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After Nailing Down a Niche You Need to Tackle Keywords

August 15, 2011 By 3 Comments

After you’ve picked your niche, you need to do some keyword research in order to get the word out about your site. Many beginning entrepreneurs make the mistake of choosing their niche and then launching a website shortly after that with no thought to keyword research.

But entrepreneurs that grasp the benefits of well-chosen keywords take the time to research because they understand the relationship between traffic and keywords. Proper keyword research will allow you to know which words get your target audience’s attention because those are the words they use themselves in a search engine.

Keyword research will position your website or blog at the top of search engine results so that your site receives plenty of traffic. When you’re targeting keywords, even subtle things like the plural form of a word make a difference.

For instance if your niche is pet training then it’s important to know that the word ‘dog’ receives forty five million searches a month while the word ‘dogs’ receives only sixteen million.

Your goal is to select keywords that will garner you the most searches per words. What you’re looking for is something with little competition but a lot of searches. You can shell out money to pay for fancy keyword tools like Market Samurai to help you in your quest, but there are free alternative tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool where you still get the information you need to get the traffic you want.

Using the wrong keywords means you’re missing out on important traffic and missing out on the sales you could be making. You can use the wrong keywords and bring people to your site, but it’ll be those people who are not interested in what you’re selling. You want your keywords to be relevant to your audience.

When you build your site, you also want to make sure that you not only use keywords in your paragraphs, but you also want to make sure that you use keywords in your titles. When you pick a name for your website, select one with a keyword or keywords in the URL.

Remember the better you use SEO on your site, the higher it will rank when search engines display the results. One of the mistakes entrepreneurs make is naming their pages incorrectly in general.

Be specific. Don’t have an ‘About’ page. Going back to the earlier example about pet training, have an ‘About Pet Training’ page. When you put up a contact page or box, use a keyword phrase there as well. Such as, “Contact me for more information on pet training.” This nets you additional keywords.

Click here to download a trial copy (included discount if you choose to purchase it) of Market Samurai which is the keyword research tool  I personally chose, and love.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: entrepreneurs, keyword research, keywords, market samurai, niche, Position, rank, relevent, seo, SEO, traffic, url

Every Good Campaign Needs a Backlinking Strategy

July 20, 2011 By 7 Comments

back links

Backlinks are just how they sound – links that lead back to your site. They’re like fingers all over the Internet and each finger is pointing the way for people to find your domain. If you have a website and you write an article with a link back to your site and you submit it to an article directory, that link is considered a backlink. You might see backlinks referred to as inbound links as well.

What’s the purpose of backlinking? What backlinks have the ability to do is raise your search engine ranking, which is what every marketer wants because the more visible your site, the more traffic, the better the odds are of making money.

The links work sort of like a popularity contest. They show the search engine spiders and search bots that your website is popular. Sites with a lot of relevant backlinks will be looked on favorably by search engines.

You can garner backlinks through natural methods. This means your pages are so good, so helpful with information, that others create links on their sites to point to your pages. You can also ask websites to backlink to yours and offer a link to their site, which is known as reciprocal linking.

Some blogs will let you leave comments and you can leave a backlink to your site. Not all blogs allow this. In forums, you can do the same by having a link in your signature file.

Look for popular forums in your niche and become an active community member. You can also use backlinks in videos and on social sites or on product reviews that you do about your niche.

Getting backlinks for your website is vital to the monetary health of your business, yet it can take a tremendous amount of time to set up backlinks – time that pulls you away from working on creating products to sell or concentrating on affiliate marketing.

That’s why some marketers choose to pay other people to create their backlinks for them.  You want to make sure that whoever you hire understands how backlinks work.  You can do this by hiring a writer to create articles and turn them into the various article directories or you can hire a service that specializes in site promotion.

Backlinks should be grown slowly whether you outsource it to a professional or take the do it yourself route. You never want to show search engines hundreds or thousands of new links in a day. Pace yourself for healthy link boosts and the search engines will see that as a positive sign that your site is an authority.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, blogs, marketers, product reviews, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, social sites, video, websites

6 Ways to Make a Living From SEO

July 12, 2011 By 20 Comments

SEO

 

Megan Duckett owns a theatrical-sewing business in California that she named “Sew What?” She wanted to branch out and figured setting up a website would expose her business to new customers nationwide, and hopefully around the globe. Setting up a site, hiring one employee, soliciting past clients and cold-calling new ones did just enough to keep the business afloat; 20% of her sales were to other states, and she conducted two overseas transactions. Then Megan discovered SEO Services.

