address keywords)
• Answer all potential questions related to topic and keywords directly or indirectly

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but if you make all of those changes and your post doesn’t improve its ranking, there must be something wrong with the spiders!

Key Takeaways From This Process

It’s important to note that my review doesn’t just rank for “conversiobot review”. It also ranks for related terms such as “conversiobot”, “conversiobot pricing,” and “what is conversiobot”. If I had been completely focused on my target keyword, this may not have been the case. Because I made an effort to cover the topic effectively and answer all questions related to the product, I get traffic to that post from a variety of different keywords.

I’ve written two more product reviews since then, and both ranked on page 1 with a little tweaking. This seems like a good indicator that it wasn’t a fluke, and that my process is working. I’m going to continue to build it out and write about my findings, successes, and failures.

Final Note

Search Engine Optimization is one of the hardest things I do as a marketer, but I love the challenge and can’t wait to post my next review. It is entirely possible that by the time you read this, my review won’t be in the #1 spot due to competition. However I assure you the screenshots in this article are legitimate, as are the practices I recommend.

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