[Case Study] Project Aged Treasure #1

Hey guys! It’s been a while since the last post about this case study. So let me quickly explain why.

The last post was published quickly before Christmas when I took some time off.

And then, in January, I caught Covid, which I have been fighting for almost two months… I’m not going to break it down in detail, but I’ve been almost unable to work for quite a while.

And now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, a case study of a site I’m building on an aged domain from Odys Global.

(For those who don’t know what’s going on, I recommend reading the introduction to this case study here.)

Contents

Current state

The site was launched on 1st March 2022. So about 10 days ago.

The site is built on an aged domain from Odys Global (thank you again).

The domain has the following metrics:

DR: 24
RDs: 230

And the site was listed on Odys Global for $3,200.

It ranked for only a few branded keywords when I acquired the domain.

But, the big plus of this domain is that the name is very, very brandable.

When I acquired the domain, my #1 priority was to keep the content relevant to what was on the domain previously.

I rebuilt the top 5 pages with the most backlinks and set 301 redirects for the rest of them to the homepage or blog page.

In general, I think the key to success with aged domains is to stay within the same niche or topics you talk about on the site.

It’s probably a bad idea to build a website about car parts on a domain that used to be a restaurant’s website.

Because something like this could happen to you:

Here are some of the criteria I look at when choosing a domain:

The former content (niche…) was relevant to what I’m trying to build
Brandable domain name (BestKitchenRobot.com vs. FoodKing.com)
Decent backlink portfolio, strong backlinks with minimum spam
The domain has clean history (no casino, 301 redirects, etc. – check Archive)
It’s still indexed in the SERP (you can use site:domain to check it)
It’s still ranking for at least something (in Ahrefs)

Right now, there are six published articles on the site.

All of them are from a very tightly-related cluster. You can think of it as:

Can dogs eat chocolate?
Can dogs eat strawberries?
…

This helps me build some kind of “topical relevancy” and is also great for interlinking.

It was quite a struggle to write them, but I’m slowly getting into it. It’s not a very technical niche, so the writing is coming along relatively quickly.

Partly Jasper.ai (AI writing tool) helps me.

What is important to mention is that I still check all the facts and write most of the content myself (about 70% is written by me, 30% by Jarvis).

Jarvis is great when one gets “writer’s block” and doesn’t know how to proceed. There’s nothing worse than having a white paper and not knowing what to do.

And I’m already starting to see the first results in Google Search Console, which surprised me relatively.

(these are 99% results of my published articles, not brand searches)

But it’s still early days. I plan to publish as much as possible now.

Site structure

I like to keep things very simple and the site structure flat.

As “Permalink Settings” in WordPress, I use “Post name”.

On the homepage, I have a search, links to categories, and then the latest posts.

Category pages are basically just basic blog rolls for now.

Then there is the main menu with links to home, categories, and search button.

In the sidebar, I have a search field and the latest posts.

And in the footer, classic stuff – about us, contact us, privacy policy, terms + address, email, and phone number for E-A-T.

The posts themselves look the same as on this site. Breadcrumbs, intro, table of contents, featured image, content itself, share buttons, author, related posts…

How is the site built?

Let’s talk a bit about how the site is built.

(Just a small note, it’s very similar to this site, the tech stack is pretty much the same)

First, talk about the theme:

GeneratePress Pro

It’s fast, lightweight, simple. It does all I need. You can customize it however you want.

What more can I say… For me, it’s the default theme that I use on all my sites.

Now let’s talk about plugins I use:

Rank Math SEO

I use Rank Math SEO so I can work with titles, meta descriptions.

Then I use it to stripe /category/ from category URLs.

For breadcrumbs, sitemap, and some attachment redirects, etc.

The plugin offers more features, but I use it only for these basics basically.

Easy Table of Contents

I use this plugin for the table of contents which is great for UX and also for sitelinks.

GenerateBlocks

To build more customized pages. Especially on the homepage. You can check the homepage of this site, it’s built with GenerateBlocks.

The plugin is very fast.

Code Snippets

When you need to insert somewhere some custom PHP, this is a great little plugin that can do it for you.

I have some custom PHP filters to modify the GeneratePress a little bit.

WP Rocket

My go-to caching and speed plugin. It’s simple and makes the site lightning fast.

These are the core plugins I use. If you have any questions or want me to cover some settings more in-depth, let me know.

Final Words

And that’s about it for today.

In the next posts, I will go a little bit more in-depth about my keyword research, content creation, etc.

And don’t forget to check the aged domain inventory of Odys Global. They have some nice pieces there!