In 18 months Megan’s revenues skyrocketed 45%. Consequently, her business now employs 33 people in a 15,000-square-foot facility, and there are plans for expansion. One third of her sales are in California, 2/3 in other states, and she’s made 55 international transactions. When interviewed by Businessweek, Megan said, “It’s all been the search engine optimization and some low-budget, pay-per-click ads I’ve placed on certain industry terms…”

How Can I Do That?

1. Keyword Research

Know your competition. Use some free tools like SEOmoz Term Extractor, Open Site Explorer and Alexa Search Analytics to keep tabs on hot keywords in your niche. Take notes on what keywords your competitors rank highly for, which keywords rank poorly for them, and even the mediocre terms.

These tools also help you keep tabs on keywords that are diminishing in use so that you can update your website accordingly. Older websites, i.e., established domains, have more trust than newer websites, so older sites tend to rank higher for those mediocre terms than fresh competitors.

2. On-Page Optimization

Make sure to use keywords in outgoing links, title tags, meta descriptions, H1 and H2 headers, in bold face, and in the ALT text of images. Keep “keyword density” in mind here. Keyword density is the ratio of keywords and key phrases to the total number of words on a page. Blogs benefit from a keyword ratio of 2% to 5%, while the optimum ratio for eCommerce websites is slightly higher at 4% to 8%.

3. Content Like No Other

When writing about the latest product or event in your niche, avoid regurgitating what your competitors have written on the topic. Go into greater depth where possible with facts, stats and graphs or charts. When writing opinion pieces or reviews, do so with more clarity and depth than your competition. In short, valuable content is writing that’s easy to understand, factual (therefore reliable), and straight to the point.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Paying to have your website at the top of the search engines guarantees more traffic, a precursor to potential sales. The PPC model is affiliate-based, and as a merchant you want solid affiliates. The cost per click (CPC) paid to search engines varies based on factors such as which search engine is used, keyword competitiveness, the day and time a visitor is surfing the web, along with visitor interest, intent and location. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter operate under a complex bid-based model.

5. Linking

Building quality backlinks takes time, but the rewards can be tremendous. The goal is to have websites that rank high in the search engines link back to you. This generates a ton of traffic.

6. Blogging

Run a companion blog to your website that shows customers you are passionate about your niche. Not just passionate about what can be sold, but a fellow enthusiast, be it camping, marketing, martial arts, whatever. Use SEO techniques to get your blog ranked higher so web surfers can share in your enthusiasm for a given niche, and then find your website.

 

Amber McDougon is a professional writer and blogger with a particular
interest in the open source Joomla platform. She has been helping
companies build and maintain their online relationships with customers
since 2005. http://www.inetzeal.net/

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, Business, content, keyword density, make a living, Megan Duckett, meta, niche, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, Sew What, websites

Keyword Research with Market Samurai

March 4, 2011 By 3 Comments

Market Samurai

I just picked up a copy of Market Samurai of which I’d used it before and was super impressed with and I have to tell you, if you’re serious about traffic and keyword research you have got to try it out for yourself and see what it can do.

Traffic isn’t a mystery, and I am continually helping people to drive more and more traffic to their sites, and it’s just like anything else, if you apply a few of the rules that surround traffic techniques, you’ll be able to increase it to the levels you’re looking for.

Just imagine 1 keyword surrounding your business that gets 300 visitors each day (for a number one ranking) that means that by spending a portion of each day moving that particular keyword up through the ranks, which we do by writing an article using that keyword as our focus topic, and then building backlinks to it using the anchor text we are trying to rank for.

Example:

I want to rank for “internet marketing for small business” which is a long tail keyword without too much competition. Now I could only expect a maximum of 91 visitors if I held the number one spot. But since there isn’t too much competition for this vague search term it wouldn’t be too hard to optimize my next post for it, and then build some backlinks to it using social bookmarking, and internal linking etc. Maybe I’m terrible at SEO and only manage a ranking of third and get 12 visits a day? Would that be so terrible?

I can hear you all now saying what the heck am I going to do with twelve visitors? Invite them over for dinner? J No, you’re going to make a list of 100 keywords just like this one, as well as some harder to rank for ones and when you add them all together…. Ahh, light bulb goes on! 100×12 is 1200, but no worries,  I’m sure you’ll manage a few first place rankings, and over time you’ll become better and better at keyword research and optimization which will only drive your traffic levels even higher!

Market Samurai should be an integral part of your traffic driving techniques, and by learning how to use it, and applying that knowledge toward your blogs and websites you’ll have a measure of control over the level of traffic you receive and you won’t be dependent on PPC for getting those visitors to your offer.

