My Niche Interior Design Blog Website Attracts 40K Visitors Every Month

Mostafa Khames

•

Published: June 17th, 2023

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Mostafa Khames

Founder, ALDECOR

$2K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

ALDECOR

aldecor.com

from Madinah Saudi Arabia

started January 2021

$2,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Mostafa recommends to grow your business!

platform

WooCommerce

MailChimp

web hosting tool-icon

Cloudways

social media

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

YouTube

PromoRepublic

productivity tool-icon

Google Suite

payments

Paypal

analytics

Google Analytics

blog

WordPress

stock images tool-icon

Pexels

freelance

Fiverr

seo

Ahrefs

Yoast

software deals

AppSumo

Discover what books Mostafa recommends to grow your business!

Want more updates on ALDECOR? Check out these stories:

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Khames and I’m the founder of ALDECOR.

I started ALDECOR in 2020, and now it has become the Arabian world's most popular and influential interior design platform.

ALDECOR is mainly a blog that includes trustworthy information about interior design, finishes, furniture, and furnishings. Additionally, we are bringing homeowners and business owners alike together, creating opportunities for them to network, learn and do great business.

We started our profits journey based on Google AdSense as the only source of income. Nowadays, we have multiple sources which include interior design consultancy, and B2B digital marketing services which are dedicated to interior designers, contractors, and suppliers. Our yearly growth profit is around 24,000 USD.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

As an interior designer, I started the business with my interior design blog KHAMES. However, I discovered that it is very hard to compete with other high-ranked interior design blogs such as thespruce.com & many others.

Moreover, I have noticed the lack of trustworthy information in the field of Arabian interior design resources. For this reason, I created ALDECOR to be a trusted source of information in the Arab world.

Since launched, ALDECOR has gained more and more visitors every day from all Arabian countries. Also, we started to cooperate with big brand names in Saudi & UAE.

Now, I work full-time as CEO of ALDECOR to manage daily activities, and I hope to enhance our capabilities to have a special team for each Arabian country.

Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.

We are mainly a blog, so we started our platform on WordPress, and we are feeling very comfortable with the available variety of plugins and services.

Also, WordPress is not costly in comparison to other CMS.

I recommend Shopify for any e-commerce startup project, and WordPress for any blog & media project.

We started our blog with some random posts which gained ZERO traffic until we understood the power of SEO and keyword selections. Now, each new post must start with analyzing all related keywords, reviewing the traffic volume, cost per click, and competition difficulty. As a result, we have many posts now on the first page of Google.

The best way to think of an MVP is this: You have a problem. What do you have to do to solve this problem?

Describe the process of launching the business.

First, I purchased a domain name which I think is very important to reflect your business. As a designer, it helped me to make the logo and select the website color scheme. Identity is very crucial for any successful business.

After that, I was planning to launch ALDECOR based on custom code from developers in India who gave me a good quotation to create the website. However, I found that the ongoing cost is very high for maintaining the website and doing any future modifications.

From this point, I decided to build the website myself based on some youtube videos. It was not easy, but it was worth every minute and cent spent on that journey.

Now, I can do all modifications, SEO changes, plugin updates, and all others without waiting for help or breaking the bank.

My advice is that if you don’t have in-house developers, it is better to learn and do it yourself. WordPress, Wix, and Shopify are not difficult to learn and manage.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Since day one, we never made a paid campaign. You may be wondering now about how we get more than 40,000 visitors every month.

The secret word is SEO, we deeply rely on our professional Search Engine Optimization techniques.

For your website, you must use solid performance hosting to guarantee the required speed by Google, as they are punching the low-speed performance websites.

Google Console, analytics, and performance tests are essential to achieve the required performance score on Mobile and PC as well.

I like using Ubersuggest & Ahrefs for keyword analysis and targeting.

Unfortunately, we found that email marketing is not working well in the Arab world. So, we focus only on SEO and Social Media, and 90% of our visitors are from SEO only.

I can summarize our SEO technique and strategy in the following points:

Get good hosting to ensure your site is super fast.
90% of the traffic is from mobile, so ensure a mobile-friendly website.
Select profitable keywords based on CPC.
Use long tail keywords ( 3 words is good).
Produce high-quality contents (1000 words is perfect).
Building internal and external links is essential.
Keep your eyes on Google Analytics and Console.
Update and publish old posts especially those with good ranking.
Your content must produce value for a reader.
Finally, add a personal touch to your content to survive, as AI now can give all the answers except the personal touch.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

As a blog, we found thousands of Arabic keywords which are not covered yet. We are planning to create thousands of new articles about interior design.

In the future, we are planning to be the main source of interior design information in The Arab World which consists of the following 22 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

My first mistake was thinking that I could compete with sharks, but I found that it is better to follow the blue ocean strategy.

The “Blue Ocean Strategy” is about how competing in overcrowded industries will have no way to sustain high performance, and the real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space.

My second mistake was creating services that I was thinking were important, and I spent money and time developing those services without making MVP at first. After launching, I discovered that no one cared about what I have done.

Since that, I decided to think based on my audience's needs and tried to give them actual benefits rather than just technical solutions.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

I use WordPress as a CMS, it is easy and flexible. Also, Elementor Pro enhances WP blogging functionality. Additionally, I use CrocoBlock as it is great for creating professional features such as custom post types and filters without codes.

Cloudways is my favorite cloud hosting service, it is fast and reliable. WordFence for security, Yoast for SEO, WP Rocket as a caching plugin, and MailChimp for email management.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Generally, I like reading, and when it comes to business and money, reading is an essential asset for success.

There are many books I can recommend, but the best for entrepreneurs is “Accelerated Startup: Everything You to Know” & “Zero to One - Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future”.

These books are about how to build a company that creates something new and offers a great formula for success.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

My main advice to any entrepreneur is to do homework first. They should study their idea and do MVP first to be sure that their idea will work successfully.

I have seen many entrepreneurs who invested large amounts of money in products and services which no one needs.

The mission of any startup is to find a repeatable business model. The way to do this is to come up with several hypotheses that address things you are uncertain about with your business, and subsequently design the experiments to prove or disprove your hypothesis, and the key to doing this well is to develop minimum viable products (MVPs).

An MVP is not a product, it is the smallest amount of work you can do to prove or reject your hypothesis.

The best way to think of an MVP is this: You have a problem. What do you have to do to solve this problem?

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

Currently, we are looking for content creators to work online. They must have interior design background, and know Arabic as well since our website is in Arabic.

Interested candidates can contact us.

Where can we go to learn more?

Please don’t hesitate to visit our website or any of our social media pages:

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!