A few of the Highlights:

Keyword Research

This module allows you to research the different keywords that might be relevant to the theme and topic of your blog or website so that you can make informed decisions on whether or not to try and tackle it. You can see how much traffic a number one ranking could potentially receive as well as the daily number of searches for that particular keyword. It will even show you how much competition there is for that word so you can then go and do some competitor research and see exactly what you need to do in order to outrank them.

Competitor Research

This module allows you to research the top ten competitors for a given keyword (or any site you choose) in order to see what you’re up against. It will show you how old they are, how many backlinks, Page Rank, and a whole slew of other information that can help you decide which step to take next. Knowing where the competition gets their backlinks from allows you the opportunity to see about getting them from the same place. I have a backlink from Harvard University that my competitors could then locate and create one of their own. Without this software my backlinks could stay hidden and go undetected allowing me to outrank them just a little bit longer. Having this tool is like having that “extra” edge you’ve been looking for.

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker allows you to track your progress on all the keywords you are trying to target, and lets you see at a glance how you are doing with each keyword. It shows you which page is ranking for that keyword, how many links are pointing toward it, and even the PageRank of the page. It’s then a simple matter to either add some more backlinks to shore it up and move it up the ranks, or perhaps you can tweak the on page settings a little to improve its SEO score. It will even keep track of where you rank on the different search engines, in case you find that one is sending you more traffic than another.

Click to enlarge.

market samurai screenshot

Getting a discount on the software:

The purchase price on Market Samurai is normally $149.00 and  well worth every penny when you consider the value of traffic, but you can also get a 35% discount simply by signing up for the trial version first. This gives you 12 days to try it out and then make your decision. If you decide this software is for you I’d recommend taking advantage of the discount they offer to their trial members which gives it to you at $97.00 even.

If you are serious about traffic, and SEO including keyword research this one is a no-brainer! This is absolutely one of my favourite tools in my arsenal!

Click here to get your discounted Trial Version of Market Samurai

Ps. Good for both PC and Mac users!!!

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: competitor analysis, keyword research, keywords, rank, rank tracker, research, seo, software, tracking, traffic

Ways To Achieve A Successful SEO Website

May 2, 2010 By 2 Comments

seo websiteSEO or Search Engine Optimization may sound complicated, but understanding it is basic and really not that difficult. This process is a must have for those who are interested in getting their website noticed by a lot of viewers. There are few guidelines that need to be followed to be able to achieve a good optimized site.

In a nutshell search engine optimization is a means to make your website known, because the truth is, no one will really find your website if you just leave it as it is without promoting it or doing something to let others know that your website exists. The primary goal of optimization is to make it more likely that a site owner meets the objectives behind his site and for visitors to find what they are looking for.

Since getting traffic or attracting a lot of visitors is important you have to take the necessary steps to be able to achieve it. You can start by creating anchored backlinks to your website. This is done in order to increase your websites rank in the search results of a search engine like Google. They key to obtain this is through interlinking pages.

For every post you write, you would need to go back and link it to anything relevant that you write about in your new post. You should also go back and see if the post you have just written applies to anything you have already written previously and link from the old post to the new post.

After you have repeatedly done this process, Google will then be able to crawl your website thus helping them in identifying what your page is about. The benefits of these internal links may not be that huge but if the niche or subject of your website is not under a very big competition then the impact would be big. A link is a link and you have to bear in mind that you have to do everything to get increased traffic to your website and get as many target visitors possible.

Meta tags are also very helpful in getting a good optimized site. These are information that you can include in the head part of your web pages. To do this, create a page title in the head portion of your page that contains the main keyword of your site. Secondary key words may also be added but make sure that the flow of the title still sounds natural.

Another factor would be the number of keywords included in your overall site. You can include at least two to five percent on the content of your site. For example if your page has two hundred fifty words, there should be at least two percent of your main keyword that is included. They key is to mention your main keyword five times to achieve the desired two percent. If you have two hundred fifty to five hundred words in one page, it should be good to go.

When you already begin ranking and reach the first page of Google using the keywords that you included in your website people will already start viewing your website and might even recommend it to others thus increasing traffic. By getting lots of traffic, this would mean that you have a higher chance of making it to a higher rank. Not to mention this can be done without having to spend any amount of money. You just have to utilize SEO properly. One very important benefit of this is you get more and more people to exchange links with you and the more it will provide an increasing traffic rate for your site. Just remember that these are not strict rules but these are basic guidelines that could result in a good optimized website. You should also be open to more ideas that can contribute positively to your site.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: Google, keywords, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, traffic